Filroden

So Soul only?

NAN and Pelican, Elephant Trunk, Heart & Soul, Iris, etc are all pivoting around for the 12:00 to 2:00 slot when it is darkest. All within range of 30s shots over a couple of hours.

By which time, for me, I have zero astronomical darkness! I've only got 90 minutes a night now. Not that I'd know because of clouds.

I'll bet M81/82 were close to the zenith? I'd guess alt az mounts will struggle close to the vertical. Nonetheless, it's nice to see the result. I found 60s exposures were more than enough. You just need to stack a few hundred to get really good quality images. Id take a look at your colour balance as the images look a little yellow/orange. Maybe check your red histogram. I'd expect all three to be reasonably close together for that area of sky.

Whilst it's great for solving imaging, it doesn't give you any control over the annotation (at least that I've found). PixInsight allows you to choose what to annotate (stars, constellations, galaxies, etc) and to fine tune it (magnitude limits, colour, font size, etc). It therefore is better for annotating the less well known galaxies. astrometry.net PixInisght (showing galaxies only though I suspect it may have solved some noise!)

I think you've missed a few or a few dozen! I can see many more after just a quick glance. If you are still trialling PixInsight then it's got a couple of good scripts to solve and annotate images. That should nail all of them!

As I have StarSense I no longer use the finder. However, I remember it took me a while to align the finder with the three screws. It's best to do it in daylight on as distant an object as you can find (being careful not to point in the direction of the sun). You can use corners of roofs, aerials, etc. My Celestron scope came with a starpointer - basically just an illuminated cross hair with no magnification - which I never liked. My Skywatcher came with a much better finderscope that had two sets of rings with three screws on each, so you could adjust it at both ends. I don't know what your finderscope looks like but it should be held in two places with at least one of them being adjustable. 1. Put in a low powered eyepiece and focus on a distant object using the main scope. Swap in a higher powered eyepiece (smaller in diameter) and fine tune your object. 2. Without moving the main scope, adjust the three screws to centre that same object in the finderscope. 3. Check the main scope is still centred on the object. If not, repeat the three steps.

The StarSense makes alignment so easy but I never got on with wireless control. My Evolution uses wifi but the combination of drop offs and the lack of tactile feedback on the screen pushed me back to the handset and, now, the laptop connected to the laptop. I also tried a mini PC via TeamSpeak but I don't think it's wifi antenna was good enough. I think you were just unlucky with the maintenance so don't give up!

That's the one. I found it did work well at both reducing the star and enhancing its colour. I didn't know about the script so I'll give it a try tonight. Thank you!

If you use Photoshop then Noel's Actions can enhance star colours by drawing in the outer colour into the saturated core. In PixInsight there is a way to achieve the same result using MorphologicalTransformation but having found it once, I've never been able to find it again!

Beautiful image. And it must be so nice not having to deal with hundreds and hundreds of subs to achieve that overall exposure

I think I've had four or five clear nights this year. I've had almost clear nights but the high haze ruined any ability to image. Still, every night is still special Hope you get some soon. With the extra hour, the Milky Way through Cygnus starts to rise to a reasonable altitude from about 2am, giving three hours of potential nebula hunting.

I find that almost impossible to remove post process so I don't include any subs with cloud. I wonder is StarTools treats cloud gradients like artefacts and has a wobbly too? High cloud is my bane. It pretty much prevents me imaging. Frustrating, as I the camera pierces them. I just can't remove them from the stacked result.

If it's not in the flats then it may be dew. Is it in every sub or just some? It doesn't look like amp glow which show stretch from a side or corner rather than curve unless you had both glow and dew! It's a shame as it's the only think spoiling the galaxy which is showing some nice red areas in the arms.

Well, if you post your equipment list in your next post then that's 9 and you can copy and paste it into your signature.

I don't know how well it would guide. It has a very long focal length and the mount is ok but not great... I will probably have to give it a go but there are still enough targets for me test the new combination of kit for at least a while. Along with the Flaming Star, I think I can also get the Soul and California at the moment, though both are nearing a street light so probably only good for Ha. I may have a go at the Leo triplets and the M95, 96 and 105 group.

Yeah. I think if I were to try galaxies it would have to be M101 and M51 at the moment because of their size otherwise I'd need to break out the SCT. The good news is I took a look out of the window at 2am last night and Deneb was already on the rise in the Eastern sky, enough to begin imaging again. Give it a couple of months and the Iris, Elephant Trunk, Veil, NAN, Pelican, etc will all be back around

As you say, you're really pushing your scope to the limits on these small objected. With the small pixel size of the camera you're asking a lot! Nonetheless, that's the sort of swirl I like to see on my coffee Apply a lot of noise reduction and it would look like how I like my Guinness too! I assume this is a tight crop? Have you thought of doing wider shots in Leo and Virgo?

Your new crop shows the Owl and M108 much better than the original crop. The comet is quite extended! Good capture. Is this a new Olympic sport you've invented? The astronomers' version of Quidditch maybe.

Here's the sky at 10:00. Looks like it's just above where you've cropped

I'd agree. You've definitely got the Owl and M108 in frame.