alacant

Hi Be up and running with the minimum of fuss, stress and mystery by watching someone who knows what they're doing during a few AP sessions. You also get to see the stuff you need first hand. One piece of (from a non-expert) advice? An astro club. Cheers and HTH

Hi Lose the drawer and use a 1.25" filter in the throat of the camera. I think they supply the adapter with the camera. HTH

Hi Lovely story and nice image. You're starting to get the faint tail too I think. Another session should do it. I had a go at the stars and the colour, but I'm far from sure... Cheers

Hi I think you missed focus, so the stars look larger than need be. HTH

Hi everyone First weekend after restrictions were lifted so long overdue non-zoom catch up consisting mainly of drinking, complaining about the high haze and trying to keep 20x80 binoculars steady which someone had acquired during restrictions. Everyone still has to be home/hotel by midnight however which gave me a bit of peace and quiet and time to find a camera. Darkness at Alicante ends at 05:00 so not much time and the distraction called Scorpio had already risen. I thought about rho-oph but with only a big reflector set up, decided upon this instead. Nowhere near as spectacular as its feline counterpart. The face on spiral is ngc5985 Thanks for looking and as always, dslr users, do post if you've had a go at it. 700d on gso203 ISO800

Hi and thanks for your comment. Around 30 frames.

Hi Nice shots. Well done. A big +1 for EKOS. We have a lot of visitors who bring their own equipment and it just has to work. No fiddling around trying to get different apps talking to each other. There are some nice lenses to be had economically in the 50mm to 300mm range. Here's our side by side arrangement with a 135. Cheers

Hi That one will work but it will push your camera focus position way out from the tube creating a moment which will stress the focuser and be difficult to balance. For the PDS we'd recommend the 4 element GPU cc. If you can't afford that, the 2 element sw 0.9 cc would be our second choice. Both will give sensible focus positions with PDSs. HTH

+1. EKOS all the way. Cheers

Hi everyone Perhaps not anyone's favourite dso, this one is to be found in a particularly barren area of Draco, Featureless and bulge-less, even StarTools' excellent deconvolution module struggled to get anything meaningful out of this one. Guiding. This close to the pole it helps to lower DEC pulses to almost nothing. No theoretical justification. just hands on trial and -plenty of- error. Thanks for looking and as always, DSLR users, please post if you've had a go. 700d on gso203 @ ISO800

A big congratulations to the winners. Wonderful processes. A shout out to everyone else who posted too. It helps us enormously to see the different methods and techniques. Cheers:)

Hi +1 as @Clarkey and @MarsG76 We tried the built in eqascom vs-pec on a windows system but to no avail. The best way to deal with PE we found was to tear the mount apart with careful cleaning, re-greasing and adjusting. Even better after replacing the bearings, even on new mounts. When the mount is as perfect mechanically as you can get it, then it's worth guiding RA via PPEC. Our sweet spot was with a fixed period of 122s; one of the harmonics on the motor gear, but try initially with the full worm rotation at 480s. Maybe out-of-the-box mounts would benefit too? Perhaps less so than a clean example. HTH

StarTools (correctly) processes colour and luminance separately. You'll see only black and white images until you either preview in wipe or combine with colour using the colour module. I'm assuming your 224 is colour. The asiair version seems to be lacking proper calibration so maybe just forget that one for now. It's known as 'The Dark Art'! You have to 'feel' the data. You can only guage it by practise; no two astro images are the same. The more more you process the... Anyway, well done. To go deeper, perhaps have a look next at the HDR and Deconvolution modules. Be sure to read the StarTools data preparation guidelines. Cheers

Hands on tells us that even if you invest in a new SkyWatcher EQ-anything, if you want it to track and guide predictably, you're gonna have to pull it apart, clean, re-grease and adjust. At the very least. You'll see why when you're inside. There's only a certain amount software can correct. Of course, you may get lucky out of the box, but still... If you want to go the whole hog, high quality replacement bearings are all standard issue sizing and readily available. If you don't want to do it yourself the mechanic guy at your local club will do it for you. HTH and clear skies:)

Hi This screwed into this. HTH

If you like, record your screen during the session and link here. It will probably be easy to see what's wrong. Usually something simple. Which is here. Here are the first few steps (video deleted) and yes, even after all that, the data is still held linearly. You can go back and completely redo it if you don't like it. Anywhere along the workflow:) Cheers

Just work through the modules in order. Autodev Crop Bin Wipe Autodev Deconvolution Colour Then season to taste. HTH

Oh dear. We prefer StarTools' database approach. It really is a breath of fresh air after all these years of levels, curves and having to work with non linear images. Of course, if you're getting better results with Affinity, stick with it. In the end it's probably down to what you're familiar with anyway. Cheers

Nooo... We allowed our trial to expire;) StarTools. I'm sure conventional methods would get you there too, but could take quite a bit longer. HTH

Hi Now we're allowed, where we are at least, perhaps the best path to take is to go along to an astro club and see for yourself. Hands on with a demonstration under the stars for the price of a round of drinks is hard to beat. Between them, they will have all the stuff you're considering. Try before you buy:) Cheers and HTH

Hi and well done for sticking at it. There is a difference: One makes processing far easier;) You have the 200p, so if you have a mount to support it, I'd try that too. The field of view will be similar to our shot for which we also used a dslr. But for either, flat frames aren't really optional. So... - flat frames - bias frames - dither between light frames - stack using a clipping algorithm That's for your dslr. We've never used a 224, but I'm guessing you're gonna need dark frames too. Oh, and clean the optical train! There is some nice detail. HTH.

For just one hour, that's amazing. 101 is big and diffuse. You've got good detail there.

Hi Assuming the core is over exposed completely in your original stack and you've gone instead for the 10s and 180s approach. Please note that very few targets need this method and your M5 stack may well be a candidate, but anyway... No. Stack them separately. Place the separate r_pp_stacked files in a separate folder, set that as working directory and hit register. The resultant r_ prefixed files are now your two separate layers. Stretch them (in Siril if you like) then layer mask them in gimp. Or get a copy of StarTools and just enjoy the view:) Cheers

Hi Oh, don't remind us! Among our recent targets were m109 and M5, both having bright stars to fight. You have done far better than I. Lovely shot.

Yeah. it's the first thing I thought about doing. Far less work! In this case though, I think context is important. Maybe small objects in general? Cheers