TiffsAndAstro

yeah mine came with that screw/washer thing. i removed it in case it took anyone's eye out but i don't like the idea of the guidescope+cam relying on a single screw - will make it prone to turning and i have to dismantle it and store it after every session. i was hoping to get another one of these screw and use them to attach my spare green dovetail. the dovetail i currently have isn't long enough to mount it on the front. i do have two ball heads and one quick release plate though.

i realise some/most of this, but main problem is my 'filter holder' is inside the nose peice of the flattener...and i don't use the nose piece. i could get a clip in for my dslr but they're expensive and won't work with a proper astro camera. also i haven't bothered looking at mounted/unmounted and i can't fit a filter drawer between focus tube and flattener otherwise i could use a rotator also not even glanced at any narrowband siril videos. pp colour adjustment is photometric colour calibration? im siril + (a slight bit of) gimp only. however, if its pop you want shade you eyes and glory at the clown show below 12 hours ago i thought i had nothing. now i have something, whatever that something is still needs a little work

Au natural is the new black i read somewhere i quite like my broadband ngc7000, hence why i was expecting what seems to be a vaguely similar target, elephant trunk to give me vaguely similar results also im reluctant to get any filters until i get a proper camera, though its possible, if im ever able to visit my (very) local astro club and join i could loan one. also, guess who forgot that there were some clouds last night. i think i had nightmares about phd2 bonging away. while i checked the plot in siril and rejected the high fwhm subs, i didn't notice bands of cloud in the ones with lower fwhm. gonna remove them and try again.

already do this in my head

This is really useful for me Ty. I'll have a look at sv bony £17 sounds very reasonable. The OTA rings need an M4 so I'll get some. The finger point to the bright red handle made me fall off my chair laughing, Ty and yes my zwo 120 f4 scope has a long looking stalk.

How far down did you go?

also any recommendations for a different target when there's the next clear sky in a couple of decades's time? definitely not tonight not good by any stretch of the imagination (geddit?) but its better than nothing. ill give it another go but at least there is something visible

i assume flats help with dust on sensor too but im not certain. i haven't removed my camera from the scope for at least a month, so no harm me having a look and running the clean sensor thing i dither by 7 pixels which i got from a dithering calculator. i think this is 7 pixels on the guide cam but again not certain i also drizzle and seemingly have to resample 50% before using starnet or blue screen of death (over 260 tiles seems to do this bluescreen) but binning 2x2 has a similar/same result to resampling so i just do that now.

yeah same dot was in my ngc7000 image, i assumed new flats would remove it. i can touch it up a little in gimp, just can't think how its still there. im gonna restack the lot manually see if the couple of frames i chose not to stack might make a difference.

there is definately something out there i think. here is a quick screenshot of histogram after gradient removal, noise reduction, photometric colour calibraion and then binning 2x2. that garnet star is bright. also my dust mote is still in the same place and its annoying me. i did take flats again so im not sure what's causing it.

tbh that was my only thought, but telescopius doesn't list its apparant brightness. random google result say magnitude of 3.5 and na nebula apparent visual magnitude of 6 which makes nelly quite a lot brighter than na? fortunately, i put aside part of my initial budget to pay for a premium flog which i am currently applying vigorously to the data also ill try binning again forgot that

This is the best idea I've seen for an inexpensive pier. Hopefully in the future I can steal it. Though im not keen on boring a 10 meter hole in the ground Paint your mini obsie blue and it will feel like a Tardis inside

So I really like my image of the north America nebula ngc7000. So I decided to try the elephant trunk nebula because it was just about visible at 1130 and could do three hours on it (got about 55 x 120 sec subs in the end). It would be even betterer After a quick stack and 2 hours processing nelly, it's crap. I will do this with more care and attention again hopefully tonight and maybe it will turn out better but I'm not confident it will be anywhere as nice as my ngc7000. Is there some major reason why ngc7000 seemed easier than elephant trunk? They're both Ha emission and vaguely position in the sky. No moon for either too. If so, what is that difference? So I can use it to choose more realistic targets than might turn out more like ngc7000 for my gear and bortle 6 etc.

