Chris

I will certainly add it to my list of project/video ideas, vlaiv! I agree it would be interesting to see if there is anything the math doesn't reveal. I would need to change my software though as I currently use DSS and GIMP for DSO's. My very next project is to play around with smartphones for astrophotography. I've recently upgraded to a Samsung Galaxy 20 FE and it looks very promising using the pro photography mode which gives full manual control and RAW. I will be interested to see what can be done with that

I think this would only work if you could easily bin mirrorless and DLSR pixels, and if you also had the inclination to do a mosaic. I would personally just use a wider lens to increase the pixel scale and in turn how long you can track without smearing the photons across pixels on the sensor. Lenses can be stopped down to help even budget lenses perform a little better, but you get what you pay for with both lenses and telescopes of course. The mounting point is often on the base of the camera when using vintage lenses, so off axis weight on declination can be a problem, although I do personally prefer the helical focuser of lenses as they don't slip like my Crayford did when pointed close to zenith.... despite being locked off . I also had problems with the refractor almost hitting the tripod, and the balance was very tricky on dec also with the ED72, reducer/flattener and camera hanging off the back. I do think you could do as you say with a dedicated astro cam with binning and mosaics, but I will hazard a guess that most people using star trackers are either relatively new to imaging or just want to keep things simple. I think I get your point, it's about pixel scale ultimately rather than focal length, but for a given 'fixed' pixel size focal length does then of course matter.

I have that very same 135mm on my rig at the moment, it's great!

Me too. It's not my first rodeo with vintage lens astrophotography as I've dabbled a bit here and there, but it really is relatively easy and cheap! Great wide angle Cygnus by the way. looking at it I think 50mm might be good for capturing both NGC7000 and Sadr. I might give that a go.

That's good to hear, thank you Ha yeah I kept dropping the price out of curiosity but it was getting a tad bit silly by the time it had dropped to 8 quid. Glad I held onto it now despite the lens having more lateral chromatic aberration than you can shake a stick at! When you pixel peep the corner stars, the blue channel sits besides the star it's meant to be apart of lol Great work in narrowband there!

Good job! Was this shot wide open at f/3.5? I reckon you can clean those corner stars up by stopping down a little bit. I ended up stopping down to f5.6 which did the trick. M31 does look well framed at 200mm so I'm looking forward to giving this one a go. I've only ever imaged it with an ED66 which is slightly on the tight side.

Great report Mark, I can't imagine you'll forget that session in a hurry and very interesting to hear how you describe the NV experience. It really does sound like a whole new level. Dark skies verses LP never ends well for LP does it.

Despite many years of dabbling, I still class myself as a noob when it comes to DSO imaging. Well maybe another way of looking at it is that I tend to keep things simple and affordable i.e. just some basic star tracker antics with a stock Fuji camera for example. However, It's surprising how much can actually still go wrong even when keeping things simple! For starters my eyes were bigger than my belly trying to image unguided with a 72mm refractor with 432mm focal length on a star tracker but I knew this going in. Does anyone else try things they know aren't a good idea? Much better to stick to something like a Redcat51 or an 8 quid 200mm vintage lens in this case.

Lovely Ha regions in the arms, and It's a very rich rendition with a nice glow to the stars, nice one!

It's not a necessity, but an enhancement. A light shroud will increase contrast, prevent air currents from hot breath as mentioned, and it will also help prevent your secondary mirror from dewing up. Below is my step by step guide to modding the Heritage 150p. I cover (no pun in intended) how to make an affordable foam light shroud that can remain on the telescope even when you collapse it down for storage. Plus I demonstrate the good old plumbers tape focuser mod which is handy for taking that slack out the helical focuser.

Well done Bryan, Xiga and Matt. Brilliant!

Your reports are always so well written and great to read Rob What a wonderful scope. Wishing you many more happy years with it....unless you upgrade to a Tak

Brilliant Lee, very nice rendition even down to the matching signature water mark

You know me Lee, of course it's going to be a youtube video 😄 I'm lost for words hearing that you had 6 clear nights out of 7! What how who what? I'll head over and check out the image now

Two nights in a row! North America nebula last night and Sadr tonight 😃

Nice one Jeremy, Gemma is a beaut!

20/20 foresight would be great and all, but I can only repeat what others have said - You were not to know and did it to use it how you wanted to at the time... plus you can't help your addiction to those long tubes, Dave. If it's any consolation this is a top notch post, very interesting!

Thanks Craig, that's good to hear. I actually thought about mentioning the TS version in the video, but to keep things neat I decided to refer to all telecentrics as Powermates due to them being the original and probably best known example. lol Yes it's my mini Marshal amp. Us night owls need some waking up sometimes

Hi John, One planetary imaging rule of thumb says to aim for an f/ratio around 5x your pixel size. The ASI462 has 2.9um pixels, therefore 2.9 x 5= f/14-15, and this would be achieved with a 2x Powermate or Barlow and your Esprit 150. Obeying the above rule of thumb leaves you at around 2100mm focal length. This is obviously a general rule of thumb and maybe the Esprit 150 can punch above it's weight. I'm not sure about using a 4 x Powermate at f/28 with 6" of aperture though? Maybe the hardcore planetary imagers can advice? I dabble with a bit of everything which makes me an expert on precisely nothing Yes, the ASI462mc has a very small sensor which wont vignette with it's supplied 1.25" nosepiece. You would only really want a 2" Barlow when imaging large objects like the Sun or Moon with a DLSR/Mirrorless camera with an APS-C or Full frame size sensor.

Done Normal brain activity may now resume

Thanks John, good to know. Similar situation to ES vs TV eyepieces then

Just a quick guide to the differences between Barlow's (Telenegatives) and Powermates (Telecentrics). And for the beginners out there, I also cover how to use Barlow's and Powermates with both Eyepieces and cameras.

I never bother with them, but then again I'm not going for the best images possible. With modern sensors it's less important, but it's still probably worth doing if you're aiming to achieve the best.

When you literally see red

That's a great start Ash, and don't worry, literally everyone starts out by black clipping their images. May your astrophotography addiction begin