TiffsAndAstro

My ability to travel will be extremely limited for quite sometime, so I'll do best I can with what I have.

Ty for all this. My first astro cam will be some time in the future. I'm bortle6 ,which turns out isn't terrible

Anne's pic looks extremely complex and way way beyond my abilities, but having seen it means I will have another go processing mine, as I might be able to reference some almost not visible fearure in mine but clear in Anne's. Also, I really need to sign up to astrbin get some idea what others are capable of with similar equipment to mine

Not trying to compare, just very interested in context because I have very little I'll be sticking to non emission nebulas until I can get a osc astro cam, just iris nebula is some of both (I think), was visible and I wanted to target something I'd previously captured to see an improvement.

That's a remarkable image. Don't think it helps my wishful thinking about no stars in the center when yours seems very nice I think I've been underrating dust when seen in conjunction with a nebula. did you take that amazing image with a astro cam or stock dslr? How many hours?

Also that image of m101 I put above is under stretched. Here's a crop and overstretch Im still experimenting with post. I like space to be dark but stuff to be bright and clear. Getting that balance is tricky.

Yeah I need another go with phd2 calibrated lower down. Then I should be able to get 5 hours per clear night. I might even try sirilic to combine multiple nights. I'm not up to manual siril control yet there is a lot to read. The 2 hours on iris nebula was an interesting result, reflection part was bigger and ok, but no stars around it. I'm hoping they were blocked by dust? If so I might try it again, but many many more hours. Starnet blue screens and failed to execute problems means sn++ only seems to work if I crop in a lot. Not always though

Just in case any is interested here's my result. I think it's ok for under two hours with a dslr Star shapes look ok even in extreme corners. Not fantastic, but ok enough I think.

Weird yes, but in a good way, as i makes you look closer and then really appreciate it. In fact, striking is a better word to describe it Im just getting started with guiding and its going ok

At first glance, i genuinely thought it was a padlock symbol/watermark indicating copyright or something related

Fantastic image, ty for sharing it.

This is my plan for next clear skies Ty again

When choosing to calibrate, phd2 seems to offer a suggested location that it will slew to. Which I decided to ignore. Will at least give it a go next time THEN I will slew to my main target and press start everything else seemed to go pretty well. But after a quick bit of processing it's a bit red noisy. Hopefully that's just because I did almost 2 hours of capture rather than the 6 hours I was aiming for

yeah i need to find a target further from the ncp calibrate then slew back. but slewing to anything other than what i can search on and frame in nina, and/or manual focus bright star targets seems impossible the built in bahtinov grabber function seemed to work well though. also after chucking away some frames im down from a goal of 6 hours and got 1h45mins.

took me forever to 3ppa like an hour. been going for an hour with auto guiding on m101 120sec iso800 since frpm the warm subs look ok but a bit variable. there was some wind gusts. my ag seems all over the place so im blaming wind. meridian flip is on, lol. i think it might not be needed. pic is via chrome remote desktop to a laptop cable ratsnest i switched to iris nebula might have 90 minutes on it. i recalibrated but phd2 wants me to recalibrate to a target nearer the celestial equator, gonna have to google that tomorrow.

I am definitely in no rush. I need a lot more time just doing this my first proper run with everything going. Auto guiding is a bit janky but there is some wind gusts. Really clear though

Didn't really consider wind at all for imaging. It's clearing up here, but winds upto 15mph might be more of an issue than I thought.

This is good to know Ty. I'm here for a good time, not a fiddling time

Newtownions do vary in price a lot. But so do there types I guess. Nothing urgent I'm just thinking about future.

Do you know roughly what it would be at F5 for context?

F4 is that much trickier than F5? I'll have a Google and see ty

I quite like them, but not terribly bothered either way. Plopping a camera in front of the lens I don't like the idea of, even though results from a Rasa look incredible.

Was it a difference of build quality or just a property of a huge mirror?

Rich cretins have just as much collimation issues as newtownions though maybe? At least the image train is somewhere sensible

So I'm quite keen on f4 ish newtownions. Not so keen on the horror stories with collimation and an image train hanging off the side, even just osc and maybe filter drawer. Are there any such scopes that are easier to deal with? And I realise I'll need a grown up mount and other accutrinontes £