I really prefer as few wires as possible trailing off the scope. How I have it the moment looks a mess but I have removed the scope from the mount after a session and it helps with that. Having said that I'll reconsider it when I get a couple hours free and look closer at the guide scope attachment situation.I have a spare usb extension lead I could use on the very short weird usb cable my 600d uses. I've seen plenty of YouTubers dangling lots of cables and id attach least try to bunch them up at a point near the center of the dovetail before dropping it down the mount. The usb hub is velcroed onto the ota at the moment and it holds ok. I think I'll have to dissemble it all anyway to do I could change that at same time. Of course, the minute I do dissemble it, the evening sky will miraculously clear up...

i bet lol

that actually looks really good. sadly i don't have access to a clamp and probably not suitable drills etc. i need to take stuff apart and see where i stand. cheers for all this.

I think that would work but the single screw would make it prone to turning. I need to dissemble it a bit to double check this but I think what you said is the first thing I need to try, Ty. Not tonight though, hopefully;)

My workshop is rather limited It's possible though ty

Omg I like that. Only problems might be velcroing my usb hub to it and being sure the base of my guide scope fits. Flo told me I need M4 bolts but maybe with low heads incase zwo 120mm/f4 guidescope base might catch on them. I think I'm going to buy stuff and see what happens, which I'm not keen on

Really appreciate this but it looks a bit clunky. I was hoping to screw the dovetail to the OTA rings then screw something like https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/303335188489 To the dovetail. Then I can just slide my guidescope and camera in? Countersunk screw heads and thin bolts needed of the correct size might be an issue though?

So I want my guidescope on a dovetail on top of my imaging scope. I should be able to use the too short for balancing bright green one I got with my scope but will need two screws that will drop through it and into each hole on top of each OTA ring. Then I'd just need to attach a finder scope clamp (?) to that green dovetail preferably via two more screws. I can then velcro my usb hub on the same green dovetail behind the guide cam. Hopefully. I could potentially reuse the finder scope clamp I'm currently using but I'm not keen to unscrew it. The holes left would let in light? I'd need to reuse those screws unless I can identify them and buy extras. Does this sound doable? I asked Flo and their advice was to spend more than my telescope cost on an adapter lol https://www.firstlightoptics.com/adm-guider-mounting/adm-mini-max-guider-guidescope-saddle.html

Very nice image

ok last upload i promise* this should have better stars (though a bit artificial) and the dust mote isn't as eye-catching. this version looks better zoomed in, but i think the original might look better zoomed out. i think i'll leave this image alone for a little while and come back to it with fresher eyes. * not really a promise

i had a quick look at binning my stack and couldn't see any obvious difference. i did use it on the 45 mins i took on m57 though and did notice a difference. its still not nice to process - star net keeps the ring nebula itself in the starmask, so i might as well just no bother. it was only a test anyway so no sweat. ill put it below as its ok for what is it. as for my ngc7000 i took the starless and starmask used for the above but this time i put the starless through graxpert. removed a small odd looking bit of gradient (though this could be information rather than noise/gradient) and a denoise. i can't recommend graxpert highly enough btw. i recombined both parts and cropped out the left hand side nasty stars. i think it has reduced alot of the noise/effect you demonstrated, above. next i will start it from scratch and bin my stacked file before doing anything else. will also try clone tool in gimp to do something with that obvious dust mote, though as little as i can, just so the eye isn't instantly drawn to it. also a quick test with siril's star resynthesis seems to completely fix those crappy stars so im also giving that a go too

i bought the power supply 'bought by others' from flo with my mount. its medical grade (?) but my only criticism of it is the connector to the mount is straight and not right angled. its worked a treat. it was about £40 quid though.