dark knight

How about having a go at m31, a nice large bright galaxy, however as others have said longer exposures are beneficial for bringing out faint details. Astrophotography is a slippery slope and get expensive very quickly, depends how far you want to take it really. Id recommend a good solid mount first and foremost (i dont know anything about your mount) say a heq5 minimum, something that will future proof you as you may want to add weight from cameras guide scope and perhaps a bigger telescope,then you could look into guiding which will allow you to take much longer exposures.

I think thats a really lovely image and well worth the effort you put in!

Just to give a price comparison I picked up a second hand low shutter count canon 6d for £500, Add ti this £150 to have it converted for astro use if required, i had the same debate with myself as your having, however what swayed me to the dslr were not just funding but that i have a skywatcher esprit 120ed pro which is well suited for the full frame of the canon 6d.

http://dslr-astrophotography.com/iso-values-canon-cameras/

There is a thread somewhere on the optimal iso to use for specific dslr cameras, I'll see if i can find it

Sorry forgot to mention i always process as RGB and not individual channels, maybe im doing it wrong, i will follow your thread as i think i will learn a lot from it too!

My knowledge is fairly limited but im sure some more knowledgeable folks will soon be able to help. I too use a dslr and my histogram never seems to venture too far from the left side although it is normally a little bit more than your histogram shows, does what iso we use change this, ive been using iso 400 last time out, maybe i should go back to iso 800.

Hi and a warm welcome to to SGL

Yep, my skywatcher 50ED and zwo 290 mini work fine with sharpcap for polar alignment.

Im not great at the processing side of things but it looks like your only processing the red channel? Maybe change to RGB and see what the histogram looks like.

+1 for NINA, Since its free there is nothing lost if you don't like it, the support network is great too.

In same boat, however cannot reach him (Andy, astronomiser) via the email on his site, anyone got up to date contact details for him please, much appreciated.

So finally had a chance to get a few hours under the stars. Decided to test equipment and cables, connections, dew bands and software communication etc, it didn't go as planned on the software front as I'd forgot to input correct camera pixel size into NINA DOH!! After 2 and a half hours and numerous scale warnings from my plate solving software I finally sussed out my stupidity. Any how this left me with half hour to do a quick imaging test with the following, esprit 120ed pro, modded canon D1000, target M42, 28x 55sec lights stacked in DSS and little bit of processing in photoshop 2020.

You need to select your mount from the drop down arrow and do the same for your guide camera. Ensure that screen actually matches your equipment, I think Ascom simulation is exactly that, just a simulation to test the software environment.

I do leave the imaging dslr attached so maybe i should remove it at the end of each seesion