Gina

Beautiful job - they look lovely - really neat

I've read David Arditti's book and disagree with a number of his ideas. As for hanging the door the wrong way or building it wrongly... well... I rest my case

OK, so what's the matter with this? A brick column like this is pretty strong. I know when making a concrete pier it is recommended that all the concrete is poured in one go without letting the first lot go off first. With wetting, mortar sticks well to bricks. Houses and other buildings have been built this way for donkeys years - why shouldn't we build a pier this way? I don't know - is there a reason? Or is it really that nobody has thought of doing this before. Apart from sharp corners, I can't see any problem! (Anyway, I like my round concrete pier - so there! )

Great start - nothing wrong with that

Nice one

Good start - get more subs on that and you'll bring a lot more out

Nice

Very good first shot - lots of lovely red glow You could get a lot more out of that with stretching the histogram. (Called Curved in most image processing software.)

Good one - you've even managed to separate the stars in the centre, a very difficult job - well done

Yep... Mine is BIG!

I used that on our porch end wall but it was just too expensive for my obsy. Also, I've only found it in white, if I could have got it in green or brown I might have gone for it.

Great first images

7th March 2012: This really was my first DSO taken on my nice spangly new Atik 314L+. I really didn't have much of an idea how long the subs should be or even how to process it - but somehow I ended-up with this:

Great looking pier Glad you're back to full health now - must have been very frustrating (as well as painful, no doubt). Good luck with the rest of the build

I think that's very good advice when stripping anything down It's often confusing when putting things back together - some things can go back in more than one way round as well as in a different order, as you say. I've had that problem before with other things. Screws of different lengths can be a particular headache.

Ah, I see

Do you really want to put both a zoom EP and zoom Barlow together?

Sara, you should drift align anyway.

But separate guidescopes nearly always suffer from flexure to one degree or another.

There is a method you can determine the cause of the eggy stars, detailed here:

http://deepskystacker.wikispaces.com/Measuring+differential+flexure

Nice one

Yes, good thinking I prefer not to hack bits off the main thing if I can avoid it.

Looks good And who says it's not neat? Looks neat enough to me - nice job

That's good

This is my first real attempt at DSO and managed to capture the Orion Nebula using my ED80 scope with 1100D DSLR attached directly to the focuser using the DSLR adapter supplied with scope and EOS adapter ring. Taken using APT for the first time.

This is a single shot processed in the GIMP to bring out the details so I'm expecting better results later when I get to stacking multiple images.

That's more than OK - it's brilliant!! Well done

Oh no!!! You're not getting rid of that lovely froggy sandpit :)