Lee_P

Thanks, I think the long integration time really helped. Yep, the Optolong L-Ultimate is excellent, and the Askar D2 is good for if you want to take things to the next level. Thanks! I oversharpened it a bit, but I quite like the aesthetics of the effect. Thanks! Crazy eh, I'm always disappointed when I see the raw stacks but it's amazing what can be eventually pulled out with processing.

My astrophotography ambition is to be thought of as someone who's good at imaging through light pollution, so @tomato's comment here has made my day 😂 For the OP @Kluson, I think Bortle 4/5 is actually a pretty low light pollution level (I'd happily swap with you!) but there might be some content on my website Urban Astrophotography that's useful to you.

Blimey there are some good images in this thread! I'll have a punt with my latest target, The Butterfly Nebula in Cygnus. It was taken from my back garden in Bristol city centre, where the light pollution is at least as bad as you imagine! I used an Askar 130PHQ telescope and a ZWO ASI2600MC Pro camera. It's OSC, but I combined 15 hours of Optolong L-Ultimate data (Ha/OIII) with 20 hours of Askar D2 (SII/OIII) to produce genuine SHO -- well, as genuine as you can with an OSC camera! Oh, and I took 30 mins of RGB (no filter) just for the stars. So in total it's 35.5 hours.

Here's The Butterfly Nebula in Cygnus. As ever, shot from Bristol city centre, where the light pollution gets worse every night, or so it seems! I combined Optolong L-Ultimate data with Askar D2 to produce SHO using my OSC camera, and sprinkled RGB stars on the top. Imaging details below, and more info on my website. * August 2023 * Bristol, UK (Bortle 8 ) * Telescope: Askar 130PHQ Flatfield Astrograph * Camera: ZWO ASI 2600MC-PRO * Mount: Sky-Watcher EQ6-R PRO * Guide: William Optics 50mm Guidescope with 1.25″ RotoLock; ZWO ASI 120MM Mini * Control: ASIAIR Plus * Software: PixInsight, Lightroom * Filters: – Optolong L-Ultimate (Ha / OIII): 450 x 120 seconds (15 hours) – Askar Colour Magic D2 (SII / OIII) : 600 x 120 seconds (20 hours) – No filter (for RGB stars): 15 x 120 seconds (30 mins) Total exposure time: 35.5 hours By Lee Pullen

Would you be able to post this is a JPEG please? So it appears in your post. At the moment we need to download the TIF file to see it. Thanks!

Yowza, that's next level!

To be honest I'm not sure, and my FRA400 has recently gone to a loving new home to accommodate my 130PHQ, so I can't make any further tests. But in all my time with the FRA400 I was never bothered by CA. Perhaps I'm not enough of a pixel peeper, but I reckon it's a-ok, especially for the price point.

There are corkers, good job!

Really interesting to see just how small it is with the brighter two stars as a frame of reference 👍

This is what my ultrawide monitor was made for 😂

Bravo!

I use a concrete block "Todmorden" pier. It's brilliant. There's some more info and a picture here.

My first globular for a while! Makes a nice change of pace from faint nebulae and galaxies. As ever, this was taken from Bristol city centre. I'm happy with how my Askar 130PHQ performed, producing good stars that could be easily tweaked during processing. I tried to keep the core glowing but not overblown. More details, including a comparison with Askar FRA400 data, can be found on my website: https://urbanastrophotography.com/index.php/2023/07/17/hercules-globular-cluster-m13/ * 22 June to 8 July 2023 to (2 weeks) * Bristol, UK (Bortle 8 ) * Telescope: Askar 130PHQ Flatfield Astrograph * Camera: ZWO ASI 2600MC-PRO * Mount: Sky-Watcher EQ6-R PRO * Guide: William Optics 50mm Guidescope with 1.25″ RotoLock; ZWO ASI 120MM Mini * Control: ASIAIR Plus * Software: PixInsight, Lightroom * Filters: – No filter 240 x 120 seconds (8 hours) Total exposure time: 8 hours By Lee Pullen

Congratulations to all the winners, especially @powerlord for that very worthy first place!

