DaveS

Yeah, a clear night but DSO imaging is pretty much no-go especially for galaxies.

Not interested in Harmonic Drive... HOWEVER If Synta / Skywatcher brought out a Direct Drive - Encoder mount to fill in the space left by ASA, that could be VERY interesting. Especially at Skywatcher rather than ASA prices.

My Moravian G3 16200 with filter wheel weighs in excess of 2.5 kg, so puts a fair old load on the focuser.

The 185 would ride happily on my little DDM 60. I could be tempted if I hadn't sworn off buying new gear.

Brilliant image, especially given our rubbish weather this year (All year). I sort of had this on my hit list but headed down the HCG rabbit hole instead.

Only anecdotally, but as late as 1988 I could, on a good night from west London see all the main stars off UMi, and a faint trail of the milky way.

M33 is a tougher target than many people imagine, very low surface brightness. From where I live it's easy binocular and just about naked eye under very good conditions.

Well, the faint blue excess was too close to other detail for Attenuate Singe Colour, but I had another play with it, giving the RGB layer a stronger Noise X in PI plus a bit of Histogram Stretch on the finished LRGB amd a masked Saturation Boost on NGC 7549. I may leave it here as I think it will be "good enough" for my project.

Thanks Göran. There's a very useful tool in AstroArt 8 for attenuating a single colour using level and range. I think I will give it a go on Blue.

And to add that the blue cast has been bugging me too, most likely in the RGB layer. More data, more better 😀.

Thanks all. Yes, I will revisit this after taking a short break to allow my eyes to recover. One slight possibility is to capture more data while waiting for the next target to get high enough.

Thanks Neil, yes I think it needs more (Careful) work on the background. More data always helps but there's already 12 hours in there and with our rubbish weather a decision has to be made as to whether to capture more data or move on to the next target. This is part of my project to image as many of the Hickson Compact Groups as I can. This is the fourth that I've got into a nearly finished state, out of a catalogue of 100, so a way to go yet.

...Or not? I dunno. This is 6 hours Bin 1 Luminance and 6 hours Bin 2 RGB, all at -26C and 600 sec subs captured, with the ODK 12 and SX 694 through Baader filters. The RGB was captured on the 7th October and the Luminance on the 14th. I waited until I had my main PC with PI and the RC tools back from repair, and been fighting with it for 4 days now but decided to post anyway My main concern is in NGC 7549 (Top centre) and whether the structures shown are genuine or a deconvolution artifact. I'm still not sure. I'm also concerned that I've blown out the galaxy cores. Don't care about the stars, they will blow out anyway. In any case, here it is, please take the time for any constructive criticism.

I've been running just the ODK 12 rig for a long time now, but finally decided to make a concerted effort to get the little 130 mm Photoline rig up and running. So far only rebooted the remote PC, hopefully tonight will be clear enough for me to get the mount synched and modelled. The alternative is a bit terrifying, sell everything apart from the ODK 12 and DDM 85, then roll the money and savings into a Moravian G5 461 and a set of 50 mm square filters. I don't want to think how much it would cost, but well into 5 figures.

I went online with Scan Computers and built a high-end but not extreme PC. Speaking personally I wouldn't touch Macs with the proverbial, as I don't want to be locked into an ecosystem I won't touch ASIAir for the same reason. No need to go Thread Ripper unless you do this professionally with huge data sets.

And this is the dismal result, hardly worth bothering except to check the framing. It's HCG 10 in Andromeda. It was very low and I think 3 of the subs picked up stray light from an upstairs window that I had forgotten about.

I tried imaging tonight, got 90 mins before the cloud rolled in. Of the 9 subs only 6 were useable.

Could he make the wretched thing disappear, like, forever please.

Just to think outside the box, how about a Richey-Chretien?

The OP is in the USA so has to use their miserable excuse for mains voltage ⚡.

I long ago stopped wasting money on astro kit, there's no point in this rubbish country.

The weather has been rubbish here for weeks, with no prospect of improvement for the foreseeable. I'm looking at Stellarium to see what HCG I might image next but have no idea when I will be able to do any more imaging. In any case the moon won't be out of the way until the 8th November.

With OSC there's no point in getting the LRGB / NB set, and I would argue, no need for a filter wheel, a simple filter drawer like the ones that ZWO do will do as well, cheaper, and avoid the need to balance a big off-centre wheel. Although I don't use OSC I have considered it and would go with just a duo band filter for H-alpha and [OIII], and either a LP or IR / UV cut filter depending on your light pollution levels.

Plus, you'll be hard put to achieve any real resolution below 1"/px unless you have a night of exceptional seeing and a premium mount that can guide below 0.5".

@ollypenrice Probably "problem";was a poor choice of word, "question" would be better, as between guide scope and OAG.