tomato

Nice job.👍 What do the stars look like on the peripheral guide sensor at f2? I had lovely sausage shaped stars using an OAG with an Esprit 150 focal reducer, but PHD guided on them OK.

Sorry, I can’t see any image on @woldsman’s post.

I was just a kid through the Mercury/Gemini/Apollo era but as I have read more about those days and the immense problems that were overcome in such a short space of time my respect for those achievements just keeps on growing. Technology has advanced so much since the but where are the real challenges to harness it? “I think this nation should commit itself to having Tik Tok at everyone’s fingertips before the decade is out” doesn’t have quite the same ring to it. Of course one could argue we have more pressing problems closer to home now but there is no cohesive commitment to fixing them, either.

Very impressive, nice to see a sharp mono image on here👍

I know, I should have nudged the scope more to the right... Captured with the RASA8/QHY268c/UVIR, 98 x 2 mins. Calibrated and stacked in APP, processed in PI and AP. I was concerned with the blotchy background but given we have a dark nebula in the FOV it is reasonable to assume that this could be a dusty region of sky, other images I have looked at would seem to confirm this. Thanks for looking. Annotated

I’ve just done a proper check on my imaging logs and YTD I’m two sessions behind where I was in 2022. I am quite forgiving when I image though, a full moon or absence of astro darkness doesn’t stop me.

I admire your pragmatic approach and self control. A lot of folks on here including myself respond to a lack of clear nights by researching and then purchasing even more kit that will then join the list of underused items.

Thanks for the info. I have manually guided many times back in the day with a reticle eyepiece and a hand controller, I used to manage 15 min exposures on emulsion film but when it was -5 deg C that was quite enough.

I use ASI 178 cameras which have major ampglow, the key to calibrating it out was to match the temperature for lights and darks. This was achieved by retro fitting Peltier coolers to the cameras.

It’s a great site, fond memories of all nighters up there back in the 1980’s doing astro photography the old fashioned way.

Great images both. I’m assuming the Yerkes photo was guided in 1901, who stood there for 3 hours?

I have the Sony version with a custom made adapter which takes a screw in filter. If you can fit a filter drawer I would definitely go with that option, it’s a pain to disturb the optical train every time you want to change a filter.

I started out back in the 1980’s as purely visual as I didn’t realise you could take photos through the scope. When I saw the photos the great Jack Newton was taking, showing the colour and detail way beyond anything I could see with my Mk 1 eyeball, I was hooked and have been ever since. But after a truly magical experience on holiday at Eddington Lodge looking through a 20” Dob I purchased 16” SW Flextube to see if I could recreate the experience at home. Unfortunately my Bortle 5/6 sky coupled with the effort to trundle the Dob out of the garage and my poorer eyesight means I haven’t really got the visual buzz back. However, I’m planning to take the Dob to the Autumn astrocamp, now equipped with a StarSense unit, really hoping for some clear sky time.

Last night I needed a target away from the encroaching low cloud so I centred the RASA8 on SH2-126. They don't call it the Great Nebula in Lacerta for nothing, the QHY268c FOV is nowhere near big enough for this one, and being set up for broadband imaging all I got was the knot of (IFN?) nebulosity which I have given the label the Axolotl Nebula. My broadband SY135 rig subs were plagued with cloud, so not much available from them, this exercise has made me realise how much effort goes into imaging this target.

This is a widefield view centred on LDN 673 in Aquila. This is 20x 2 mins captured with the SY135/QHY268c/IRUV filter combination. Alas all my subs taken post the meridian flip had a massive flare on them due to a neighbour's outside light reflecting off the edge of the dome aperture into the lens, never mind. No calibration frames, vignetting reduced with the tool in APP, LP removal in APP then processed in Pixinsight and AP.

Great image Dave, I must try this one out with the RASA8.

Yes, you could be fooled into thinking the 2023 version had come from a dedicated astro camera. The latest software tools are really asking the question about the standards of the image capturing kit required these days, but of course quality data, from whatever camera is being used, always helps.

I started with an Atik 314, then went 383 mono before moving to IMX571 sensors. I use flats and dark flats and still use darks although a lot of imagers have dispensed with darks for this sensor. How careful you need to be with the spacing depends to some extent on your OTA, an f2 RASA needs more careful setting up than an f7 Esprit, but that is just my experience. However, I should point out that I’m more relaxed than a lot of imagers wrt star shapes, I’m happy to let the processing software fix minor aberrations rather than use precious sky time trying to get things perfect.

+1 for Telescopius, enter your location and it will give you more targets than you can shake a stick at, plus those with optimum placing for imaging.

It does have a number of Astro dedicated features, it will calibrate and stack fits files, for example, although I don’t use it for that.

Thanks for the comment. The Affinity Photo Remove Background tool can produce a clipped result, although I brought the background level up to try and mitigate this. It is probably still too black, but that’s to hide my patchy background. I’ve said this before but I really should be more disciplined with my framing.

A used SY135 f2 sony mount and Sony Alpha A700 DSLR camera body can be had for £333, that leaves £167 for the mount.🥴 Looks like a cheaper lens would be needed, or just buy a Seestar and see if Astro imaging is your thing. That would easily sell on if you decide that it is not for you.

I'm think I have this correct but @ollypenrice's favourite Deep Sky image taken to date (so that is really saying something) was with a SamYang 135mm lens, and not a big Tak telescope or a Planewave 17" ODK. Ok, to be fair, it was took with a high end camera from a great site and by folks who really know what they are doing, but the point I'm trying to make is you definitely do not have to start off purchasing loads of high end expensive kit. There are a couple of folks on SGL since I have been a member who have done just that and sadly got very frustrated very quickly with trying to achieve spectacular results straight away and their entire setups have ended up in the classifieds section. Back in the pre-digital era when I would venture AP was somewhat harder, I went the "buy all the kit straight away" route and suffered endless frustrations. For a long time my best results were captured with a 50mm lens.

This is three sessions over 3 years all captured with the RASA8/QHY268c/NBZ combination. As usual for me, the FOVs from the three sessions had widely different orientations so quite a bit of work was needed to smooth the joins on the overlapping background sections of sky. After applying the LP removal to each session image in APP, I used the clone tool in AP to smooth the joins and and then the Remove background tool to try and even up the background sections. Total integration is 5.4 hrs, 108 x 3 mins, thanks for looking.

What about the OP’s suggestion of trading in the APO for a bigger doublet refractor? Would the increase in aperture trump some of the other issues wrt to detail resolution?