happy-kat

There's a great flare in the comet tail captured. 

50ED EVFFV2 Canon 1100D Virtuoso V1 February 2022

welcome, great to read you are enjoying your telescope

I've not seen the mount base disassembled

that's a super comet capture and process.

Thank you for sharing what you did.  

Looks like I'll have to starnet++ to my tool base

Though ASTAP is great I am not looking forward to comet registration on 300 lights.

I too noticed this but I also also got a comet + stars stack out of DSS that has colour on both, this has made wonder how I managed this

That's a super image.

I used ASTAP and had a great circular star trail image but I wanted to stack on the comet and the stars.

Sounds good.

Has this improved your exposure length for your EAA?

The wider a lens is open the more evident any imperfections will show, having the lens not fully open often helps the star shapes. If you don't like defraction spikes on bright stars from stopping down you can either use step rings or make a cardboard aperture mask to stop a lens down which is what I've done for a lens I use which needs stopping down (the actual lens under the mask is on the widest aperture).

Orion is quite South now in the northern hemisphere means star trails show faster. East and West are more forgiving below 60 degrees for static photos

Focus is key. You could make what is called a Y mask out of cardboard to help focus on say Rigel good bright star in the area of your target.

Maybe focus in the daytime on a really distant chimney or tree (no where near the Sun) then you'd be close for the stars.

When stacking kappa sigma clipping can help tighten stars up. Be encouraged you captured Orion and successfully stacked your images. 

Focusing on a star will be easier and it will mean the nebula is also in focus. 

Are you triggering your camera using a remote release, this minimises camera shake and out of focus stars.

I either use and Android device and DSLR controller to focus and set the manual settings up, bigger screen and 10x zoom helps with focus. 

Hi nice to capture data, it's a good start.

What do you use to help you get focus?

Do you get the same ring if you don't use a filter?

It's great to capture but it's proving tricky to process I am finding for my data. There's lots of motion in your second image, shows the comet moving.

What I can share that I found using siril working through to registration I register on global stars then I stacked then I went back to registration and chose comet and marked the two points and then stacked and my stack was aligned on both the comet and stars. I need to figure out my data comet oddity on the comet but your data may vary.

on my phone I've been using skysafari to see where the comet is

good luck hope you see it, I looked at it with binoculars but didn't see it

do you use the synscan app with your goto dob? it has the comet under solar

Picture 3 looks good, the final image the secondary looks a bit off but I've only collimated an f5 and I'm not familiar with what an f4.3 telescope would look like when well collimated.

That's great and there's the comet if its clear for you still

That looks better. I'd go outside and enjoy your telescope and come back to this another cloudy day to improve it. If you are adjusting your secondary then it's safer to protect your primary mirror from anything falling on it.

It's a bit better.

In your fiddling have you only touched the primary mirror?

Looks a great find. 80mm aperture and the long focal length (what does the label say on the telescope) makes for a forgiving Focal ratio (maybe f10) so reduced CA. Should give pleasing planet views. Observe patiently and you'll hopefully catch moments of good seeing.

The view is very dependant on the night's viewing conditions and this can vary as you're observing, the Moon can really shows this.

I've the same telescope and only periodically check collimation and I've only used a collimation cap. I did check secondary alignment and checked it's placement with a ruler to ensure it was evenly placed. Astrobaby collimation guide is the one I used to help understand doing collimation. On the occasions I would want to use the most magnification then I'm more likely to check collimation. The moon is quite handy for this when outside with just a collimation cap  it's a great telescope.

If you use an IR pass filter (blocks other light) then can image on IR, great for Moon, planets too as IR can be more stable on reading