StevieDvd

Entering the focal length as zero is a good start if you have the correct camera selected. The ASIAir will use those to calculate the FOV as long as it can see a decently focused/exposed image. Check your camera selection for main camera and make sure you can see a few stars in the PA screen. Exposure needs to be around 2-5 seconds but on a DSLR you may need to select an appropriate ISO speed for that to work.

The ASIAir Pro just needs the replacement OS (Stellarmate, Astroberry etc) - the power ports are supported in the Indi libraries now as standard. No hacking required as these OS's give you full access.. The issue earlier was the Rpi USB driver which needed a kernel update only on the ZWO provided software (the hack was to get command line access to update the kernel). Most of the hacking was more to do with people trying to add Indi drivers for non ZWO cameras/focusers to the ASIAir software which turned out to be a dead end. I still use the ASIAir software over others as it's easier and more user friendly, but upgraded to the ASIAir Plus.

I thought the WO ZS61ii needed 67.7mm back focus! So 67.7 - 12.5 = 55.2 deduct the flattener from that to get the correct spacing.

The Seestar would calibrate, plate-solve and track - it has no guide camera. it's also AZ as standard unless you are using it on a wedge. Is the other setup in eq mode, if so then best to do PA. The AsiAir will also plate-solve on a goto and track but unless PA is reasonable the tracking will be off.

I don't think a pipe from Mr Spock's garden to Africa is a viable or economic solution🙂

How about one like this: https://www.skyatnightmagazine.com/advice/how-to-build-a-back-garden-telescope-pier Dustbin as cover for mount - perhaps other bin like options are available.

The upside of using the mounts built in USB is that you can use a cheaper USB printer cable. You need to set the baud rate to 115200 rather than the 9600 people use with an eqmod cable. The downside is that the driver needed is Prologic which does not preserve the com port for the device, it can change the com port which causes issues if the astro software does not have an auto port option. You would soon get used to checking that if the mount did not connect but a nuisance nonetheless. And the USB cable does not click in place so could get pulled out (unlike the eqmod connection).

At least with the ASIAir Pro you can easily swap the OS just by changing the micro-sd card. Indi-lib supports the ZWO power ports so you can run Stellarmate, Astroberry and other indi driven Pi systems.

Glad your working oaky. The 'sudo rpi-update' command is no the same as the app/release update that most instructions include and there are many Rpi units that have not doe or needed to have done it.

What's you Linux knowledge like? You may need to update the Rpi core to get updated usb/serial drivers (same thing happened to the Asiair when Skywatcher added usb ports for serial usage). If I can find the details I'll add them later. Update https://gist.github.com/timucingelici/217ac492bc2b127c6645ce033463d265 The gist of which is to do a 'sudo rpi-update' followed by 'sudo reboot' as on https://www.raspberrypi.com/documentation/computers/os.html

I think both Siril and PixInsight on defaults produce a similar post stacked result so would not be the cause of 'the biggest difference'.

I'm not a big fan of dobs but given your stated requirements even I'd say the dob is a wise choice. Once you get started on refractors and newtonians the mount becomes a major influence in the usage and increases the budget for a 'decent' setup. Which ever way you go, and depending on your ability to find objects in the sky, it may pay to look at the Celestron Starsense app and hardware to help you locate dso's and planets. The holder with licenses are often sold independent of the mounts/scopes they come with - I bought a second hand scope/mount just to get the holder & license. You can also find free software but may have to make a diy holder to do something similar. The Skywatcher 8" dob is much better than a host of the budget full mount/scopes on Ebay/Amazon - so don't trust the pictures on the boxes.

Try the faster baud rate 115200. Note if the driver is a Prologic one the port number may change (FTDI ones keep the number) - so don't assume com 3 is always the value. Eqmod has an auto detect option that can help with that.

Up front, I use PixInsight and the RC Plugins so perhaps I have a slight bias but: You say "To be honest... the stretched unprocessed images from PixInsight are far superior to those done by Siril." which might be a bit mis-leading. The stretching would be part of the processing, and in both Siril & PixInsight there are several ways/tools to do this - from auto to curves/histograms with different settings. So as @vlaiv mentions just the stacking is unlikely to yield such different images. I used to stack in Siril and finish in PixInsight after trialling the RC Tools and buying them. Only later did I find the way to use the stretching tools in Siril to achieve a better result than I had ever managed to achieve in Siril earlier. It would be interesting to see the images straight out of Siril/PixInsight before they are post-processed and how they were stretched.

Sorry for the possible hit on your finances but wait till you've tried BlurXTerminator, NoiseXTerminator & StarXTerminator (trial versions available). Some of these are available for Photoshop so you could try these with images first processed via Siril - which if acceptable could be a cheaper option.

From the the posts @Alex dew mentions using a baud rate of 9600. But connecting via a USB A-B cable. This may need to be 115200 for a USB connection, I say possibly as that is the setting for a USB port on the mount (not sure it is the same for the handset USB). HTH Steve

They mentioned "EQ5 pro goto with built-in USB port"

If there is an eqmod option for the mount try that with 115200 baud or less likely 9600 baud.

On reflection, yes.

Have you run the apt-get update command after adding the new repository?

My take on his setup was that the closer to the sensor the filter is positioned the smaller the halo is - but it's brighter! So he has the filter furthest from the sensor so that it's so feint it is not visible (or is removal in post processing).

Yes likely to be the filter as explained in this YouTube video placement of the filter can affect the halo apparently, though I have not tried that myself (yet).

PA and alignment are not the same. PA should level the mount but your alignment can be affected by the Date/Time/Location or BST/GMT settings. Also, see if the software has the same settings as your phone/tablet/pc - one may override the other. Check those and if all okay try a 3 star alignment and that nothing is left loose(clutches etc).

I had a mini 850 that I had 'upgraded' with electronic distributor and halogen headlights, as well as many repaints/resprays. My elder brother had a Vauxhall Viva and asked me to come and collect another car so I was tasked with driving his viva home. When in the drivers seat I asked why he only had sidelights working as the road was so dim. His headlights were on, I was just used to having 'proper' lights. Driving around it was common for other drivers to shout that I had main beam on, which I had not. So turning them on gave let the 'brighter' ones realise they had been dipped!

You can also run the astrometry setup from Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) - I do. Just needs the solve-field command to have the prefix WSL in front to run from a windows command prompt.