DaveS

Thanks for taking the time and trouble over this. I'm going to take a pause, have a think, and come back with fresh eyes.

Hmm... I may have left too much green in the image when I was taking it out as I wanted to avoid sending it too red. I may have another go. I'll have a go with ABE to see how much vignetting there still is, I thought the Flats would have taken care of that. I ran NoiseX but kept the level to 60% as I didn't want the background to go too "plasticky".

No, I didn't try starless processing, as that's something for me still to get to grips with. I used several iterations of the "Attenuate One Colour" tool in AA8 with careful note of the processed areas, as the original image had both too much green in the target area and a huge magenta area around the outside, plus the usual magenta stars.

Toil and Trouble, much of both! This data was captured on 5 nights between the 22nd June and 19th July in 900 sec subs with the ODK 12 / G3 16200 combination with 3 nm Chroma SHO filters. 12 Hydrogen, 16 Oxygen, and 16 Sulphur subs made it into the stacks after chucking out the worst subs. Calibrated with Pre-calibrated Flats and Darks. Initial SHO combination and cropping in AstroArt 8, then into PI for BlurX and NoiseX, then back to AA8 for DDP and colour adjustment Saves as a JPEG I'm still not happy with it despite spending many hours bashing with the heavy hammer. Given that I'm out of practice with NB (Been concentrating on galaxies for the last year or so) any advice will be welcome. Thanks for looking.

As here. I joined Rory's Discord and tried to participate but it just got manic and I had to drop out as I couldn't keep up.

I'm lucky in that I'm a) retired, 2) an imager, and 3) have an automated obsy. So I can set up an imaging sequence, check that it's running, and then turn in. I may wake up to shut down the obsy after the run, but I have woken up at 6.30 in winter to shut down, which I can do from my tablet without having to get out of bed. Lazy? Yup 😂.

I'm in the Bride Valley not far from Bridport. I have Bortle 3 sky.

Hi Kriss and welcome to SGL from another Dorset astrophotographer.

I still remember one early December a couple of years ago when I went out at about 4 to lock up and the sky was pitch black and glittering, with the clusters in Auriga like gems. Triangulum and Andromeda were still quite high in the west. M31 was huge, and I noticed a faint grey fuzzy that I only later twigged as M33, seen directly without needing averted vision. But I was only wearing my dressing gown so didn't hang about too long.

It's a home built RoR that just looks like a shed. But it has automated roof opening and closing.

I have a completely automated obsy thanks to the ASA software. I can turn the power on remotely too, so I can set up a sequence and go to bed, closing down when the sequence is finished without even getting out of bed.

When Betelgeuse goes bang (Or rather when we see it go bang) two things can be guaranteed, a) it will happen in summer, and b) we'll be clouded out for months.

Launching near the equator is all right provided you aren't aiming for a polar orbit, in which case a site nearer the pole is needed, hence Spaceport Sutherland and Saxa Vord. Spaceport Cornwall is predicated on horizontal launches and landing. Dreamchaser is already lined up as a landing customer but we dropped the ball by not buying up Virgin Orbit when they went bankrupt.

That's good to know, let's hope they don't drop the ball again.

Just to throw a grenade into the discussion, I find Cartes du Ciel best for telescope control, but it doesn't have a pretty desktop. For planning a session I use Stellarium on my desktop computer.

We are one of the largest satellite building nations, but we are now playing a very late catch up where launching is concerned. We were the sixth country to launch a satellite ( Why so late? It's not as if we lacked the ability) but the ONLY country to give up that ability. As I said above, I blame the lack of science qualifications in the civil service and among MPs.

The negativity that you might perceive is born of my frustration at our lack of progress in launching, when I see any number of US private companies (Not just SpaceX) launching satellites.

On NOW.

We put a satellite into orbit in 1971 despite government interference, then promptly went to sleep. I blame a mentality in the civil service that knowing Ovid is more important than understanding Schrödinger.

If they're talking about what we laughably call the UK Space Industry then they need to get in touch with Jordan Wright, the Angry Astronaut. isn't it ironic the the best informed person is an Anglophile American?

Ah, you posted before me. Yes, should be interesting to some, but I expect to hear the usual complaints that it's not stargazing.

The OP should take very much note of what Carole has to say, she's been doing AP for longer than most here, including with DSLRs and her images have won awards on other fora. M101 is a very difficult target, especially under suboptimal conditions. If you want to keep on without a tracking mount due to financial restrictions then wide angle images of bright targets is the way to go. This might be about the cheapest tracking mount available. https://www.firstlightoptics.com/equatorial-astronomy-mounts/omegon-minitrack-lx-quattro-ns.html

I started out with a little Dixon's "Prinz" 60 mm 'frac, but it looks to be of a better quality than the Tasco specimen in the video. I will agree about the mount, pretty rubbish, but just needs putting on something a bit more stable. It got me into serious astronomy and didn't put me off, even with the Huygeniun EPs

The OP hasn't been back since early yesterday, has he lost interest?

I don't see those dark borders in my Dark frames, but that may be down to the software. I also don't see the bright top to the frame or the bright vertical lines. I see from the FITS header that you captured at ambient temperature, what does it look like at the set point, -26 degrees? For reference, here is a stack of 300 sec darks from my camera at -25 degrees, captured in maxim with the Moravian driver. I make no claim as to the perfection or otherwise of my Dark frame, but the camera was bought new.