MattJenko

Love 50mm lens Milky Way shots. Take a few more per session and stack if you want to remove the plane + satellite trails (although I quite them like this image!) and it would help in being able to control the purple stars easier too.

More a lean over movement than a slow dance pirouette

Telrad on other side of finder for me too on my 250px. Nice smooth flow of centering in Telrad, validating in finder and viewing in eyepiece...

Is the issue in carrying the Dob as a complete unit? The OTA is simple to remove from the base, and in my experience as a 250px owner myself is that the base is the heaviest and clunkiest piece, the OTA itself is quite easily manageable. If that is the case, then a new base might solve the problem, be it something you can do yourself if you are skilled in that regard, or someone like OrionOptics who sell their Dob bases separately which will fit the 250px tube. @John - didn't you do exactly this in a post I saw a while ago?

I think it is important to also stress the evolving nature of people's experiences and motivations for imaging. Extrapolating from a very scientific sample of one (me), we want to get better - much better. James is right in the sense that this hobby is not a competition against others, but I am certainly trying to compete against previous images and efforts of my own. Even my goals have evolved as I have gained those experience and honed some skills, and for this reason I think mono imaging is far superior, as the opportunities for that growth are far greater than OSC in my view.

What about an alt az fork, like this one : https://www.teleskop-express.de/shop/product_info.php/info/p11130_TS-Optics-Fork-Mount-for-large-Binoculars--Spotting-Scopes--Telephoto-Lenses-or-Telescopes.html

I have an old model AA115 and have nothing but praise for it. Other than the annoying end cap it has been lovely to image with. Given you are keeping the widefield scope, I would get the AA115 to give a better range of focal lengths for your 2 options. Here are some images taken with it. Any issues with images are not the scopes fault! My AA115 images on AstroBin

Having done DSLR and mono imaging, I think the key point is There is indeed a kind of elemental fury that surfaces when a mono imaging run ends up with only 1 or 2 usable images with a filter with lovely full set of subs for all other filters. The knowledge that you have collected more photons with the other filters than you ever could with OSC that evening kind of slips into irrelevance when you realise you won't be able to do a great deal of processing without the missing data. If you are regularly set up and regularly rely on multiple sessions to gather data for a single image, then this is no big deal, but for the setup/teardown weekenders like myself it can amount to heart bursting sorrow. I have tried ways to try and limit this, by looping through RGB subs (3 at a time) but the additional refocusing needed etc eats into the overall time and adds more possibility for murphys law to strike. I am a CMOS user mainly now as well, to counterbalance all the CCDers here.

The shift from simple Dob viewing to guided imaging was a massive shift in complexity...

10mm will give you a decent full disk kind of view and when the seeing is good, you can use a 4mm to get higher magnification. I would not recommend a 40mm for the moon with your scope.

I love the AltAz bonus of the AzEQ6 when it comes to observing, especially for non fixed locations as you don't need to polar align. You could mount both C9.25 and 80ED as a treat.

I can't remember if the focuser was too far out or required extensions. I suspect it is too far out and that you either need to push the main mirror forwards to push the focus point further out of the focus tube or try and get a low profile focuser, or move the dslt closer in somehow.

I had this very scope as my first scope and it was tricky to get working well in terms of aligning and keeping on target. As mentioned above, you need to align the red dot finder during the day to make sure it is any use at all. Once that is working, it solved the initial find the object issue. After that, you are into the world of equatorial mount alignment. Before you start observing, you need to align the mount to point along the earth's rotational axis (polar alingment). This only has the be done roughly for visual with this scoipe, but without doing this, then keeping the object in view is going to be frustrating. Once aligned roughly, then all that is needed is to use the RA slow mo to track the object, which helps enormously. For this scope, the 10mm eyepiece is no where near as good as the 20mm, so a decent 8-12mm EP is well worth it (more so than a 4mm in my view). I also got a 28mm for the scope to help with targeting and finding. The best bang for buck for this scope though is a Telrad.

If you want to stick with CCD as opposed to a CMOS camera, I would be tempted to go with a larger FOV and use a 8300 chip (Atik 383 or Moravian equivalent) as there are some very large nebula objects out there.... For galaxies, you are not losing significant resolution in terms of arc/pixel either. +1 for SX filter wheels.

I have set up my imaging kit a few times recently and left set up during the day with a cover over it, but the summer days are rather hot and the temp under the cover is still very high. Would people recommend a full teardown during these hot 30+ degree days?

First real outing of my second hand Atik 460ex. It struggled rather a lot on cooling, but knew that when I bought it. Managed a set of images against M11, a set of RGB 2 min subs. Cropped image down to frame better and despite some column defects, this camera is performing very nicely. Will potentially need to always dither which might impact my longer term dual rig ambitions, but for now, just glad to get under some clear skies and to dust off my capturing skills and use my own kit. AA115, Atik 460ex, AzEQ6. Guided. RGB, 2mins, ~20 subs each.

Good choices. My HEQ5 is still turning slowly and accurately after years of excellent service.

there is something there, so i think you are on the right track with masking out the stars. i am not a photoshop guy, but applying the stetching to midrange only, excluding touching the close to or saturated stars would allow you to push the nebula in isolation from the starfield.

for bright deep space objects, I would use a cmos based camera and take multiple 5-10 second exposures (as in hundreds of them) and track as best you can. you can then align and trim the edges and you should be able to get something to be happy with.

If you get the filter wheel oriented so the filter surface is closest to the camera side and attach the ASI1600 right up to the filter wheel, then 1.25" filters are absolutely fine. I have used Baader LRGB + NB filters, a Chroma 3nm Ha 1.25 filters and ZWO's own and see precious little vignetting from any of them. The ZWO filter wheel has the filter surface pretty close to the thread so works well, the SX wheel I have is a little further away, so I use the ZWO one exclusively with the ASI1600 now. And to be honest, even if I had noticeable vignetting, it normally processes out really easily. For a £50 difference in the current LRGBHa bundles on FLO (or £100 for the full NB set), its not a major issue either way so you won't be making a mistake choosing one over the other, unless you want to buy 3nm filters

if you find that your imaging time without the filter is being saturated with andromeda light, then just take lots of shorter exposures of strong andromeda signal images without the filter. if, however, the background is being saturated without the filter, keep the filter in.

how about longer focal length/smaller aperture newtonians for a real wallet saver?

Feels a bit like cheating, but this is a southern hemisphere object and I get no time with my own telescopes because of work commitments at the moment anyway. Its a good chance to play with some data and keep those processing skills from totally rusting over while circumstance forces my own kit to gather dust not photons. Our southern colleagues are truly blessed with some awesome objects. iTelescope T9 in Siding Springs. 12 hours exposure time. LRGB. PixInsight.

Agreed. Its also how you use it. Fully extended legs in windy places is a different proposition from low down to the floor in a sheltered spot. This particular tripod is so tiny and the way I use it means that it easily holds my payloads. As you suggest, mileage for others may vary considerably.

Mine handles more than 8kg. SA, dovetail, counterbalance and the rig above is more than 8kg and it is solid in all manner of heights and configurations. Not sure about actual max though.