JSeaman

Yeah don't get me wrong it's right at the limit but with a RoR obervsatory I have a keep rate of about 80-90% so not too bad, I lose more to satellites than wind Agree completely on the comment about good copies, I hope you find a good solution!

I'm using an NEQ6 Pro with a 300PDS on and can do 10 minute sub so guess you have some other issues That said I'm at the limits of the mount and I have been torn between EQ8 and CEM 120. I had settled on the 120 then found a bunch of people with ioptron issues. That said, it's easy enough to find a bunch of people that have issues with any astro equipment as it's a complicated set up at the best of times. Keep us posted on which way you go!

I would say buy it and you won't regret it

Not sure if you know how the moon works?!

Ed, I use the 300 PDS with a filter wheel and no problems. I was in your position a few years ago and chose OSC (QHY8L at the time) and within a year I went for a mono set up and never looked back. It is night and day better than colour imaging and your first go at Ha will confirm this I'm absolutely sure! James

This is the best 5% of 100x1mS exposure, so effectively a 5mS exposure at -10 degrees with an ZWO ASI 1600 Pro. Overlayed with a duplicate layer of a wavelet image used in "Screen" blending to pull out some highlights

No problem, the issues are the usual in terms of any wind making things wobble and balancing such a big beast which is offset to fit in an observatory and has an ED80 hanging off it. My mount has DEC backlash issues which poses a challenge sometimes. The clutches can't lock this level of weight beyond normal operation i.e. if you bump the scope it will move. I get sub arc-second guiding most nights though on my fixed pier. Note that I have a RoR observatory now rather than a dome so wind is still very much a factor despite being surrounded on 4 sides.

I'm running a 300PDS 12" Newtonian on an NEQ6 Pro, I wouldn't say without issue but it works

I have only had a play with the JPG quickly so you can definitely do more but this is with a bit of sharpening, a despeckle, convert to B&W to remove colour artefacts, shadows/highlights to bring out a bit more of the shadow, crop to suit Stacking a bunch of short images can help even with the moon, assuming you are using a tripod then it shouldn't be vibration at those shutter speeds. Personally I would be keeping the ISO at 100 or 200 for noise control, you should be able to go up as high as f/11 with that normally. The viewfinder image is smaller which always looks better, you can hopefully see that in the below:

I think I'm happier with this edit at the mo:

Well now I need to gather more data

I thought I would have a try at a cluster tonight seeing as the moon is out and I only have a few hours. This is M3, only 15 minutes of RGB and L using 30 second exposures, I am pretty happy considering the short length:

I can't say I had good experiences with QHY's products, 12 months is about right and that included the QHY8. I too am now on the ZWO ASI 1600 and can't recommend it enough

I went dark with this one, the process was: - DBE on each RGB layer - MLT noise reduction on RGB - Stretch RGB and L - Combinatoin and Levels/Curves - Starmask/light reduction (0.2) - Selective colour on L - Selective colour on RGB - Combine and brightness/contrast - Removed some green (curves then level offset) from the final image for a moody feel - Finally some selective light blurring to remove any speckles

Thanks very much, still going, effort 93 ...

I tried my best to get what I could out of this one, I took LRGB last night and Ha this evening. It's about 8 hours total exposure and mainly 5 minute with 2x2 binning. First time in a while I've stayed up all night changing filters because the moon is on its way, this is my 65th attempt at processing it!!

Thanks, was certainly more challenging than expected! I'm not sure more subs would have helped but do feel like better subs would have been easier to work with, one day I will have a Bortle <5 to play with!!

My first go at this target, I feel like dark skies would let me do more now but pretty happy with it nonetheless. 11 hrs of LRGB

I had the same dilemma as you with an ED80 on an NEQ6 Pro. I went for a ZWO ASI1600 (very highly recommended) and a 300PDS (very difficult but awesome if you can manage it) This will help you look at FOVs: https://www.skyatnightmagazine.com/astronomy-field-view-calculator/

I find it invaluable, and in fact, I don't think I could now image without it. Things I use are: - I have 2 park positions configured, one to put the scope away and one to point at my flat panel - Every night at the end of my session, EQMod's timer parks the scope for me - CDC and EQMod let you do everything you need in terms of finding targets - I can nudge the scope around while looking at an image on my PC (which is all remote from the observatory), variable slew rates in EQMod also help - I have actually hooked up a game controller and that is a bit of fun and quite useful - Limits can be set to prevent the mount smashing into things it shouldn't - I can force meridian flips early in EQMod when a target is just the wrong side of the meridian I suppose it is in our nature to push the set up that we use but I have tried a few and settled on EQMod and CDC as a really good pair

This is my second HaLRGB shot, M97 (the Owl Nebula), I find it really hard to make this look good 38xHa, 38xLum, 12xRed, 12xGreen, 12xBlue, all 300 seconds between 20th March and 6th April

I like processing attempt number 31 at the moment ...

Thanks - such a good target isn't it?!

Now with Ha ...

After moving from an OSC to narrowband, I missed galaxies so I have now added LRGB to my collection. This is about 7 hours of data: My current edit (#33):