AKB

258 x 300s sounds like a long time (21.5 hours), at least, to me. How long was your exposure, Olly? Tony

Works a treat with Zoom. Our local astro society (Abingdon) used to have physical observing sessions, but now, of course, that's not possible, so Zoom takes it places. Works rather well, actually. If a general audience is to enjoy it, it need to be rather slick, in terms of finding targets, capturing the data, and presenting it. Those used to doing EEA/EEVA are fairly practised at this anyway. The right software helps (real-time stacking, etc.) but that's somewhat dependent on which camera you plan to use. Tony

Can you say a little more about the processing? I have an ASI294MC and a Quad-band filter, so should be able to perform a similar trick?

That I like very much! Very delicate.

I don’t know if this counts, but for me it was seeing an artificial satellite in broad daylight: the ECHO balloon - the worlds first (passive) communications satellite. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Echo I think it must have been the 1964 one. I was 10. Tony

I have a 6.25" mirror I ground when I was 17... ...Oh dear... ...that’s 50 years ago! Sentimental reasons. Definitely.

IIRC, that is the exposure. Given that you probably want to guide the mount as frequently as possible, there should be little reason for it to be otherwise.

Taking your first image in the previous post above, applying DBE, and a bit of colour balance and stretching, I get this. It seems not too bad to me?

X-wing fighters?

I have taken a few images with a C.25 Hyperstar and an ASI294 OSC with no filters. The Horsehead image is 20 x 1 minute exposures. Album here: Tony

It’s sad, for such an otherwise classy scope. My other fast wish-list scope (Officinia Stellare RH200) also seems it would need a better focuser too. A never-ending saga... ....although, hopefully, yours will end happily ever after.

Indeed, @tooth_dr where also are you with the focuser...? Tony

Yes, that worked for me (PI on a Mac read it, and saved it.) Here's a 16-bit TIFF... @Rustang, hope that's OK by you. Tony SS.tif

Even odder... I could read the file (with PixInsight) but any attempt to screen stretch, or the like, resulted in an error... Tony

Ooh, that is faint.

Do you mean darks? Dithering is not going to address many of the things which flats fix, like vignetting and dust bunnies. Flats make a huge difference, generally. Tony

Just recently done that myself. Seems to help...

Surprisingly cloudless yesterday evening, and when setting up, I thought the moon looked lovely. My only appropriate gear to hand was my guidescope, and, by chance, I've recently got a 3D printed bahtinov mask for it, so I hoped the focus was good enough: EvoGuide 50ED ZWO ASI120MM 200 frames from 1000, with AS!, and some level adjustment/sharpening in Nebulosity and PI. I have an even better estimation of my guidescope, now... Tony.

That’s exactly how it works for me!

I am absolutely thrilled with my ROR from Home Observatory UK, which I've had for three years now. I had a problem with the roof sticking after my first winter, so they came along (free of charge) and fixed it for me. The only thing I have done to 'improve' it is replace all hinges and door handles with stainless steel... if I was doing it again I would ask for this at the outset. Tony. ___________ PS: plus a bit of added security...

Further to this, I see that the imaging circle for a 6" Hyperstar is just 11mm, whereas the ASI294MC chip diagonal is 23mm, so not really suited to the scope? (Unless, of course, I have it wrong and you have some other diameter, but in that case, your backfocus measurement is certainly wrong.)

Oh yes, nice galaxy!

I have a C9.25 HYperstar and an ASI294MC-Pro camera. You don't say what size scope you have, but looking here https://starizona.com/tutorial/hyperstar-specifications/ it seems like you have a 6" variety. The spacer is specfic to the camera. The camera itself should have a 6.5mm length between its thread and the chip. It should also come with an 11mm spacer, which, perhaps not coincidentally, sounds like what you need. The backfocus is very critical, but, again, on the Starizona site it says +/- 0.5mm (or perhaps I read it here: https://www.cloudynights.com/articles/cat/articles/the-amazing-hyperstar-a-guide-to-optimize-perf-r3013 which is also worth a look.) It must be of that order because there would be an effective length change when using a filter, which the adapters are threaded to take, as @ollypenrice has indicated.

Here's a thought... I'm sure this has been done before, and, if I'm correct, it confers no advantage in terms of overall acquisition time, but it does mean that you could do this without a filter wheel or two scopes. Has anyone used a bino-viewer with two cameras for EEVA (or otherwise) ? True, the light reaching either camera is halved, but it does mean that you could have simultaneous capture of, say, red/blue or L/Ha. True, you would need two cameras True, dithering might be a problem (but maybe that doesn't concern you, because you don't guide) I use Nebulosity for capture, so it's easy to run two copies simultaneously (I assume this may be true for other acquisition software?) Something like this: https://www.firstlightoptics.com/binoviewers/william-optics-binoviewer.html or this https://www.firstlightoptics.com/binoviewers/ovl-binoviewer-with-2x-barlow.html Your thoughts? Tony

I had a go yesterday, but it was indeed a bit cloudy (and windy.) This is 3 x 20 seconds @ 20:20 (I think the focus was good, but the clouds weren't!)