jgs001

As you're using the telescope as a camera lens, when you connect your camera, the FOV of a 600mm scope will be the same as the FOV of a 600mm camera lens on the same camera body.

What Peter said, but https://www.firstlightoptics.com/dovetails-saddles-clamps/astro-essentials-vixen-type-photo-dovetail-bar.html should enable you to connect your camera and lens directly to the mount.

I'd suggest, rather than spending money now, as a start, get a dovetail, fit a camera quick release plate system to it, and mount your camera with lens directly onto the AltAz mount. The light weight will help relieve the pressure on the drives. Make sure that the balance is a little to the rear as it'll keep the drives fully engaged. Even in Alt Az you can achieve passable images, up to 2 minutes low in the east and west. Take a look at the posts in It's not ideal, can be frustrating, but it's gear you have.

that is indeed an option, but you won't really have the detail doing that, if you're trying to get any surface detail... best I can offer, try it, and see what it looks like. As for the illusion that the moon appears larger, that is true, and it's a deception, that if I recall correctly, your brain plays as putting the moon near the horizon allows you to get a sense of scale with the surroundings... I'm not aware of a method of being able to do what you're looking for any other way, I'd suggest trying to ensure you keep the same exposure settings, and do a gentle photoshoppery... If you really wanted a very detailed moon, you could grab a shot with the newt, and use that with the landscape... with some moon resizing.

The 55-250 isn't going to get you that close... as you say, for close up use the newt. But, the 55-250 may allow you to capture a better framing of the moon with the scenario, and given the larger size on the sensor that the higher zoom will give you, will produce some detail.

That's a difficult one to answer... Typically, around the 50mm mark on a full frame (35mm on a crop sensor) is considered to be about the same as you're eye sees. I presume though you wanted to get closed than that. You could look at the EFS55-250, that would give you a closed view, and you would be able to get some detail on the moons surface.

If you can stretch to it, then go for a macro lens. They have an incredibly flat field and thus work really well for Astro. The nifty fifty needs to be stopped to around f/4 or f/5.6 to get the best out of it for Astro.

Ok, one quick installation later... It's called groups. When you add an image to the main group, a new group tab will appear next to it. Click on that, and add the next nights data to that... I think, you want to avoid using the Main group, as any calibration frames in the main group, will be applied to all groups.. so drop in one image file to get Group 1 active, then, after adding everything to group 1, remove it again.

Alistair, that all depends on the tool you're using to stack. It's been a while, and I don't have it handy, but as I recall... DSS lets you load sets of data in, as that, sets of data... with tabs across the bottom... so you load up each set of lights and calibration frames form each session into a set, add a new set, and continue like that. I've done it (albeit a long time ago) with 3 nights worth of data.

Thanks all... Ant, mostly ? if that counts. It's going to take me a while to get caught up with stuff... I suspect things have moved on a fair way with tech and equipment since I last looked at any of it,

It's been quite a long while, so figured I ought to say Hello to everyone all over again... Sorry for my absence... but hopefully, normality (whatever the hell that is) is returning, and I'll be able to get on, and do some Astro stuff again. So, Hello everyone. I've been into Astronomy for over 10 years now, started observing with Binoculars, and progressed up to being an image, although I often do a bit of one whilst the other is active.

First real opportunity I've had in ages to do any imaging or astronomy of any kind, and decided (perhaps foolishly you might think) to try a stack. My last attempt blew up registax, but with the help of PIPP (and some fairly massive cropping of each image image in PIPP), registax didn't expire in a heap of bit dust, and completed the processing. 22 images, Canon 60d, Sigma 150-600, each image, 1/30s, ISO250 f/14 at 600mm.

It's actually easier at prime focus. You can use, an in camera clip filter, or a filter that screws into the EP adapter, be it, 1.25" or 2". With the images I posted above, I was using a 1.25" CLS filter.

the LP round here isn't too bad, but it does get noticeable in the images. I used an Astronomic CLS filter, on the ST80 to cut out the LP. It did a great job. I was also using a SemiAPO filter to cut out a lot of the CA that the ST80 suffers from, thus the images look less blue than you'd expect from an unmodified dSLR. My M45 image with this setup really didn't work very well because of that filter... it cut most of the reflection nebula.

I'll play... these are all early, I've now gone HEQ5 or Astrotrac... but... These were all shot using a NexStar SLT with an ST80 clone, and an unmodded Canon 450d. The mount and scope, in total cost £100. Shot settings are in the borders 63x61 seconds ISO1600

Interesting... flats at 100, the rest at lights ISO... I've only ever used the same ISO on all the calibration frames... dropping the ISO might sort out some oddities I get on flats using a laptop with camera lenses though

If you bookmark the page with your location on it, the URL contains that location. That way, when you go to the bookmark, the site takes you straight back to your correct location. It worked for me that way... http://clearoutside.com/forecast/54.7/-2 This is using a couple of random long/lat values I entered rather than mine, but the principle is the same.

Looks great, Nice one Steve and team.