nephilim

Stunning image there Adrian.

No, an APO will always outperform an achromat, the optics are far better, the quality of the image is a lot more important than the amount of light that the scope receives.

The Startravel 102 is an achromat refractor & suffers from chromatic aberration (colour fringing) and is really only suited to visual use where as the Evoguide 50ED is a apochromat which are much better, be aware though that for Astrophotography you'll need to buy a field flattener otherwise your images will suffer distortions around the edges (these are needed for most refractors apart from too end models, if you buy a reflector however you'll need a comma corrector). Have a read of this as there's some very good advice regarding your first scope for AP. https://astrobackyard.com/beginner-astrophotography-telescope/

Here is a dark frame from my 533. If you click on the centre of the page you'll see there is an actual image there but it also shows how much amp glow there is....or rather there isnt.

If your wanting to avoid amp glow, the ZWO ASI 533MC-Pro has zero amp glow. Compared to the 183 it also has lower read noise & is 14bit compared to the 183 @12bit. The 533 is £120 more than the 183 but is described by FLO as 'the latest iteration of the 183'. A few people are put off the 533 due to its square chip but tbh I think it frames targets very well & if it's your first dedicated camera you won't notice that anyway. I've included my latest image taken with the 533 last month of the North American & Pelican nebulae & for me the framing is spot on. The 533 is my first cooled astro camera & I was also looking at the 183 (mainly due to the lower price) before deciding on the 533 after reading/ watching a lot of very favourable reviews. I'm glad I chose the 533, imo it's a fantastic camera for the price. Please note that the gradient in the image is due to my poor processing skills (plus this is a PNG rather than the original xisf file from PixInsight so not the best quality) I havnt been doing this long so I've still a lot to learn. Steve

I'v regularly bought second hand gear & never had any problems. If you look at say https://www.astrobuysell.com/uk/ and SGL's own classified section, you'll see that second hand gear usually costs around 70% of the cost new, that may seem a little high compared to other second hand markets but thats usually because the kit is (more often than not) in very good condition. I'd personally always go & see it first or at least ask the seller to meet half way etc. Then you can check the condition yourself & also ask any questions regarding use/ set up/ tips etc. Also, even though the chances are that it will have been couriered to the seller the first time around, at least if your the one doing the transporting, you'll treat it with care. Steve

That's a great mount mate. Good luck.

Thats a good start for 60 seconds. Just a bit of advice here from a fellow newbie. For M42 its worth doing what you did, as in 2 or 3 sets of different length exposures. Calibrate etc each set separately so you end up with 2 or 3 master light frames. Then follow this tutorial. Orion needs very short exposures for the core otherwise its easy to over expose which you've done slightly here. It also needs longer exposures to bring out the nebulosity. Processing is at least 50% of this hobby & its a steep learning curve, hopefully this video will help you pick up some new techniques. Steve

Hi & welcome to SGL, All i'll say is that you really dont need to start guiding straight away. Yes, you will want to take longer exposures at some point but theres so much to learn when your starting out that adding guiding to it is yet one more thing to think about. I've been imaging for around 8 months now & although I have a guide scope (Skywatcher Evoguide 80ED) & guide camera (ZWO Asi 120Mm-S), I still haven't started guiding yet. I can happily take exposures up to 180 seconds without needing to guide. I've pretty much reached the point now where I want to start but I'm so glad I waited a while as I found there was plenty to learn right from the start & getting those first 'basic' steps learnt properly means theres less pressure when it comes to the guiding part. Just to show you what I mean, this is my latest image from 2 weeks ago & its only 60 second exposures, 2 & a half hours of them. The main problem (as you can see in this image) is that shorter exposures & a shorter number of exposures can result in noisier images, longer exposures helps dial that noise down, this can be sorted in processing but means more work on that side & believe me, processing is at least 50% of this hobby, I've still to come back to this image & add more exposure time to it. Hopefully though this will show you that you can still produce good images without guiding. Its up to you though 🙂

Hi Mark, Its a long time since I did this & I ran into the same problem but I did solve it. Its late here & i'm up for work in about 5hrs so i'll have to get back to you tomorrow afternoon as I'll have to figure out how I did it. What I will say is that several months down the line, the EXOS II & the ASIAIR are working really well together & i've finally started to get some fairly good images. Here is my latest image with this set up & the Samyang 135mm f2 camera lens. I'll speak to you tomorrow. Steve

@Annehouw That is stunning.

