RoloFanatic

I have no doubt that the iOptron skyguider pro will work well with a DSLR lens and guiding. I use my iOptron skyguider pro with a WO z73 and DLSR which is definitely at its limits but with guiding I easily get 5 min subs (for fun i even tried 10 mins once and they looked alright). Don't forget to factor in the tripod if you are budgeting, good tripods are not cheap unfortunately. This is what I use: Innorel RT80C carbon fiber tripod160cm, but you may be able to get away with something a cheaper because you wont have the weight of a telescope on it.

Just another recommendation for NINA. I use it for controlling my camera, but the BEST feature of NINA in my opinion is the plate solving! It makes finding your target and lining up perfectly so much easier. You will need to install ASTAP or similar to use it, but there are loads of tutorials on youtube for how to do that

Hmmmm I think maybe I got a bit overexcited when I read about this because it was something new and I liked the idea of not needing a guide scope. But from what you're saying it sounds like it would be more of a pain than it's worth, I ll have a look at some mini guidescopes instead and put the OAG on hold. Thanks for the advice

Great picture, I think M81 and M82 might be my favourite objects in the night sky at the moment!

Hey, I am wanting to try autoguiding with my telescope but I am very close to the maximum weight limit of my mount and I cant upgrade my mount because I need it to be highly portable. This is what lead me to look into off axis guiding. Im using a William Optics Zenithstar 73 with the Z73A adjustable flattener on an ioptron skyguider pro and a astromodified canon 4000D. From the reading I have done I require a 55mm spacing behind the flattener to the camera, this is usually achieved by the 44mm distance in the camera body, and an 11mm gap for the connecting t-ring adapter. What I am planning to use for OAG is the TSOAG9 with the TS EOS adapter which gives a total spacing of 11.4 mm if I understand correctly. Is this spacing ok for my DLSR as it is slightly more than the 55mm stated? Also, I am planning to use the ZWO ASI120mm guide camera, which I know some people have said may not be sensitive enough but I think they are referring to it not being suitable for use with very long focal length SCT scopes. Would this be sensitive enough for use with a 73mm refractor? Any help would be great as this stuff is $$$ so I want to try and get it right first time. Thanks!

It does sound kind of ridiculous but surely there must be some potential or there wouldn't be any investment. I wonder if it could be an option for getting things off of planets with less gravity and/or thinner atmospheres such as the lunar surface?

Getting my first good image of Andromeda was definitely a highlight for me!

I currently use an ioptron skyguider pro with a WO Z73 and find it works pretty well, i can easily get subs of 2 mins which is enough for my use but I did need to buy the extender bar for the weight in order to achieve balance. My setup is just within the weight limit though so I think if you want to do autoguiding as well, then the skyguider pro may not be suitable.

I agree. I worry that when people recommend the HEQ5 to every person who asks for advice on an entry level astrophotography mount they could be putting people off from even trying it. There are some great youtube channels which show really well that you don't need to break the bank to get amazing pictures (astrobuiscuit is one, some of astrobackyards videos, and nebula photos as a few examples).

That looks great! Do you mind if I ask what mount did you use for this image, and also how long were the exposures? Im thinking of trying the horsehead for the first time myself with a similar scope and a DSLR 😛

Over Christmas I finally decided it was time to try imaging Andromeda (not sure why I left it so long), I had a week and a half off, so plenty of time to wait for the perfect night....... It was cloudy all night, every night apart from a few hours on one evening when I rushed out for a very quick imaging session on Andromeda. I was aiming to get 2 hours of exposure doing 60 x 2 min exposures however when I went to stack the images I realized that almost half of them were unusable. They had this weird double star effect which I haven't seen before. I thought this was maybe caused by wind making the mount wobble as I use a lightweight camera tripod which makes my setup quite top heavy. But if anyone has another diagnosis please let me know! Example image: 2021-12-26_19-46-02___120.00s_0029.cr2 Anyways, in future I think I will be using shorter 60 second or 30 second exposures to try and increase the proportion of usable frames. Overall I was really happy with the resulting image, this was the first time I have gone in depth on the processing side of things. I feel I have to give a big thanks to Nebula Photos on youtube who had a great tutorial on processing Andromeda in GIMP. The final image was made up using 32 x 2 min lights, 20 x 2 min darks, 30 bias frames, darks and lights were taken using Nina, stacked in DeepSkyStacker and edited in GIMP and StarNet++. Image taken using WO Z73, iOptron SkyGuider Pro, Canon 600D (unmodified). I have also included the original stacked image if anyone wants to have a go at processing it as well, I would be interested to see anyone can pull out more from this data! Any tips/feedback would be appreciated Clear skies! Andromeda removed bad frames manual save 17.01.22.TIF

Nice picture, I havent gotten around to trying orion myself yet, hopefully soon! Perhaps a noob question; what is with the spike effect on the very bright stars? I can't recall seeing it like that before with so many, are they diffraction spikes?

These are great, I'm quite jealous of your image of Jupiter with the moon passing in front of it! Really great colour too!

If youre looking for something very faint then plate solving has worked really well for me. I just use stellarium to find the coordinates of the object i want to look at, then use NINA and ASTAP to plate solve and find what the coordinates are of the stars I am seeing through my telescope and adjust from there. Usually only takes a few minutes to find what Im looking for.

Thats an amazing image! I didn't know you could get such a detailed image from only 60 second exposures