sagramore

Welcome to all the new owners around the world! Congratulations on owning a lovely little scope I know that some of you are not new to the hobby and some of you are so please ignore any tips I give that you already know. I will add a few things I have learned since I had it, however please bear in mind that I am nothing more than an average user - my images are not the best but I am proud of them. Get a good mount! This is number 1. The scope is small so you can get away with some smaller mounts, however once you add a guide scope and camera (and maybe filter wheel if you are lucky enough to have the expensive cameras!) then the best mount you can afford is the way to go. I use a NEQ6 for mine as I have an ST80 guide scope and a heavy DSLR. A standard unmodified DSLR will get you good photos. Sure, you can't see the Ha and you have to battle with light pollution, but it is definitely the most affordable way into astrophotography where you can learn what you are doing, and how to process images. Light pollution - probably the bane of all our lives. This is especially bad for the DSLRs doing one-shot RGB imaging. You will notice some bad gradients across your images and they are difficult to remove. There are methods out there to help and, of course, you can aim away from the horizon/cities and be somewhere nice & dark. I don't have a LP filter yet, but it is probably the next item on my list before any other upgrades. Power - Do not forget to budget for power in the field. I was told by everybody that the celestron/skywatcher branded "power tanks" that you can buy are overpriced garbage. You need to factor in the cost of buying some sort of power for when you are out & about. In the end I got a 110 Ah leisure battery and a battery box to house it in, total cost around £80. It's not a lot but it is not insignificant. Coma corrector - There are two main CC that people in here use; Skywatcher and Baader. The Baader is a little more expensive I believe but some people claim it to be better. I use the Skywatcher 0.9x CC. Please note that depending on your camera (I am using a DSLR), using the CC can push the focal point of the scope to an awkward position, i.e. the focuser draw-tube was a long way into the aperture and was causing "bites" to come out of bright (all?) stars. You can relatively simply fix this by moving the primary mirror up the tube and there are a couple of posts in this thread earlier about how to do this reversibly/non-destructively. I did it, it wasn't hard, but it was a little fiddly and you need to be confident enough to start taking the mirror out, etc. - Just something to keep in mind! It was annoying but the benefits of the CC are worth it. That's about all I have for now and I just hope it helps at least one of you to get past a problem you might have. Remember that you don't *need* a guide scope and guide camera when you are just starting. Using an NEQ6 and this little scope I was able to get 2 minute exposures without guiding as long as I polar aligned well so if your money is tight, the guiding can wait a little longer and you will still get some great images. All of the photos I have posted in here were taken without any guiding as I only just bought it and now it's summer so there's no imaging time! Clear skies, everyone!!

Hi richyrich_one - I was following your mod with great interest as my best photos with the 130-PDS are suffering from the same "bites" out of the bright stars. I bought some washers and some 40mm bolts and bolt extenders like you suggested but I feel like I misunderstood just looking at the picture. Either way I managed to patch it all together and I've moved the primary up the tube like in your image and it's all completely reversible. Thanks for the tip! I have a question though - are you able to use your scope for visual use in this format? I am not sure if I moved my mirror up slightly further than you but I can't get focus with any eyepieces any more. At least, not without using an extension tube. The camera + 0.9x CC appears to focus fine though with only a few mm of focuser draw tube sticking into the tube so I guess that's the point! I don't really use it for visual, just handy to know if I've done something wrong. Just need to have a day to test it out now. I shouldn't moan about the summer but the nights are too bright and short for any imaging at all now! I am hoping I got the collimation back properly after having removed everything because it was spot on and nice & tight before.... heh

My first image of the sun! Taken on May 8th as a 4-panel mosaic. Full posting with image details can be seen here: Flickr for higher resolution here:

Thanks - I'm pretty surprised too! It helps when you look for targets near polaris of course I think I'm really pushing it with 2 minutes as I do not drift align and I do lose some subs to vibrations and stuff - perhaps it's periodic? I am hoping to get an ASI camera to start guiding with soon to try and fix some of those issues.

Hi everyone. Two more photos to add to the 130-PDS party I have posted them "properly" with the respective write-ups in the threads linked under each image, but both were taken with the 130-PDS on an NEQ6 mount, unguided, with an unmodified Canon EOS 550D. M97 Owl Nebula and M108 - full thread here: https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/265499-messiers-97-owl-nebula-and-108-galaxy/ M101 Pinwheel Galaxy - full thread here: https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/265501-m101-my-first-48-minutes-of-the-pinwheel-galaxy/ The Pinwheel certainly needs more data, it's a deceptively dim subject! I think I should wait until I get autoguiding set up though first. Thanks for looking! Hamish / sagramore

I haven't tried it yet but I imagine the Triangulum M33 would be a great size for this scope and a DSLR! Or perhaps those galaxies that are grouped, like M81/M82 or the Leo triplet so you can catch them all in one frame.

