CraigT82

You'll be best speaking to a vendor that sells the astrofi 102, they will be able to advise on how far you can go with it Re: automation. I'm not familiar with it, or automation to be honest.

The batch stacking is great! Also you don't actually need to do the analyse step first, if you're not bothered about viewing the quality graph you can just place the APs on the first preview image, then go straight to stack. This is what I do and I set it to stack 10%, 20%, 30% and 50%

That mount is an equatorial, which means that it needs to be tilted up a bit on it's Alt axis. Loosen the red arrowed fastener and tilt the whole head up until the little gauge behind the fastener reads 51 (or whatever your latitude is). You then need to place the mount down on the ground so that RA axis (blue arrow) points northwards, towards Polaris. Once that is done you will be able to rotate just the RA axis to keep an obkect in the field of view

Very nice image, well done! Welcome to the forum

Fantastic! Nicely done 👍

Some good info here from Martin Lewis... https://skyinspector.co.uk/mars-edge-artefact/ Note that there will be an article on this effect in next months BAA journal (if you're a member) but I assume it will be added to Martin's website afterwards too.

Really nice work, tons of readily identifiable features to be seen there. The edge rind effect is due to diffraction apparently and is tough to deal with but you've doen a good job withe the third attempt there

You may want to check if the focuser on that 102 mak can be motorised? I'm sure it can but may be a DIY solution rather than an off the shelf product

Very nice! I have 2 altair cameras - gpcam3 224c and 290m - and am very pleased with both. They have both worked perfectly right out the box and no issues at all in the 2 years I've had them. I just hope that a future firecapture update sees them compatible with Linux with firecapture and then I can make the switch from Windows

Thanks for kind comments everyone. Unusually I think I nailed the processing the first time around, as I've reprocessed the image several times with different settings/techniques and havent been able to improve it. First time for everything!

On pretty much any goto mount you can quickly move the scope to another part of the sky by unlocking the clutches and moving and it will carry on tracking, however you will lose the goto alignment as the brains will still think it's pointing at the first object because the motors haven't moved. Skywatcher mounts with 'freedom find' function have an encoder on each axis so if you move the mount by undoing the clutches the brains will know it's moved and where it's now pointing and you can carry on goto'ing as you were. So it sounds like you want a freedom find mount (AZ-EQ5?) with a nice wooden tripod for the vibrations.

Really nice job, would love to get my hands on a 385c would make finding stuff easier!

Lovely! Syrtis major coming nicely into view

Great work! Really like the Mars RGB, beautiful image 👍

Very nice lots of detail and contrast there, I got an image at exactly the same time 00:45 utc!

Not bad at all, definitely some potential like you say. Hopefully will only need to do collimation once being permanently mounted.

Personally, for planetary imaging I'd go with the Baader VIP. Being a barlow you can change the amplification factor easily, and the 1.25" nosepiece that contains the lens element can directly replace the nosepiece of your filter wheel or ADC, and so it doesn't add any length to your imaging train. There is a document you can download from the Baader website that tells you how to calculate the amplification factor for any given distance from lens to sensor.

Very nice work Chris, lots to see there

Nice result Dave, cant get enough of Mars at the minute!

Some decent seeing last night (predicted nicely by the Windy.com app), although transparency was poor with scudding cloud bands which played havoc with the histogram during capture. 16x 120sec captures derotated to 00:45 UTC. Mare Cimmerium at centre with Sinus Gomer (the finger like dark area) nicely visible. 8.75" Fullerscope on EQ6 Altair 224C with Baader L filter and APM 2.7x barlow and ZWO ADC

The C11 is F10, so you will need a 3x barlow to get to F30. Saying that though F30 is probably a bit high for the 174mm. You want 3-5x the pixel size for a mono camera, so F18 to F30 tops, with the shorter FL being your workhorse and the longer FL for nights of excellent seeing. If you buy a barlow instead of a powermate you can tune the amplification factor by placing it (the barlow lens cell) closer or further from the sensor. I use the APM 2.7x coma correcting barlow and find it excellent and the Baader VIP modular barlow is a great barlow too (a certain Mr Peach uses the Baader VIP). The best planetary imager I currently know of (imho) uses an ancient Clave 2x barlow! Of all the factors which will affect the quality of your final image, the choice of image amplifier is relatively unimportant so don't worry about it too much (just don't use the plastic skywatcher one!).

Wonderful! Dont think I've ever seen such a long rotation

Thats a really nice one to get going with the SPC is really disappearing quick!

Just had the runtime 55 error when trying to initiate the mount via EQMOD. Going into toolbox and deleting the ini file (bottom of toolbox dialogue box) did the trick!

You could even justmount the 70LT scope onto the dob as a big finder!