Selborne

I was surprised how much out of collimation the scope was, like you stated yours was. but now all is well. and thanks for the comment regards, Jamie

Hi Guys, I thought I would share with you my first DSO taken with my new Orion 8" Ritchey Chretien F8 Telescope. The frame is made up of 12 x 4min shots, no light or dark frames, using my Sony A7Rii camera. The camera had the long exposure noise reduction switched on, which does help to reduce the total number of stars captured by the camera, as the Sony A7Rii does tend to overdo the number of stars captured. The telescope was mounted on my trusty skywatcher NEQ6 mount and the guiding was via PHD 'of course' via my skywatcher ED50 guide scope. The shots were taken from my back garden in Stowmarket, Suffolk where I believe I am a Bortie 4 location, so the skies are mostly dark, with just a little light pollution from the main town, no filters used. My normal telescope is a Skywatcher ED100 Pro Esprit F5.5, which is an incredibly sharp scope, but with a wide 550mm field of view, great for capturing the whole of Andromeda but a struggle with smaller images like the Iris Nebula. I will say the Orion RC scope did need to be collimated out of the box, which was a little disappointing, and it was not just a little out of collimation, it was a long way out, but with the use of a collimating tool, I soon had it dialled in. First impressions of the Orion Ritchey Chretien 8" Telescope are fair, not super impressed, as it is nowhere near as sharp as my ED100 Esprit, but then this is to be expected based on price and telescope type, however, the pictures it has produced are pretty good, if you downscale the full 42MP from the Sony A7Rii camera, as can be seen in this picture. I purchased this 8" Orion Ritchey Chretien OTA mainly for Planetary work, but as yet I have not had a chance to 'get onto' a planet, fingers crossed some clear nights will arrive soon, so I can try. I welcome comments, many thanks Jamie

Hi Steve, I purchased mine from 365 Astronomy, Zoran there is very helpful, he calculated the tube length from the field flattener and put together a set of adapters which allow me to have a native sony mount adapter through to the M48 connection to the field flattener, it was not cheap the whole setup was about £60, but it is the right tool for the right job. regards Jamie

Hi Souls, Your first statement is correct, you cannot mount filters inside the adapter, Interesting that the new box is smaller ! many thanks Jamie

Congratulations Nikolas, now you journey begins ! did you order the field flattener as well ?

Lets us see the results once you captured it, would be interesting to compare you equipment set and results

Hi Ragnar, thanks for your quote, yes it is a lot of equipment to take, I manage to get everything into 3 peli cases, so there is good protection for travelling. I have a small Mercedes Citan Van which allows for easy travel, plus it has three leisure batteries connected together feeding an inverter, which gives silent power all night if needed, around 2.5kWh, more than enough for the scope, computer, dew heaters etc. With regard to Photoshop, I pay monthly for the Adobe Photographer pack, Lightroon CC and Photoshop CC software, £7 per month, very good value, with the latest software you get the latest functions. with regard to alignment, yes I just use auto align function, but it only works for the one set of subs taken at the same time, so if I do 20 shots at 2 mins in one go, they will align ok, if I move from the target and the return later, it will not align the different sets of subs. I will try Registar as you a have done. With regard to the Sony A7Rii, I have to say it is incredible, I used to use a Canon 60Da which was fine, but the Canon noise and colour banding was awful, as a result I struggled to go over 1600 ISO and I had to take darks, flats and bias frames to get anything useable, the Sony A7Rii has none of the noise or colour banding issues of the Canon, I can use 20000 ISO if I wish and with 30 plus frames stack the grain away in photoshop, see the Sony makes grain not noise and there is zero colour banding, its more like a super hybrid of film. If you note all the top range astro cameras you can purchase use the Sony chips, and I suspect this is why. The camera, as you correctly deduced is not modded, I prefer the colour that I get, as you say the modded cameras produce to much red, but they do get more nebula showing, so it is a trade off, I prefer the colour, as you can see below from the Iris Nebulas taken last month. The other really great thing about the Sony A7Rii is that it is 42MP, this means that I can zoom in to 1:1 pixels giving me either super wide field with my 100ED Pro Esprit F5.5 or at 1:1 I can get much closer, more like my Canon 60Da on a 150mm F7 scope. Thanls again for the chat, Regards Jamie

