AbsolutelyN

Same here. What's so frustrating here is we keep getting clear skies during the day and as soon as the sun goes down the clouds roll in immediately.

Lovely image, saw this last night out of window but we had guests and could not get out to capture.

Embarrassingly Unfortunately in the UK, we were skiing at Pila over the Christmas week. It's a very inspiring location surrounded by such huge mountains, you are very lucky to live in such a wonderful place. Hope to visit again soon.

Cheers, the trees certainly do help. Coma is pretty awful in high res file and regret not taking my. Sigma 14-24 2.8 which would have fared much better. Morphological transformation has also been used to try to improve centre of frame stars. It was also actually a 15 second exposure rather than 30 sec. Second version posted above with a 30 sec exposure blended which just reveals the California Nebula.

The Pleiades from Aosta Valley on Christmas Day. Sony A7r3 with Canon 20-35 (hence bad coma) - 15 sec at 2.8 3200iso https://www.astrobin.com/bkc01k/?nc=user Blended with a 30 second exposure

The full moon casts long shadows from trees lining the river Crimple. Mist cloaks the landscape with broken low clouds allowing the light from winter stars of Orion to break through. Sony Ar73 with Sigma 14-24mm 2.8 @ f/8 Higher res on astrobin: https://www.astrobin.com/n89e4o/?nc=user

Just had the problem of an immovable male to male T2 cemented to EF-W. Nails would not budge it at all. Finally managed to get it free with the nails/wood with the help of a tiny amount of wd-40 applied with sheet of paper to seep under adapter and give a bit of lubrication. Only use as last resort as you don't want wd-40 anywhere near the filters!

That's stunning, very nice.

Thanks - and yes I completely agree if stars are there then generally leave them. I think leeway to alter or 'enhance' images in astrophotography is an interesting topic though as often what you are photographing is not visible to human eye or even visible in visible bandwidths so the image becomes an interpretation of what is there. You can use a specific filter to isolate a specific wavelength. Starless is kind of just digitally blocking the stars to isolate other parts of the image. False colour for example is often pushed to the extreme and personally I find this can at times bothers me more than a starless image in terms of image tinkering. There are as many opinions as possibilities and everyone will have their own personal preferences. In this one all I was trying to highlight are structures you can't see as easily in an aesthetically pleasing way.

Brilliant, love the subtle colours too

Thank you. Mosaic was created in PixInsight. From what you say I think we use starnet in a similar way, I use it more for images with stars than starless images - I'll have a go at the mask tip thanks.

This is a single frame from the mosaic, about 20% overlap at a guess

I didn't know he had any images in Huddersfield, will have to pop in and have a look, thanks for that. The Great Day of His Wrath and Destruction of Pompeii are the ones that inspired me since first seeing them in books.

Thanks! It reminds me personally of the epic paintings of English Romantic Painter John Martin

Thanks Gina, it's processed in PixInsight with Starnet

Thanks, first attempt at a mosaic which was easier than expected and first image I'm captured that I possibly prefer as a starless (especially as it was captured between showers).

The Horse Head Nebula just under the left hand star of the belt of Orion (the brightest star in this image - it's rotated 90 degrees i.e. north is left). It's 1400 light years away. This is two frames stitched together for wider field of view with Esprit 80, 5.5 hour exposure in total (both exposures combined in bortle 5). ZWO 1600MM with ZWO HA filter, 300 sec exposures at gain 200 offset 50. Two frames from Esprit 80 combined. The stars digitally removed with starnet so that you can better see the structure of the nebula. High res: https://www.astrobin.com/full/6ra6mx/0/?nc=user Original image: https://www.astrobin.com/ou5x3g/?nc=user

Looks great ... any chance of info where you got it? Thanks

I sometimes use one of these on top of my Esprit 100 rings to mount a camera or Esprit 80. I'd suggest asking FLO which dovetail / plate would work best for what you need.

I've had my AZ-EQ6 outside for a full year now so thought I'd put an update here for anyone else thinking of keeping mount outside permanently. Disaster struck early on and I had to buy a new motherboard for the mount, I suspect water had got through the cheap £35 telescope cover I was using. I still use the same cover and I can see a couple of tiny pin holes in it which probably caused the problem. Eventually I'll get a better cover but in the mean time I simply use two large heavy duty rubble bags over the mount to add extra waterproof layer and then the bigger scope cover, all held in place with hooked bungy cords. On top of this I also have two dew strips which I wrap around the mount to keep a small amount of heat inside. It's been like this for almost a year and not had any problems at all. The only real issue is the tripod feet seem to rust and jam as I guess they are much more exposed to water. Every now and then I give them a real good spray of wd-40 but open to suggestions. I'd be interested to know if anyone uses another heat source, especially after the recent thread of dew heaters catching fire....

This one has been really hard work due to atrocious weather recently. What's with the clear cold days but cloudy nights? Made over about 6 weeks, taking an hour at a time during any available clear periods. I'll never forget the first time I saw M42 through my home made rickety wooden 8" reflector on a freezing January night when I was about 15. Far more detail here but still not quite the same experience. Approx 18.2 hours from Bortle 5 skies. Hi res on Astrobin. https://www.astrobin.com/ph1nb5/0/

Interested to hear more on this for my Esprit 100. I suspect image quality may be pushed a bit with the 80 unless using with a small sensor as the 80 has smaller image circle.

I had same issue about a year ago. Started with a Tracer battery which is great but the one I had was not powerful enough to go all night once adding dew heaters etc. I found this thread invaluable:

I'm considering a 183mm for wide field with my existing EOS lenses and have come across the Geoptik adaptor which looks quite sturdy. I have the ZWO adapter and have tried it with a couple of lenses with little luck, there is always tilt or issues with star shapes. I was just wondering if anyone has this configuration and can suggest how to get the right spacing? It would be EF lens, adapter, EF-W Mini + ZWO 183MM Pro. Any suggestions much appreciated.

Thanks, it's just a sequence of stills with 20 seconds exposure per frame with I think a 15 sec delay between frames. It ran from about 10pm until the battery died at almost 5am. All the jpegs then combined into a movie.