TiffsAndAstro

didn't do this and will give it a go tomorrow, though its possible clouds will clear a bit in an hour or so

Just in case anyone's wondering, I think less than 1 minute should be plenty for me. If there's a gap in the cloud tonight will see how quick less than 1min takes. Theres a chance I can get the comet and triangulum galaxy in same frame at 135mm

Well I found shiny thing and found i could focus on its reflection. No use for fixing bird shapes but, I could watch that focus change as the purple fringing was replaced with green fringing I think that will help me focus when it's dark though. I'd say the fringing doesnt really change much even stopping down to 6.3

Ty all for all the solutions. I'm sure at least one will do the job. The flashlight thing from flo seems a great idea at a decent price.

I remember seeing the sun on television a few months ago.

Is there anyway in daylight or a cloudy night, to test my lens at various stops to see how it effects aberations? I'm thinking bright led behind foil with a pinhole at one end of garden and 30feet away at other?

first clear sky attempting 3ppa with nina went really well, laptop battery life and shiity 25 year old usb hub issues aside whether my pa was as accurate as nina said who knows. next clear skies ill repeat it and try some very long exposures to test it? i was only using a 50mm lens, so im not sure how accurate 3ppa really can be with a big fov.

just in case anyone is interested and/or haven't tried nina for 3ppa.... it was drizzling, so i go play warthunder. go for a cig 20 mins later sky perfectly clear. so i hurried set up my gear, plonk tripod point north (i couldn't help having a glance through polar scope to check polaris was at least somewhere in view). connect my laptop, all goes fine but plate solving, error about couldn't download image. tried camera not going through an old crap usb hub and it worked:) did all 3 polar alignment image and solved them and gave me a reasonably small error, but no matter what i did with alt/az bolts, the error didn't change. took me 10 minutes before i looked up and noticed sky full of cloud which i am hoping was the problem. 95% 3ppa on nina, first attempt and only failed due to cloud....i hope ok so clouds went away battery charged up a bit and camera battery changed, had another go. wow. its a bit fiddly (my mount bolts are pretty nasty with a weird dead spot on the alt). got it seemingly good, tightened the big bolts and alt and az both went up to like 3 or 4 minutes. tried again on both and got the screenshot below and left it. what sort of numbers are good enough? is there a chart somewhere of like focal length, exp time, guiding yes/no etc? also anything anyone notices i should change. i couldn't see a way to change delay between 3ppa subs. ive set it doing a sequence (i think) of 20 x 120 sec on m51 at 50mm crop sensor lol just to test if i can repeatedly set up as quick and accurate (?) as my last attempt, nina is pretty amazing also want to preview my subs but scared to break anything, my choice of colour screen needs work

Tbh I've only really run provided scripts, but would love this so tyvmuch. If I ever see stars again I will have a go. Using dss like I do is a pita. Seems I'm blind to clouds in subs. Aircraft I can spot

Honestly, I bought a 135 2.8 200 f3.5 500mm f8 and tmount to ef adaptor for £60. I assumed they'd be a bit [removed word] compared to £500 scope but wanted at least a couple of hours getting an idea of relative focal lengths before committing a bit more. I think they've been worthwhile for that. But I cant un see the birds stopping them down does help. My dad's old mint 50mm pentax m f1.7 seems fantastic in comparison.

100 seems much more do able ty

Sy135 seems too much but will keep looking.

SW 72ed is on my list but would need a flattener? 200 earth poinds on flo I think I would like its colour coordination however. Possibly a tad heavy on my sw gti as I'm keen to mess with auto guiding.

I have vintage 135 2.8 and 200 f3.5 and the stars show a lot of bird shapes. Less so if I stop down, but then it feels like what's point of a fast lens if I have stop it down? I'm guessing that's why we have proper telescopes. As a noob, I'm keen to delay experiencing the fun of back spacing etc

Wow ty for all this. I'm avoiding variable zooms. I already have a very nice seeming pentax 50mm f1.7. Mounts are a pain. Which macro did you have that you didn't like? 200mm f2.8l would be super but maybe a tad too expensive and, as a noob, a little too much zoom? Also, I like the idea of using whatever I do get as a guide scope if i ever get a proper telescope

I need a decent lens for my 600d. I'm looking hopefully less than £300 used uk. There are some 150 and 180mm apo seem well regarded. Also maybe up to 300mm focal length. Canon l lens look nice but pricey for me.

Great ty, can wait for 3ppa to work perfectly first time I try it for real

hey ty for this. yeah i tried it using plate solve and it didn't like it. too wide an fov try using g05 database? i was about to give that a go this morning when i say your post. I just tried blind solving and....i think it worked. its showing me an image with annotation that looks correct so my next question is, can i use blind solving during 3ppa or should i go get the g05 database and use that? ok well i just tested 2 subs that didn't work but with g05 now they do do i need to set image source back to a particular setting once im done so its ready to do 3ppa first time ?

Siril seems more than enough at the moment but I like dss quality rating thing

never tried nina before, so i didn't realise it was possible to plate solve with a previously taken image, will google and have a look how ty. also i've set up astap with the first of the new big databases. hopefully that was the correct choice.

Just wondered if a 50mm f1.7 would be the best choice for my first go at nina and its 3ppa plugin? Or perhaps such a wide field might cause issues? 1.6 crop sensor

"as a mac user" i bought my one and only mac ever because it was such a nice object and looks good in a coffee shop. except i don't drink coffee its ok for email/browsing though hopefully also for astro stuff now i have boot camp etc. im sure ill find some issues but its been surprisingly easy so far. If i do ill definately give kstars/ekos a go and have a look. cheers.

i've watched a couple of his videos will go trawl his entire collection, ty. ideally though, i'd like a introduction to nina video that starts with "run this shortcut to open nina"

so i checked my weather forecast and it will be cloudy here for the next 8 months is there anything a frustrated noob can do on a cloudy evening? ive recently set up nina on a laptop, perfectly. im 110% certain it will work perfectly the first time i get to try it under clear skies. in about 8 months is there anything i could do with my nina/setup to practice a bit first? or anything like that? if anyone had a link to a good intro to nina video it would be much appreciated. im watching Cuiv the lazy geeks nina videos and while they're great, they are a little above my paygrade and assumed a basic working knowledge of nina to start with i think. my gear is a sw gti gem (ish) canon 600d and a variety of quite bad vintage lenses. and nina on a macbook running bootcamp ;(

yeah i already installed that. i used another installer from somewhere and fingers crossed its working ty for this. also, because im not a lazy geek i decided to install all this imaging stuff on bootcamp on an old mac and not activate it. For the lulz. well my 600d connects to nina (thought it doesn't autopopular the sensor size x/y but everything else). my sw gti connects to nina and i've parked it. just need clear skies so i can plug it all back together outside and it will work 100% first time