Knight of Clear Skies

A bit noisy as you say but still a fine image. I suspect a lot more could be done to clean up the background, have you tried 'isolate' in Startools or 'deep sky noise reduction' in Noel's actions? What scope was this taken with please? Yes, it's fun to peek in the corners and see what you've caught.

Very nice indeed. Was this taken with the Takumar 135mm Gina? If so, did you stop it down a little?

Here's a wide field of view from the 10th April showing Caldwell 7 (NGC 2403) and Comet C/2019 Y4 (ATLAS) together in Camelopardalis. The small fuzzy on the right is NGC 2366, a barred irregular dwarf galaxy. think I've also picked up a little IFN below the comet, here was some light cloud scudding through that night but the sigma clip should have removed it. I'll check later whether it's real. My main goal was to produce an animation of the comet's motion but I noticed the galaxies and famed the shot accordingly. This was an hour of data (2 minute subs) with the Samyang 135mm f2 and Canon 6d, heavily cropped. Here's a 100% crop of the often overlooked Caldwell 7. And here's a 100% crop of the comet, which appears to show the fragmentation. Hope you like them. I'd post up the animation but YouTube has killed the quality, does anyone know of a better place to host it please?

Superb image of a candy-wrapper of a galaxy. Personally, I'd consider cropping off the left hand side of the image as there is not a lot going on over there.

This is worth a look. https://spaceweathergallery.com/indiv_upload.php?upload_id=161604

By all means, but a good title or description of what the imager was trying to achieve is appreciated. (An honest label justifies pretty much any presentation.) Here's a good example of exaggeration to show Ha clouds around M31 (although the galaxy itself is a bit too bling for my taste).

Personally, I think it's worth presenting really good data more than one way. A bold image can complement a more naturalistic one, there is nothing inherently wrong with exaggerating features to show them more clearly. But there are some things I'm not keen on: Bright blue spiral arms, particularly in non-starburst galaxies. Especially in tenuous outer regions, I'd prefer to see them as more ephemeral. Galaxy halos and outer arms that have been over-stretched to jump out of the background. In reality they are tenuous and amorphous. These structures don't typically have sharply defined edges, the density just drops off with distance. Entirely wrong colours such as greenish Milky Way landscape shots. Sometimes narrowband data lends itself to bolder images. The colours are artificial so why not pump up the saturation? I've also seen some quite 'wrong' images which have brought new life to the subject, such as a super-sharp Andromeda that could be used as a scouring pad. There are no hard rules about any of this but it's good to have some idea of how 'natural' an image is. Some low-fidelity and grainy images can also really hit the mark. I don't have the processing skill to present data as I'd like but that's fine as I get decent results, and I slowly improve.

Impressive as that image is, to me it's too blue. Especially the faint outer arms and structure which look very artificial to my eye.

It's difficult to say what the problem is here. If you're getting good focus sometimes it means your telescope can reach focus with a camera (not all can, the sensor is further back than an eyepiece - not all focusers are designed to work with cameras). have you tried focussing the camera on a distant object during daytime to confirm there are no problems? It could be that the star is moving out of the field of view when you switch over, or it could be an exposure setting issue on the camera. Have you tried increasing the ISO level to the highest level when focussing? Also, you could try taking an exposure of a few seconds to confirm whether the star is within the field of view.

Good luck with your new purchases, hope you enjoy them.

Have you considered the Samyang 135mm f2 lens? It can cover a full frame camera sensor and would be much more forgiving to use on the EQ5 (balance seems to be crucial on this mount, I've struggled to get consistent subs with a heavy 200mm f2.8 lens in the past). Here's an example of what the Samyang lens can produce, using a old modded DSLR and clip-in Ha filter.

They've come out well, good contrast and not over-sharpened.

I've had lots of similar problems with flats over-correcting in DSS. Often I just use the GradientExterminator plugin for Photoshop to remove any vignetting. If you put the stacked image without flats on Dropbox I could have a quick go at sorting it out.

That's a shame, thanks for letting us know.

On the edge of Bodmin Moor, which is recognised by the IDA as a Dark Sky Landscape.

Unfortunately the map isn't loading for me, anyone else getting this javascript error please? "Google Maps JavaScript API error: ExpiredKeyMapError" I've tried Chrome and Firefox.

Looking at your location fewer contrails is the most likely explanation, followed by less air pollution. SQM readings have been very good down here in Cornwall recently, had a record-equalling 21.88 the other night.

I use a low-tech alternative, a thick sock with a heat pack in it held on with rubber bands. Hope you enjoy the lens, it's a good one.

Probably more like an HEQ5 to take the 130pds, if you want it to track accurately. (It is possible to run it on lighter, cheaper mounts but isn't really recommended as it's a recipe for frustration. Imaging is much more demanding of mounts than visual work.)

My Astronomik 12nm Ha filter works very well, and I've also got good results with it under light-polluted Hertfordshire skies. There are also LP filters when shooting in colour, hopefully someone else can recommend one for you. I did put together a bit of a guide on budget lenses a while ago, which you might find useful. The Takumar 200mm f4 is a good AP lens but not as good as the 135mm f3.5. This is a slight crop of M33 with the Takumar 135mm f3.5 (2 minute exposure).

Please bear in mind, the focal length of the ED72 is only 357mm when used with the 0.85 reducer/flattener. So it wouldn't make much difference to your field of view. (Looking at the pics I guess that's a zoom lens at f5.6? I would expect an ED72 to produce much better stars and to be faster at f4.9.)

Thanks, glad you like it. I wanted to show what's possible with this lens and a cheap modded DSLR. (Your 650 should be a bit more sensitive than my 1100D.) The key to the image was shooting Ha through a clip-in filter and blending the nebulosity into the red channel of the RGB image. Imaging from a dark site also helped, especially with the colour image, although Ha is forgiving of light pollution and moonlight. For most beginners I'd recommend a fast lens over a small scope, especially when using a DSLR. Tracking is more forgiving at short focal lengths and it's easier to work around fickle UK weather with fast optics (1 hour at f2 is equivalent to 8 hours at f5.6). But other than M31 & M33 galaxies will be small at 135mm focal length.

Yes, it's a great lens for AP. Here's an example HaRGB image taken with a modded DSLR.

Thanks Olly, that's the crucial bit of information I needed to know. The title bar threw me, I wondered if something had gone wrong with the colour channels. Think I'll go ahead with buying Registar later this week, when I've got a bit more time to use it.

Very nice, although I'm a little confused by all the migrating geese.