DaveS

Sorry, missed the replies here., Yes, with the 3nm Astrodon. I also have it in [NII] and [OIII], but the alignment was so bad that I had to crop it down to about half the overall size.

This is an image of the Rosette I made with my TS 80mm f/4.4 and ASI1600 If you look in the corners you will see some decidedly dodgy stars, even though I had been fiddling with spacing and squaring till my eyes went funny.

It's not a bad 'scope as such, but it could drive you to distraction getting it set up. Here's a photo of mine, which I haven't used for quite a while. I've been meaning to use it again but "stuff" kept getting in the way.

Beware of this 'scope. I have one and it is *very* sensitive to spacing and squaring on. It is *just about* usable with a not-too-big sensor, but I think anything above an ASI1600 size will be pushing the tolerances. @ultranova had one, and we had a very long exchange of PMs trying to sort out the spacing before he got fed up and sent it back. I think he got his through a UK dealer which made it easy, but mine came direct from TS so I ended up hanging on to it. It may well come with a TS camera rotator instead of the tilt adjuster, which can make working out the spacing from TS site data tricky to say the least.

The Skymax 127 is a Maksutov-Cassegrain design, which means it has a concave primary of relatively short focal length, and a convex secondary which has the effect of multiplying the focal length, giving a leng FL in a short tube. Although the 130P is a good 'scope it has several shortcomings if you are thinking of putting a camera on it later, mainly to do with reaching focus with a camera. It also has a single speed focuser rather than the 2 speed of the 130P-DS. By the time you get to a 200mm 'scope it's starting to be a bit of a beast for small mounts to handle, note that the AZ-GTi is only rated for 5kg payload which is why you're seeing it with small 'scopes attached. A GOTO mount that can handle a 200mm 'scope is going to be pricey. Something like This Or for an Alt-Az goto This Edit: Damn, I'm so slow at typing that two got in before me. My post still stands though

It's not just low-end 'scopes that have non collimateable primary mirrors. The Primary mirror and corrector elements of my ODK12 are also factory set, and TBH I'm glad they are. Adjusting secondary collimation and spacing is quite enough, doing it for the primary, corrector elements and focuser would be a nightmare.

If you could get hold of 3 DDM60 that would be a cost effective solution, but the chances are infinitesimally small. Regarding multiple tube rings, Gina has done something similar with 3D printing for her multiple wide-field rig, but only using camera lenses.

A 130 P-DS on an AZ-GTi sounds a good option to me, plus the 130 P-DS is a good little imaging 'scope should you want to go in that direction at some point. Beware though, AP can be a slippery slope to a bottomless money pit. But budget for some better eyepieces than the ones supplied, and also for a Cheshire collimating eyepieces. Although the AZ-GTi can be operated via WiFi by the free Synscan software on a smartphone / tablet I found doing so a pain as my 'phone screen, even in red-light mode, was bright enough to affect my night vision. The Synscan handset might be worth looking at as a later addition.

Definitely suffering from lack of data. Despite your saying that some subs were a bit dodgy the first is much better. IMHO of course.

DDM 100 Go on, you know you want one And so do I, but it's more than BOTH my DDMs put together .

Well.. The professional astronomers have some pretty big telescopes...with pretty big lasers for their artificial stars....Repurpose?

+1 for AstroArt 7, I do all the grunt work on it, then into Affinity Photo for the final polishing.

I was going to say M27, as that's very strong in [OIII] but it needs a longer FL.

I live in rural Dorset but still have 50+mbps, without Stinking Musk's ego-trip.

I have a supposedly SQI of 21.66, and the last clear nights when I was out the sun was at about -14 deg and the sky was still noticeably lighter than under full Astro Dark at -18 deg.

Brilliant image. I had a go at this last year, but the results were dire. I'll try to have another go this year when we get some darkness back.

Right. back on track. AstroArt (I'm on V7) has a very good line removal tool, just click on the end points and Filters > Cosmetic > Remove Line and it's gone. It also does a good job of Sigma Stacking provided you have enough subs. I've seen satellite breakthrough on 6 subs, but not on 18.

Bride Valley

After finding that the exit pupil of my old 7x50 Carl Zeiss Jenoptem WF bins was too big for my aging pupils I splashed out on a pair of 10x50 Vortex Crossfire from FLO, using a £100 voucher I got at my retirement to help the pain. I find they are much brighter, which I attribute to all the light from the objectives now getting into my eye. I have to say I'm nearly 100% imager, but it's good to pick up a pair of bins for a look around while the real work is going on.

According to the tables I get Astro Dark back at 17th July, but only for 38 mins. Still 3 weeks away

Only have nautical dark at the mo, but the last few nights by 12.30 or so (BST) the Milky Way was quite strong with the Cygnus Rift and other structure clearly visible pretty much to the southern horizon, even though it was barely 40 degrees high at the time. Light pollution mad suggests 21.66, but I have my doubts.

TBH I'm not best placed to recommend a planetary camera, being DSO only. All I can suggest (And it's not much) is have a look on the FLO site at the sort of cameras you can afford (ZWO are favourite ATM) and plug the figures into CCD Suitability.

From your description it looks like you want to do planetary imaging. As with all astrophotography (Though I'm a DSO bloke) a dedicated astro camera will beat a DSLR or mirrorless hands down.

Thanks. I know it's usual to do this in HOO, but I have a sneaking liking for the Hubble Palette I imaged this back in '17 I think in NHO and had a long discussion with @Gina over NHO , and whether it was genuine, way back in the Anybody Playing? thread (I think it was in regard of Mel15). We decided that the "[NII]" signal was largely due to bleedthrough from the HII line, so I've gone for SHO here, and the [SII] signal does look separated from the HII.

Thanks for the votes of confidence folks. I know SHO isn't to everybody's taste, but I wanted to give it a shot for "completeness". I may have overcooked a bit on the left, as some of the filaments have gone white, suggesting burn out. Possibly due to injudicious curves in Affinity as the DDP looked OK.