Gina

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 :)

Ah well, you have plenty of resources there Reggie Linux Mint is based on Ubuntu but not as bloated Works well on old machines. I went off Ubuntu a few years ago when they made some wrong decisions IMO. I have one old machine running dual boot but since I'm using it virtually entirely for XP now I shall be removing Linux when I get round to it. I have a 12 yr old laptop running my weather station software with Mint.

This looks a pretty good buy, higher spec machine, for under a ton and a half, :- Buy Dell Optiplex 745 SFF Intel Core 2 Duo 3.4Ghz 2GB 80GB DVDRW Win XP Pro at Morgan Computers

Might even go for something like that myself if what I've got isn't fast enough

Yes, you can usually get USB to work with a bit of fiddling about. What I had trouble with when I was trying to run weather software in XP in VB under Linux was FTP. Tried other progs in XP and had FTP trouble. WINE OTOH is the other way round - FTP is fine but not USB. OK I know WINE is not a VM but does a similar job.

One thing you have to watch when running a VM is system resources which are shared between systems. What I've done is to buy cheap refurbished PCs from Morgans at about a ton (£100) and monitors at around £30. KB/mouse for a fiver or so almost anywhere. You may want a wireless card in the PC if you want wireless LAN but they come with 100Mb Ethernet RJ45 port. And about 6 USB2 ports. They're ex-office computers and are good makes, well built (well, the ones I've bought have been anyway). They came with Win XP Pro and a few odd bits of software installed but no CDs so if you lose the OS you'll need a Win XP install CD. They do have the XP serial number on the case though so you can register the XP OS. Hardware is basic and lowish spec but usable eg. 40 or 80GB HD a gig or two RAM, CDROM drive, Pentium 4 HT processor. Of course you can upgrade various bits if wanted.

Yes, I've done that too - both ways round.