My FRA400 was serial number #00012, so I figure it was one of the first! No really serious issues though, just what I flagged in my review. I imagine all the telescopes you listed would be good though. The main bonus about the FRA400 is not having to worry about backfocus (assuming you're not using the reducer), which makes things easier. I haven't used the other two telescopes so can't really give an informed opinion about them, but for what it's worth, if I were in the market for a wide-telescope again and I had the options you listed, I'd buy another FRA400.

My previous telescope was an Askar FRA400, and I rate it highly. I wrote a review here, and there are lots of example photos if you go to my website's gallery and scroll down a bit.

The L-Ultimate is great, but expensive. You might find this comparison I made of three dual NB filters useful.

Haha, well to be fair the Hubble image at its full resolution does absolutely blow mine out of the water, as you'd expect -- but I got H-alpha and a supernova, and Hubble didn't 😂

My entry is The Pinwheel Galaxy -- very popular at the moment, but in my defense I'd been imaging it for a month before the supernova! After that discovery I just kept going until I'd collected 70 hours of good quality RGB data using my OSC camera. I then collected 30 hours using my Optolong L-Ultimate filter, extracted the H-alpha, and added it into the RGB image. The result is 100 hours of OSC HaRGB data, all taken from my back garden in Bristol's Bortle 8 city centre. The whole project took two months. I had to learn a few new tricks along the way as I'd never handled such a large quantity of data -- the RGB component alone is 2100 subframes of 120s each, totalling 102GB. PixInsight struggled with the pre-processing, and took over 85 hours to do the number crunching! This was also the first time I'd combined H-alpha with RGB data. I spent the best part of two days on the processing 😵 It ended up being by far my most ambitious astro project to date. I've written the experience up in more detail on my website. * 21 April to 16 June 2023 to (8 weeks) * Bristol, UK (Bortle 8 ) * Telescope: Askar 130PHQ Flatfield Astrograph * Camera: ZWO ASI 2600MC-PRO * Mount: Sky-Watcher EQ6-R PRO * Guide: William Optics 50mm Guidescope with 1.25″ RotoLock; ZWO ASI 120MM Mini * Control: ASIAIR Plus * Software: PixInsight, Lightroom * Filters: – No filter 2100 x 120 seconds (70 hours) – Optolong L-Ultimate 900 x 120 seconds (30 hours) Total exposure time: 100 hours By Lee Pullen --- This animation shows my nearest data before and after the supernova. And finally, just for fun and following @powerlord's fine example from earlier in this thread, here's Man with Concrete Block Pier vs Hubble. I think it's pretty neat seeing the supernova appear, as well as the glowing hydrogen.

This image was taken from Bristol city centre, Bortle 8, using an Askar 130PHQ telescope and ZWO ASI2600MC-Pro OSC camera. It's 70 hours of RGB data (no filter) and 30 hours of Optolong L-Ultimate, from which I extracted hydrogen-alpha. I was imaging the galaxy for a month before the supernova, and then that kicked off so I just kept going and going... I was hoping to make a study of the supernova's varying brightness, but that didn't come out too well, so I made a single image with all the data instead! It was a real challenge and I learned a lot during this project. There's lots more info on my website here, and the key imaging details are at the bottom of this post. This is the last clear night I had before the supernova was detected; and then the night after it was found. And just for fun, here's my effort versus Hubble 😂 * 21 April to 16 June 2023 to (8 weeks) * Bristol, UK (Bortle 8 ) * Telescope: Askar 130PHQ Flatfield Astrograph * Camera: ZWO ASI 2600MC-PRO * Mount: Sky-Watcher EQ6-R PRO * Guide: William Optics 50mm Guidescope with 1.25″ RotoLock; ZWO ASI 120MM Mini * Control: ASIAIR Plus * Software: PixInsight, Lightroom * Filters: – No filter 2100 x 120 seconds (70 hours) – Optolong L-Ultimate 900 x 120 seconds (30 hours) Total exposure time: 100 hours By Lee Pullen

I set my 130mm refractor to refocus every hour. Seems to work ok.

That's a brilliant result!

Great shot, you've captured lots of fine detail there 👍

Brilliant!

Very good!