wimvb

I've never done much visual, went to astrophotography almost from the beginning, and have always had a goto scope. But on those occasions I did, and without goto, finding my target felt more rewarding, a pat on the back moment. You will probably also spend more time on each target than if you use goto. Automation is an invitation to target hopping. As far as light pollution is concerned, there are filters for visual use. The problem may be to get proper dark adaption if there are light sources near your observing location. If you have a baby to also take care of, you should probably consider a scope that can be carried or wheeled out and set up in a short time near your house, without having to travel to a darker site/park. This allows you to use it when you have time, even if that is only a short time. The best scope is the one that gets used.

Very nice indeed. I think that if you spend some time on getting the colours balanced, you'll be surprised how much more there is in the data. There are hints of blue star clouds and Ha regions in your image already.

Very nice image. The banding is typical for many dslr cameras, but especially Canon. That's why PI has CBR, Canon Banding Reduction. I think that if you use SCNR Green on the first image, this will lift the blue colours.

Very nice widefield that puts different objects into perspective. If only the weather would allow you to collect more data. Getting some colour in the dust would lift this image, I think. 👍🏽

For imaging, yes. For visual with a Newtonian, your back will thank you if you get an altaz mount and not a star tracker.

That's where chat rooms come in handy. My students let one person take a picture, who then shares it on a chat. Technological advancement in action.

That sums it up quite nicely in a one-liner.

About a week ago received a notification of a paper about "low surface brightness dwarf galaxies around nearby spirals". Since that notification got stuck in the spam filter, I didn't read it until now. And, of course I just had to compare to some of my images. https://www.academia.edu/27234546/New_Low_Surface_Brightness_Dwarf_Galaxies_Detected_Around_Nearby_Spirals?email_work_card=title around ngc 2683, I have its dwarf also in my image (marked ngc2683 dw1): https://www.astrobin.com/jd2hjn/C/?nc=user Around ngc 891, I found a dwarf just near the very edge of my image (indicated by the red markers). It's nice to be on the forefront of scientific development. 😉 I don't know how Academia.edu selects its papers for notification, because the reference is five years old. But I guess in astronomical terms, that's less than a sneeze. Ah well, not so forefront maybe. Of course, now I wonder what other major scientific breakthroughs are hidden in the depths of my hard drive. The moral of the story is, that even with modest equipment (is my equipment modest? I think it is; a SkyWatcher mount and telescope and a ZWO cmos camera are not exactly top notch super advanced scientific pieces of equipment.), it is possible to confirm relatively recent astronomical discoveries. And you don't need to haul your gear up a Chilean mountain top to capture scientific grade data. An 80% of the time fogged over Swedish lowland will do just fine. Of course, you may miss a conjunction or two or an occasional solar eclipse due to clouds. And you won't see that comet due to the absence of darkness during the summer months. But those are just transients. The important stuff is and will always be lurking behind the clouds.

No, but it will determine the optical resolution of the lens (so called Dawes limit), ie if two stars that are close to each other, can be separated in the view.

There is an Imaging Mode on that site. You can enter a custom telescope (= lens), where you specify focal length and aperture (FL / F-number). For a 70 mm lens at f/4, the focal length = 70 and aperture = 70/4 = 17.5 Here's the moon at 70 mm with a Canon camera

Anything hidden under that snow?

First, for viewing I would suggest a so called altaz mount (up-down left-right). This type of mount is easier to point and the eye piece is always in the same direction. This is especially important for a newtonian telescope. With a (faster) dobsonian you can also look at nebulas. Refracting telescopes (with lenses and not mirrors), you will get chromatic abberations, coloured fringes around stars and planets. with a 200 mm f/6 dobsonian you have about the same focal length but 4times as much light gathering as with a 100mm f/13. Depending on what you are interested in most, the scopes you suggested can also do a good job. Personally, for (planetary) viewing, I would prefer a reflector (dob, cassegrain, maksutov) over a refractor, unless that reflector is apochromatic or at least a good doublet. And that puts you in a different price range.

