alacant

Hi Nice image. I'm with @MarkAR regarding the dither. Lights, bias and flat frames but without darks. Stack with a clipping algorithm and take as many frames as you can. HTH

Much better. Now it looks like a proper flat frame:)

Hi Hands on advice from someone who does astro-photography is gold dust in this game. I recommend getting in touch with an astro club near you. You'll be able to see -albeit via video link- all the suggestions which have been made here. If you do finally decide to go for whatever it may be, you know there's someone on hand to help should you get stuck. The importance of the latter when beginning astrophotography can't be emphasized enough. Save yourself the stress and frustration! If you do decide to go it alone, my recommendation would be to get the heq5 mount and start with what you already have; camera and lens. If you're short on glass, there are some great 135mm and 200mm vintage lenses which will cover your 5d fine but don't expect any telescope within your budget to cover full frame;) Cheers and HTH

Dim the panel and/or put more sheets of paper until you get at least one second. Do it in a dark room to ensure no extraneous light enters the camera.

Ah;)

Hi You can see that the optical train has changed between flat frames being taken. The first shows the shadow of the camera's flip mirror. The second, doesn't. You can also see evidence of too short a shutter speed -uneven lighting- on the bottom quarter of image 1. HTH

The light panel refreshes many times per second. Any capture shorter than the refresh rate and you'll get only part of the light; uneven. Remember that this is astrophotography. One can never know, predict or explain. Anything. It's magic! Cheers

Hi These seem to be .jpg files. Please send links to: - a single raw flat file that worked - a single raw flat file which didn't work One observation: you need to reduce the light from the LED panel so your exposures are at least 1s. Cheers

Hi Post -links to- an example flat frame which works and an example of the latest, which doesn't. Cheers

Hi The f2.5 isn't available within (the £50 ?) budget and IMHO, isn't going to buy you much more speed. Both will give chromatic aberration wide open anyway. Never used a Zeiss but I've a feeling they go for quite a bit more. The 3.5 reduced to f5.6 is probably the best trade off. Cheers

With their tiny apertures, they are all very slow. You need several hours to get anything reasonable. Takumar wise, just get one which looks decent perhaps. Cheers

Hi The Takumar 135 is excellent. Here's an example. HTH

Tremendous images. Many congratulations to the worthy winners:)

Hi everyone Here's an idea for a 70% moonlit night and to test your gradient removal skills at the same time. What looks a nice even field before moon-rise becomes a 50-50 mush of light and dark when on the workbench. This also served as a test of Ivo's new gradient module in the latest StarTools beta. One click and you're just about done. Amazing work. Optics wise, we now have the tsflat2 at 132mm for the ED72. It's still not there I don't think so still having to do those mm-at-a-time sessions. Lots of refreshment called for for those;) Thanks for looking and a quick repeat plea for anyone with hands on with said ff to come forward. 700d on 72ed @ ISO800

Thanks. Good to know. I'm not giving up just yet. The spacing seems to depend upon focal length and according to the -sparse- documentation, the spacing is 128mm for the 72ed. That however is obviously too short as stars in all four corners have tails. Then there's the awful SW focuser with which to contend, tilt, slip and slop... Ah well...

Hi See my comment here. We need someone who has stacked red only files in DSS to confirm that red only stacks produce rgb images. Cheers

Hi I think you perhaps need to do the flat frames again. As it stands ATM, you may have better luck without applying flat frames. Get the calibration frames and the single colour rgb stacks correct and you'll have a much easier time processing. Cheers

Hi How about a 1.25" Barlow with your 120mc instead? That would work out far cheaper. Our 130 had a 2 to 1.25 adapter in the box but even if you don't have one, they're cheap enough items. HTH.

Hi everyone Closing in on the ff spacing a mm at a time. The documentations gives 128mm. Here we are at 132mm and counting. Can't be far off now. The big challenge here was removing the moon gradient... I know it's a long shot, but is anyone else using the tsflat2 and willing to share their spacings? As a non-refractor guy, this ff stuff is quite daunting. Cheers and thanks for looking. 700d 72ed tsflat2

Caroline's Rose, ngc7789. Cassiopeia. HTH

Hi everyone. Didn't know there was another processing competition. I usually never get beyond the beginners' section of the forum. Maybe this is too late... Not much monochrome so... StarTools 1.7 using compose bi-colour with red = S+H. Stars tamed by the new tighten module; works wonders with the right mask. Colour and make-it-look-nice by DarkTable. Ubuntu 20.04. Clear skies and stay safe.

Absolutely wonderful. Congratulations y enhorabuena to the winners. Brilliant interpretations. Cheers and clear skies.

Ah, OK If the OP is using it simply as a finder telescope then adjustable rings are the way to go. I automatically assume everyone is imaging and so in this case it just had to for a guide telescope. Must pay more attention! Cheers

Hi I don't have the Altair telescope so cannot confirm for certain, but the 90mm sw rings with the finder telescope bolted to a rail along the top of the main telescope rings would avoid most if not all the usual flexure associated with 120º rifle type rings. HTH

It's probably not important and I don't use dss so I don't know what it does but when I open your .tif stacks in Siril, I expect to get 4 separate monochrome images. In fact I get RGB data from each. If I stack red frames in Siril, I get a monochrome image containing only red data. Maybe dss doesn't do that... But the main issue I think is to get the calibration frames in order. Do that and you'll find it a lot easier to process. Cheers