AbsolutelyN

Stunning Göran, you pick up the most subtle colours in the IFN.

Another difficult to process galaxy. For some reason the luminance channel had the most bizarre gradients which took a lot of work to remove with DBE in PixInsight. Hopefully they have been mostly removed a the background is not too bad. 5.6 hours with 250-PDS and ZWO 1600MM https://www.astrobin.com/48w0xe/

It will only work on Canon AF lenses - they have a list of lenses its been tested with here: https://astromechanics.org/downloads/ascom_ef/en/manual/lens_test.pdf

Yes it controls focus and aperture. Focus control seems as good as my sesto senso to me, very fine adjustments possible. You can only set aperture when you connect in SGP so you've have to disconnect and change a setting and reconnect if you wanted to change aperture. The main issue was power but I don't think you'd have this problem as you have an observatory. I'm running it at the end of a 20m USB cable and there is no power left in the USB cable to power the adapter which draws power from USB. I've fixed it by installing a powered USB hub. Another issue was it being inconsistent at connecting. Again this could be because of my setup as it always works fine from a short cable direct into laptop. Finally if you add too many spacers it seems to hit a hard infinity despite still being able to manually get the image in focus. Overall brilliant bit of kit though and much more compact than a belt driven solution - https://www.firstlightoptics.com/adapters/astromechanics-ascom-aps-c-m42-to-canon-lens-controller-mark-ii.html

At 400mm I needed 15 hours (from bortle 5) to get good detail in the IFN and that's at f/2 so I find fast lenses and scopes are the only real way to access it with UK weather.

It looks very good to me and the colours are spot on. Have you cropped this? I assumed the 2600 would have a wider field of view. Will have to try the 2600MC on the 250PDS. I'm still processing my M63 as some really strange gradient driving me crazy which is only on the L channel.

Fantastic detail in the IFN, nicely done.

Thanks, it was difficult to both capture and process, it has very bright areas and also very faint areas making it a tough target despite its size.

This is a corner from full frame 6d

I was a little disappointed at first as unrealistically expected perfection given only using aps-c and not full frame but having worked on the spacing to get it like this I'm finding it perfectly ok and very usable.

This is about as good as I've managed so far. Bit better stacked as you say.

F/1.4 as I can barely tell the difference between f/1.4 and f/2 ... and seems pointless to got to f/2.8 as you could get a cheaper lens 🙂

It's a fantastic lens, though from reviews I hoped for better coma

I'm using the Astromechanics EOS adapter. I've had issues connecting and controlling to the thing but when you get it working it's superb. This image for example was refocussed once every 2 hours automatically in SGP. It's just like using any scope autofocusser in SGP and you can even set the aperture when you connect to it. Without the adaptor you can change aperture on a Sigma lens by attaching it to a canon body, setting aperture, press depth of field preview and remove the lens whilst its pressed.

Thanks Alan. I really like narrower field of view here but they need much more exposure so harder to do. I also find it's not very easy to plate solve and guide in this area. The area is utterly fascinating though, just the starless version shows some quite amazing structures to explore.

Stars are sharp but I think you just need much more data/exposure time. Make sure you dither between every 2nd or 3rd exposure to help reduce noise. Then add appropriate bias, darks and flats if you can. If you've had success without the LPro then remove it - its just an extra piece of glass that will further limit light getting to your sensor. Good luck. ps. I'd also double check you are getting the exposure time you think you are as it doesn't look like 30 mins of data from a 250mm newtonian. With my DSLR I regularly think I'm taking 1min exposures only to find they are 1 second - easily done in the dark (by me anyway).

This is second attempt at Polaris with Sigma 105 1.4 and 2600mc on a star adventurer. This time I went with 2min exposures and managed a longer integration time, almost 7 hours. Setup in action here -

This is my 250-PDS in tracking last night - with star adventurer behind it. Watch for the drop in sky brightness at 39 seconds ... caused by streetlights turning off at 1:15am.

Thanks - it's just unity gain and 1 min exposures.

Stunning Adrian. The details in the galaxies are fantastic.

Sure - I just used three very small pieces of velcro to attach it to the mirror clips. It's centred as best I could manage. Makes a big difference as I had flare radiating out of bright stars. There is still a bit but its nothing in comparison. Flare from your 250 didn't look anywhere near as bad from the image you posted last night so not sure but probably worth a try as might tidy them up a bit. Have you flocked the inside of the tube? The top half of mine is flocked, might help with that strange bit of flare perhaps?

Thanks Adam - an aperture mask also helps 🙂

I found this one tricky in both capture and processing and didn't get as much data as I hoped but hopefully its come out ok. Hope I've not gone over board with noise reduction. 250-PDS, ZWO 1600MM - 4.7 hours. https://www.astrobin.com/0ierjp/?nc=user

Stunning Craig, the first one in particular looks like it was take from orbit!

Fantastic image Adam