This is a reprocess of an image I took a couple of weeks ago. I decided to try it using the false Hubble Palette & quite pleased with how its turned out. I'm still vey much a newbie with all this, especially when it comes to PI but i'm slowly refining a half decent workflow that is working for me at the moment. Theres a fair bit of noise in this (needs more time on it) & theres a gradient from the 97% full Moon that was unavoidable with the Moon been quite near the object at the time. I'll come back to this once i've got more imaging time on it. The North American & Pelican Nebula in Cygnus 145x 1 min 30x Darks 20x Flats Bortle 4 SQL 21.66 Equipment used as per my signature but with no guiding Stacked & processed etc in PI Thanks for looking Steve

Thats good to hear, at least i'm on the right track.

I've not really done any planetary as I mainly image DSO's but seen as though i've already got the 120MM-S as a guide cam I may as well put it to good use for planets as well.

Thats a very nice looking scope, I was also looking at that but I think the RC is better at small galaxies. I may be wrong though as i've never really looked into RC's & CC's but the CC has a much longer FL so i'm assuming better suited to planets over the RC. I'm looking at the RC for both planets with my 120mm-s that I normally use as a guide scope & small galaxies (Sombrero, Bodes etc) paired with my ASI 533MC-Pro.

Even better, thank you 🙂

Thats great, Thanks for that John 🙂 I just need to hear some positive feedback now.

That was my thinking as well but i've only got experience of using it as a guide camera, so didn't want to advise on its proper use. I'm glad you've said it works well for planetary as I'm looking at getting the iOptron 6" RC for that as I only image DSO's at the moment with my ASI 533MC-Pro.

Hi, I started doing AP around 8 or so months ago using the ASI 533MC-Pro & Samyang 135mm f2 lens & it seems to be going quite well (apart from the uk weather but thats a given really 🙄) I'm wanting to broaden my horizons with a bit of planetary imaging & maybe some of the smaller galaxies, hopefully using the scope in the title. Whats really drawn me to it is the price as I dont want to spend a fortune getting into planetary imaging & also there seems to be no need for a coma corrector which brings the price even further down, I can also use my guide camera (ASI mm-s) as a planetary camera. Now I appreciate that this scope is going to be far less forgiving than my Samyang 135 & I also hear that collimating can be more than trying. Has anyone here actually used one of these for imaging & whats the verdict? They are on FLO's website but advertised as 'unavailable please contact us'. I'm not sure if that means unavailable for good or not in stock at the moment, I have emailed FLO & should hear back from them this week. TIA Steve

I'm not sure what your doing wrong but I will say that its not a lousy camera. I have the 120MM-S (Mono) version but I only bought it as a guide camera for my AP rig, it's main use though is as a planetary camera (which I hope to try out with this camera at some point) but many do use it as a guide camera. I know thats not very helpful but just letting you know that the camera is fine. Steve

I could maybe understand it if they were good scopes & fit for the purpose they are aimed at. But then that would hike the price up considerably & people are more likely to be conned if they see a bargain rather than an item that although expensive would do the job properly. Simply put, it's just taking advantage of people who don't have the experience to know otherwise & it's disgusting imo.

Thats very disappointing & in my eyes really is a case of selling out to the highest bidder. You'd have thought that the amount of time put into studying for all the qualifications she has that she would have just little bit of respect & passion for her area of expertise. If people of her apparent calibre cant be trusted then who on earth can. Steve

I agree with you there. Unfortunately due to the massive amount of scams constantly doing the rounds i'm very suspicious of most online advertising things these days, its turned me into a complete cynic. I'd rather be a cynic than lose money to one of these cons though. Steve

Hi Steve, Well that sucked me in completely, I had no idea regarding the Amazon reference but it all makes sense now. Thats a pretty underhand way of drumming up business, thanks for pointing this out. Steve