Really like it! There's a lot of nice detail in the core of yours compared to mine - I perhaps should have taken some much shorter exposures like your 5s and 10s ones. Something to remember for next time. Perhaps I can even add some data to mine another night. Thanks for sharing, it's a great looking image.

Hi spiraleye. No filters at all in my setup at the moment. I do have to be careful with light pollution as well, it was starting to become more and more apparent in the 120s exposures. I can highly recommend a series of tutorials by Doug German (see his Youtube tutorial session here) which I can strongly recommend if you are new like I am! It does focus on Photoshop more than anything else, but the general processes are applicable to a lot of software. It really helped me with removing gradients caused by light pollution without having to buy extra expensive gradient removal software. As for getting the camera set up: sorry if I say anything incorrect here as I am doing it from memory and I am currently using a coma corrector, which changes things a bit. However, it is my understanding that you should be able to connect the camera using *just* a T-ring and no need for a 1.25" or 2" adapter. There is a part of the 1.25" connection on the focuser that screws off to leave a T-thread that screws directly onto the T-ring on your camera. This should allow you to get the focus you need without the barlow in place. It's also much closer to the body of the scope then so a lot less chance of flexure or slop too. It's a pretty good focuser for such a cheap scope! This post has two images of the part I am talking about, before & after unscrewing to reveal the T-thread. Hope that helps!!

Hi spiraleye - welcome to the club! Haha. Really nice image for such a short amount of time. There's a lot of nice detail in the core, which is pretty overexposed in my photo so you've got me on that One bit of advice for any deep sky images would be to forget the barlow if you can. I know you end up "zoomed out" but (if I have my maths correct) a doubling in focal ratio requires FOUR times the exposure duration to get the same detail, so by taking the 2x barlow out of your setup you would get as much light collection as if you had done 80 second exposures. The difficulty is finding this balance for smaller targets. Look forward to seeing more of your work. I would love to move to narrowband as well but sadly I don't have the spare £2000-£3000 necessary for even the basic level stuff! Haha.

Thanks for your comment! Never be too scared to post an image is what I have learned. They're always worth a look and in my case people have had a lot of helpful comments to make. Look forward to seeing it

I finally have some more photos to post and I am really very pleased with myself as they are really the 2nd and 3rd images I have taken since getting my new mount & scope I *love* this 130-PDS! Okay, on to the photos: Globular Cluster M3 2016-03-07, near Swindon, England Gear: Skywatcher 130-PDS with 0.9x coma corrector (585 mm, f/4.5) Skywatcher NEQ6-Pro Synscan (unguided) Canon EOS 550D (unmodified) Acquisition: - AstrophotographyTools (APT) using APT dithering (unguided) - 14 x 60s = total 14 minutes @ ISO 800 - 33 flats + library bias & darks - Stacked in DeepSkyStacker and post-processed in Photoshop CC 2015 High res Flickr link: Here Great Orion Nebula (M42, M43) and Running Man Nebula (NGC 1973/5/7) 2016-03-07, near Swindon, England Gear: Skywatcher 130-PDS with 0.9x coma corrector (585 mm, f/4.5) Skywatcher NEQ6-Pro Synscan (unguided) Canon EOS 550D (unmodified) Acquisition: - AstrophotographyTools (APT) using APT dithering (unguided) - 15 x 120s, 17 x 60s, 20 x 30s = total 57 minutes @ ISO 800 - 33 flats + library bias & darks - Each exposure stacked separately in DeepSkyStacker and post-processed in Photoshop CC 2015 - Final merge of the three different exposures in Photoshop to create manual HDR image High res Flickr link: Here I am most pleased with the Orion nebula image - I had never hoped to get such a good photograph with my local city light pollution and with under 1hr of data + my processing inexperience. I was glad to be able to take three different exposures and combine them into a sort of hoome-made manual HDR composition so that there was a little more detail in the core without it being too blown out and without me losing too much of the softer detail in the dust. Thanks for looking and I welcome any comments or advice on what I could improve!

