MarsG76

Very interesting... but playing with planetary positions to given dates, only the 2014 Solar maximum coincides to the theory.. and even than it's January 2014 not April 2014, when the Solar Max was at peak.... the previous Solar Max dates are way off from a Venus, Earth and Jupiter alignment... Site I used for the position simulation is https://theskylive.com/3dsolarsystem?obj=&h=11&m=15&date=2014-01-11

This is a easy question to answer... Most definitely the Televue 17mm Ethos....

Make sure that you have a dark sky, night adapted eyes and a low power eyepiece.. I looked at it at 50X magnification.. it's bigger than one might realise.

I'll tell you that these first DSO images [word removed] all over my first DSO images....

Nice prominances Charl... you captured some nice looking structure.

Very nice.. I remember seeing it in the eyepiece about a year ago.

Cool riddle.. I'm going to use it at work tomorrow.

Great progress...

I Agree that the second one looks more natural and is better overall, but I also think that the blacks are clipped so a mixture of the first one with the second one will be perfect, say 35% of the first and 65% of the second image.

Judging by the website, it'll work with ASCOM/INDI compatible cameras and ZWO is listed as one of the brands. @Yoddha?

Very very nice... that's more prominence activity than I've seen in a while.

I agree and modding the 40D is quite easy.

Touch blue perhaps, but awesome...

Great looking photo...

Great object to target...

50.7 hours!! wow.. to think that the biggest risk in such a lot exposure project is getting enough cloud free and moonless nights to finish.

Very nice... I'm expecting some nice astro image posts in your near future.

Congrats on the scope... I was going to suggest a 8" SCT... basically from experience I find that the 8" is a great general purpose scope... its small enough and powerful enough to keep owners happy for a long time if not for ever.

As the saying goes, there's more than one way to skin a cat.

Very true... I use either masking and range selection if I have the RGB stars data... or create a grey luma map and use the original narrowband image blured 5 pixes as color data.. usually fixes stars that have a purple halo that are normally present or a side effect in narrowband imaging.

Providing that Starwiz uses photoshop.

Message @Yoddha, he's the best man to answer the question, being the author of APT... I think that when using a guide scope, the software used for guiding should auto lock onto a guide star after the meridian flip, but when using a OAG, no such luxury unless using a low focal length and more guide stars show up in the FOV... I never had that luck at 2032mm FL.

Hope you have fun and bag all of the listed objects...

Looks like the Astro Tech and the Televue have the edge... The TV Nagler looking the best to me... that's why they cost a Kidney, an arm and a leg...

+1 good idea... clear every setting on the mount and start again.