Hi Guys, I thought I would share with you the spoils of last nights observing, it was a very clear and calm night here in Suffolk and I took the opportunity to travel a few miles out from Stowmarket, to and old second world war airfield, were there is next to no light pollution, as a result I thought I would try to capture the Bubble Nebula. This Deep Sky Object has always been a difficult one for me, never really managed to pull it off, however with the aid of my Skywatcher 100 ED Pro Esprit Telescope complete with my Sony A7Rii Camera, atop my Skywatcher NEQ6 mount, using my Skywatcher 50ED Guide Scope, complete with Altair Astro ASI130mm (mono) guide camera and PHD2 Software of course, I was able to capture the picture below. I have to say I am very happy. The images is made up of 10 x 120s frames at ISO5000, no darks, flats or bias frames were used, stacked in Photoshop via the Mean function, levels and curves adjusted to suit. The Sony A7rii camera seems to manage noise very well, even at 5000 ISO. Welcome comments / discussion. Many thanks Jamie

Thank you for a detailed reply, very much appriciated, I will take a look at the 294 as you have suggested, Cheers Jamie

Hi Vlaiv, any reason for your suggestion ? Why do you think the 294 is the preferred option ? Interested to know your thoughts, Thanks Jamie

Hi Guys, I am looking for a little bit of advice, I have finally reached that point in most amateur astronomers lives, where we think it is time to move from DSLRs to dedicated astro cameras. Having done a fair bit of research and read far to many forum posts, I think I have brought my choice down to one of two cameras:- either the ZWO ASI 284 Pro Colour or the ZWO ASI 183 Pro Colour Cameras, I know that the real serious of your guys will tell me to go mono, as the results are considerably better, but I am not ready for that yet (that is likely to be the next step). The type of astrophotography I do is using my Skywatcher 100ED Pro Espirt Telescope, with the 50ED Guidescope and auto guiding software PHD2 of course, and I am happy to work with exposures of over 5 mins, hence the need to move to a cooled camera, to capture deep sky objects. I have had a great deal of success with my Sony A7Rii full frame 42MP camera, so should I take the next step and if so which way should I go ? Here is an image below taken with my sony, no flats, bias, or darks, just RAW files processed in Photoshop. I very much welcome comment and advice, Many thanks Jamie

Hi Guys, I thought I would share with you the spoils of last nights observing, it was a very clear and calm night here in Suffolk and the light pollution from the town of Stowmarket was quite low. It has been a while since we had a clear still night through until dawn, so took the opportunity to have a go at capturing The Cocoon Nebula - IC5146. This Deep Sky Object has always been a difficult one for me, never really managed to pull it off, however with the aid of my Skywatcher 100 ED Pro Esprit Telescope complete with my Sony A7Rii Camera, atop my Skywatcher NEQ6 mount, using my Skywatcher 50ED Guide Scope, complete with Altair Astro ASI130mm (mono) guide camera and PHD2 Software of course, I was able to capture the picture below. I have to say I am very happy. The images is made up of 20 x 180s frames at ISO2500, no darks, flats or bias frames were used, stacked in Photoshop via the Mean function, levels and curves adjusted to suit. Welcome comments / discussion. Many thanks Jamie

Hi Alex, Thank you for the response and information, As you say, I will retry the shot with longer frames perhaps 240s and aim to get as many shots as possible, plus get the darks/bias etc and then use Deep Sky Stacker to try to get a better image. The detail in your shot is just incredible, it inspires me to try harder When we get another clear night I will try to get out into the countryside for darker skies as you suggest, Speak soon thanks Jamie

Here is another shot to show just how sharp the Skywatcher 100 ED Pro Esprit Scope really is. This is 3 x 30s Sony A7Rii Frames, stacked in Photoshop of the Hercules M13 Great Globular Cluster. I think I have found my forever scope thanks Jamie

Sorry Nikolas, no recommendations for auto focus systems, something I do not use. I focus between each set of frames with the bahtinov mask, lock the focus and shoot. Once the scope is down to ambient temperature, it does not seem to change much. Regards Jamie