alan potts

Those TEC140 are great scopes, Olly swears by his, It is a scope I would consider very strongly if I were to go up in APO size but I also keep looking at the 150mm Espirit which is also very decent. Lovely image now in my books but some will want more saturation🙂. Alan

A staggering amount of detail in this shot, rich in colour and I really find it hard to think I have seen a a better M33, a wow capture for sure very well done. Hope one day to get close to this standard. Alan.

Thank you for that Wim, all I need to do now is go outside and take an image good enough to use it on, looks long and involved but I will sit and have a go at it, like anything in PS there are 10 ways to do the same or similar, I tend to try and keep it simple even though I am half decent using it, that's only because I've used it for years with normal photography. The trick I always wanted to pull off was Urainum35's control of Alnitak on the HH, I have watched his video about 50 times and I still can't see what he does, Olly gave me a good half measure though which I'm happy with, one day I will suss it. Alan

We have had terrible weather through May and the beginning of June, we have just had 4 days of no rain where 102mm of rain fell, thats forecasters for you. last night was the first clear I have had with no cloud for over a month. I know you struggle in the England with weather but if helps I am genuinely concerned and always wish you all well, when I was over in late July and early August it was lovely, maybe I need to come over more often. I have never done more than 2 hours so far on an image but galaxies do really need it, my trouble is I am up very early every morning so don't stop out that late, looks clear for tonight so maybe have a go at M10 or 14. I don't know what arcsin stretch is can you enlarge on it, I would like to red up my stars a bit😀. Alan

Superb capture, so much to look at!! Alan.

There is a massive amount of data gone into that capture and I personally feel it looks much better toned down somewhat, I like punchy images which is probably why I got a bit of an orange caste into my M12 you looked at earlier. I would still try and tone the orange stars down a bit around M51 as for me they look a little overdone and I think it detracts from a superb centre-piece of the galaxy. In any case it's a super image which ever way you look at it and everything else is just personal taste. You have some wonderful scopes, as much as I could afford to have them I value my wife more, If I could pick one it would be the Tak. Alan

Dave I won't be getting the ASI071 until maybe Sept, the savings pot took a bit of a hit at weekend , but I will get one, it will be a bit better for darkness then too. I feel the glow from the laptop is getting into my 40D's viewfinder when pointing eastwards. Must mask it. Alan

I am tending to get a bit of gradient on that right hand side, I cropped the far right corner away. I see it on most of my images shot facing eastwards, I'm beginning to think it is the glow from the laptop creeping in the viewfinder. The long the sub the worse it seems to be, will look into it but I am just trying to hone skills a bit before I get a ASI 071, by this time we should have better darkness, or at least more of it. Alan

Thankyou very much Steve, yes it does look better, I feel this could be my half baked attempt to bring up the orange in the stars as I felt it generally lacked colour. I used a technique using Select and Mask then tried to bring up the stars in Raw Filter, this works very nicely for noise reduction and it is pretty good for taking the sting out of bright centres, not so good for colouring stars though, I know other ways. It's strange when I was looking at it I didn't notice the red in the background and I normally do, I sometimes like to leave an image do a bit of gardening then come back, I find it helps. Alan

Got some impressive, for me, guiding last night adding to M13 0.4 on RA ans 0.3on Dec, conditions were good and it highlighted to me what someone said last week, conditions are all when it comes to guiding. However all changed when I lowered the scope to pick up Messier 12 around the 20 degree mark from the horizon. Still not too bad though at 0.8 and getting better as it climbed. M12 rises in my worst part of the sky, not that it is that bad, there is just a bit of a glow from the town about 4 miles away . This is 1 hour 30mins of 3 minute subs at 1600ISO using a Canon 40D which is modded, had dither working too, I think. This is far from perfect compared to some of the outstanding work I see on here but I feel I am improving. Used my 805mm APO at native F/L Please feel free to offer advice or cut it to bits, see there is a very faint galaxy just creeping through in there. Alan.

As the 4 straight day of no rain pours down, 2 inches has just fallen in 30 minutes, you could not see, weather forecasters for you, I have some questions. I see the words Pixel Scale used often in regards to a camera scope combination. Firstly what does it mean, I have scopes at 420mm 641mm, 805mm and 1000mm, without going into the shortest version of my SC at 1920mm. How does one work this out and thirdly, what is a good figure to aim for? Not that I can vary this at present having only a DSLR. Alan

Dave, but surely 15K is enough to have bought it, and then restart saving for the car.

I have the 7D 1&2 and both are superb bodies, however I would go with the 80D, I have owned or used all of these right from 10D up to 60D and always found them excellent, it is just that bit newer than the 7's. I have a 1DS mk2 as well and have tried it on my scope and wasn't over impressed, though the 6D mk2 will be a better body in any case because of it being years newer. Alan

I asked more or less the same question about 2 month back and whilst the two above answered and are well worth taking note of someone said the 294 had some issues with condensation in the cooling, can't recall who it was though. I elected to carry on saving for the 071, which took a hit this weekend as I had to use 300 quid of my saving pot to buy a guitar for my son, so I may now be looking at the 183MC🙃.

Thats a great shame, the best thing I have ever seen is from Backyard Astronomer, a large plastic storage box turned on its side with holes for the cables. Alan

Many congratulations to you and all your family John, nice tie, dare not show you some of the ones I had from my tie days, all Versace and minus magnitude for brightness🙂. Alan

As said 8 10 and 12 but I don't believe there was a 6. Meade brought out a 6 inch single post affair in about 2011 I forget the name they gave it and I think it had some sort of camera as part of it. There was also an 8 inch but I don't believe they were popular, remember reading many a comment about the single pillar mount. Alan

If it helps the weather is awful here too, storms, rain, storms and more rain. I have known 25 clear nights in May and 28 in June, this year May didn't break double figures. Alan

I have done it in the past John from a better position than yourself but it is far from easy even here. I used the m/n 190mm and rate it harder than Sirius. Alan

Absolutely correct, sorry everyone, I meant to say Would Not need a Flatener etc. As an aside I seem to have missed Not or 'nt from a few ending of words of late, must check things more carefully. Sorry all, Alan

I am no expert but I used a 70mm (420mm) scope with a Canon APS C sensor and the egg shaped stars were only toward the very edge. With the 414 being much smaller than the Canon I would have thought you would need a reducer/flatener. Alan.

At that reduction it's the time to buy it, I got a secondhand simialar TS Red 0.79 and that is expensive enough at 380e, normally Riccardi are 700e area. Alan

I feel there are some very nice 80mm and 70mm scopes out there and of course more affordable, Gina's suggestion is nice the Espirit 80mm . TS did a nice 80mm carbon fiber scope at a bit over 1000e think they still do, never seen one but I know someone that has one and he loves it.

I guess without putting exotic words like Lzos or Lomo in the description as well as another few other high quality marques the Espirit range seem to take a bit of beating from what I have read and have seen results from and even here SW's offering would be so close to these as to barely matter. I did have here for a while a 90mm APO triplet from Telescope Services that performed very nicely, I very nearly bought one 5 years back, I believe it was F6. That said owning a APM larger scope I would go for the 100mm Espirit, fast and wide enough, if I were to buy tomorrow.

The new mount would appeal to me at 35kg it is the sort of mount that would handle my LX200 12inch, without fork of course. I can't see myself trying to ever mount the 18 inch Dob. There are some what appears to be decently made mounts in the affordable area now, even though I could dig into the pockets far enough to buy a top level mount with weather like I have had dished up in May I can't see that I would ever want to. Not managed more than 70mins without being stopped often by a storm. Feel this one could be worth keeping an eye on. Alan