2016-02-23 - Local Nature Reserve (Wiltshire, England) Comet C/2013 US10 ("Catalina") in the top centre, open star cluster NGC 1502 on the lower-right, and planetary nebula NGC 1501 in the centre left (see next image for a zoom in of this!). The first "decent" image taken with my new 130 PDS 5" reflector and NEQ6 mount. Really pleased with it considering my inexperience. Probably the best processed image to date as well thanks to some YouTube guides from Doug German (www.budgetastro.net). See this Flickr link for full resolution version: Flickr Technical details: Skywatcher 130-PDS, Skywatcher NEQ6, Canon 550D (unmodified) with Skywatcher 0.9x coma corrector - f/4.5 (585 mm) 29 x 120s exposures @ ISO 800 (dithered with APT and no guide camera) = 58 mins 15 darks, 28 flats, 52 bias Captured in APT, stacked in DeepSkyStacker, processed in Photoshop and Irfanview Thanks for looking!

EDIT: I had a go at reprocessing the same data after watching some tutorials on YouTube. It's still pretty poor because of the noise (only 8 minutes of data and no dithering!) however I think ti's a lot more even and the detail in the galaxies is a little better. EDIT 2: I don't know what I've done but I've somehow managed to remove the originally processed image.... sorry! I think I will have to be more careful with double-posting and editing posts in future!

Thanks for the comments! I was able to catch just a few minutes with the scope tonight between all the clouds here and I'm really pleased so far. My major problem with the Skywatcher 200P reflector tube (1200 mm version) was that even after careful balancing and alignment I was unable to get objects in the FOV after slewing to them. I figured it was likely due to some mirror slop and a lot of tube flexure. Nothing of the sort with this new scope! Things were bang on. One problem I encountered was that neither of my rubbish little webcams are sensitive enough to pick up guide stars so I will have to leave out the guiding (and the ST80) for now until I get a dedicated planetary/guide scope, which is out of budget for now. However, I did manage to (finally) get the auto dithering working in APT without the need for a guide scope, and it works very nicely. I've included a very quick shot of M81 / M82 / NGC 3077 that I took with the 130 PDS tonight. Image details below the image. I know there's a nasty orange gradient still but sadly my back garden is in the middle of Swindon so it's pretty light polluted. That's something to work on in the future. There's also the same problems that some others have seen in this thread - namely still some coma in the corners even with the CC and also the focus tube is so far in it's taking bites out of some of the brighter stars. All things I still need to address in the future.... Skywatcher 130 PDS on NEQ6 mount. Unguided. Canon EOS 550D (unmodified) and Skywatcher coma corrector. 16 x 30s = 8 minutes @ ISO 800, 20 darks, 27 flats, 1 library master bias/offset. Acquired with APT using unguided dithering. Stacked in DeepSkyStacker, post-processing in Photoshop CS3 and resized in IrfanView. All in all I'm pleased so far and tomorrow night I'm taking the scope out to a much better location to give it a proper run. Hoping to catch Catalina while it's still close to cluster NGC 1502 and still bright enough to see at all. Thanks for looking!

Hello everybody. I hope this is the right place to post because this is my first post on this forum and I absolutely love this thread in particular for reasons that should become apparent.... I just received my 130-PDS and I cannot wait to get out there with it. I recently treated myself to a NEQ6 (I figured better safe than sorry when it comes to the mount!) and have just finished acquiring all the bits and pieces to get it working in the field. I am pretty new and you'd probably describe me as "all the gear but no idea" at the moment! I've upgraded to this kit from a 200P 8" dobsonian so it's a bit of a step up in complexity to say the least. What I have managed to do so far is get the mount fully controlled by my laptop with EQMOD and Stellarium/StellariumScope and I was able to take some photos using APT and my (unmodified) EOS 550D on it via my ST80. I think my polar alignment isn't too shoddy as I have managed up to 90 second exposures without guiding on the ST80. I was originally trying to mount the 8" dob OTA on the NEQ6, which I think can handle the weight, but the 1200mm reflector is just not built for it and I was getting some mirror slop & tube flexure so I gave up and decided the 130-PDS was the way forwards. Anyway, my real reason for posting is to show these three photos of my setup (which I have not yet used!) to ask if anybody can see I am doing something very obviously wrong or not? I plan to try and use the ST80 as a guide scope with an old webcam I have modified to fit into the 1.25" connection on the ST80 but as yet I'm not actually sure if it's a good enough camera. I'd like to avoid another £200-£300 on a guide cam for now if I can, especially seeing as my local light pollution is pretty high and I might well be limited with my exposure times anyway. There is a skywatcher coma corrector between the DSLR and the focuser and I know it's unconventional to angle the camera down like that but it was the only way I could get it to all balance! So - criticisms and advice gratefully accepted for this very new hobbyist! The forecast says I might get some clear skies on Tuesday so I'm hoping to give it all a try then. Thanks for looking! Hamish / sagramore