Hals

There isn't a "one rig does it all" but I'd echo what everyone else said about the mount. It's paramount (no pun intended...) 

Bortle 6 officially, but I'd say closer to 5 in reality as I can see the Milky Way once dark adapted.

I was imaging last night, only managed an hour on the Cocoon Nebula. What caught my eye was the artifacts showing on the stars. The thing is this hasn't showed up before. Up to now my star images were circular. The only thing that I have done since my last imaging session is cleaned my objective lens (carefully...blower brush, lens tissue\fluid then a very gentle polish with a microfibre cloth).  I'm very careful handling the scope, no knocks etc. If this is aperture vignetting how can this suddenly appear, and if it's pinched optics the same question as nothing has changed barring the lens clean. Here's an image to show the effect - the little notch at the eight o'clock position on the brighter stars (low rez but you can see it). Hope anyone can shed some light on it and hopefully a fix !

That is top drawer. Very well done 👍

Unmodded DSLR with no filters, 24 x180 sec subs, plus the usual calibration frames. I'm not getting hung up about too many stars on this as I like to see it as is, if you will. I'm just so happy that I'm finally able to capture these beautiful objects after many years as a purely visual observer.

Nice one, lovely colour in the Dumbbell 👍

0.5 sec @ ISO 12800, slightly out of focus but it was a spur of the moment grab. 20/07/2020 00:10 hrs.

Final image after much faffing about. A bit noisy but it was a very warm night. 

Cheers Mark, I'll try. Not having a great deal of success with that so far though. I'll keep plugging away I'm using Annie's Actions in PS to try and reduce them.

The Witches Broom from last night, my first attempt on this.

24 x 180 sec subs, no filter, the usual bias, darks & flats.

Cropped a bit because I didn't frame it as well as I could\should have, had one of those nights with a few gremlins and wanted to get something before the clouds eventually rolled in.

I'd be more than happy with that ! Western Veil is my next target - hopefully tonight if Clear Outside is correct.

M31 20x120 sec subs, no filter, taken as the Moon was starting to get a bit too high for comfort and the sky getting lighter. Overall I'm happy with this considering.

NGC 6992 again 20x120 sec subs, no filter. Needs a lot more integration time, a first attempt and the start of an ongoing project.

Ah! Thanks, I do eventually intend to connect APT up to the mount at some stage, it's just I've only x2 USB ports on my laptop these will both be used for my camera's. Looks like a USB hub is on the shopping list! Thanks again.

I'll be using APT for planning my subs and using PHD2 for guiding. I don't have EQ Mod installed so I'm using the Synscan hand controller for locating objects, which I'm happy with and comfortable using. My question is will it be ok to use just the hand controller to locate my objects then use APT\PHD2 for the previously mentioned uses only? ie: I won't have to connect APT to my mount? 

DeepSky Stacker for  stacking, the rest with Photoshop or at a push, GIMP.

A bit more processing, a bit noisy but at least I caught the Crescent Nebula, albeit faintly !

https://www.mpb.com/en-uk/used-equipment/used-photo-and-video/used-digital-slr-cameras/

Often have some good deals on used gear 😀

Here's my initial test shoot from last night, uncropped, 20 lights, 10 darks, 10 bias no flats:  unguided 30 sec exposure with manual focus without a Bahtinov mask (it's in the post). It's just a random area of sky in Cygnus I didn't target anything just wanted to see how the stars were. I think they're pretty much round right to the edge. Very quickly processed but I'm happy with the result so far. I was hoping for a good result with the WO Z71 but dreading stretched stars or trailing. Now for some proper targets...Onwards and upwards.

So, after some research and much YouTubing I’ve pulled the trigger on a William Optics Z71 Star II Quad APO Astrograph. Should fulfil my needs for wide field with fast and quality optics. I’ll be doing shorter unguided subs initially then later I’ll get an autoguider rig for it. I feel like I’ve taken the red pill and am about to fall down the rabbit hole 😀

Portability is a criteria, I know the ED80 is pretty portable but I'm edging for the WO partly because I have the option of a good deal with it and its superior (IMHO) build quality and finish.  I'll let you know which one I get eventually !

That’s what I thought 👍

31 minutes ago, blinky said:

what camera are you going to use?  I had a Willima Optics ZS66 a few years ago and it was a nice widefield image but with the big pixels of the DSLR I was using at the time it was very undersampled and I prefered my 80mm Skywatcher.  Nowadays with small pixel CMOS I would be tempted to go with the 60mm as it would provide the larger FoV for widefield especially if paired with one of those CMOS chips...

It’s a Canon 80D DSLR. 

Torn between these two for wide field imaging. Can anyone with experience of either offer a good comparison, pro's & cons etc. I'm leaning towards the ZS61 at the moment and whichever one I get will do me for a few years.

Compared to my shed, that's a show house !!! 😆