Hint your wife at this, then. https://www.firstlightoptics.com/books/making-every-photon-count-steve-richards.html In all fairness, you will have a hard time finding a "one size fits all" solution. Besides, with one scope, only one of you can do his/her thing. For you, I would recommend one of these https://www.firstlightoptics.com/star-tracker-astronomy-mounts.html For your wife probably a Maksutov on an altaz (up-down, left-right) mount https://www.firstlightoptics.com/maksutov.html With two scopes you can share the hobby and fascination.

How about a Dob? A bit above your budget, but with GoTo https://www.firstlightoptics.com/dobsonians/skywatcher-skyliner-200p-flextube-goto.html Abt 500 and larger without GoTo https://www.firstlightoptics.com/dobsonians/skywatcher-skyliner-250px-flextube-dobsonian.html

Check this http://astronomy.tools/calculators/field_of_view/ The moon has an angular size of about 0.5 degrees

Field rotation occurs any time you don't have perfect polar alignment. In the extreme case where you image with an altaz mount (which is always "polar aligned" to zenith), you have a large amount of field rotation. If your pa error is small, field rotation will be negligible. I think that even with a synscan all star polar alignment, which probably is less accurate than drift alignment, field rotation will not be a problem.

For observing, definitely. You don't need accurate pa for that. I don't know if they do, but a GoTo mount is able to compensate for the drift in declination due to poor pa. As for photography, guiding will compensate for polar misalignment as well as mount tracking errors.

Even after a 2-star GoTo alignment. The way I used it was as follows. Align the tripod and mount so that the RA axis roughly points towards the NCP. Do a 2-star alignment with a 25 mm eyepiece. The first star will be miles out. Redo the 2-star alignment with a (Barlowed) 17 mm eyepiece to get better alignment. The first star may still be out, but the second should be close. After this alignment, objects should be in the fov of a 25 mm eyepiece. Do the polar alignment on any star suggested by the HC. Redo the 2-star alignment after polar alignment. I always considered finding the correct alignment star to be the tricky part. Make sure your finder scope is aligned with the main scope.

The Synscan hand controller has a built in all star polar alignment function. It's in the setup section, together with 1-star, 2-star, and 3-star alignment. Just in case you don't have a computer connected to your mount. You do a 2-star GoTo alignment, and the HC calculates the polar misalignment. After that you use the polar alignment function. If you use a high magnification eyepiece, you can get good enough accuracy.

The image information, including camera orientation, is kept in the exif image header. Astronomy programs don't usually read this information. Instead they use the stars to orient the image. There shouldn't be any impact on the final stack.

It was clouds that spoiled your image. Here's a single sub Btw, do you have software to evaluate raw image files (NEF)? If not, I can recommend RawTherapee. It allows batch processing and examination of raw files. And here's a somewhat cleaned up stack Next time, if you center on the bright star between Andromeda and the lower left corner, you will also capture M33. In this shot, you just missed it.

I've read that ZWO have released a driver/firmware update that unlocks the 1x1 mode. Images will then be in 12 bit digital resolution, not 14 bit. Full well will also be lower.

If this is the unprocessed stacked image, there is either something seriously wrong with your stacking workflow, or your data capture. What do single subframes look like? If they look similar, you may have had dew on your telescope lens. If the subs look clean, it must be your workflow.

Ok, this makes more sense. I would say, with a cmos, always dither. With a classical ccd, dithering is still good practice, but not as critical. If you don't dither, and your guiding is spot on, then hot pixels will always be in the same position in your registered (aligned) subs, and the rejection algorithm in stacking, doesn't have any sigma to work with. For ccd, a bad pixel map will remove hot pixels. But as Vlaiv said, you can dither every second or third frame. Cmos cameras work best with many, short exposures, and dithering will cost a lot of imaging time. But dithering every 3 subs is doable.

This setup will work ok for larger nebulae, but not for galaxies. The Andromeda galaxy doesn’t fit the field of view, and most other galaxies will seem very small. Imo, you will outgrow this combination in a very short time. Use a field of view calculator to test the view on several targets. https://astronomy.tools/calculators/field_of_view/ I would also use a filter wheel rather than a filter drawer, because you won’t need to handle your filters during a session. Less chance of misshaps.