alacant

Hi The GSO is less expensive and gives you 75mm to play with.

Hi Yes. You don't have enough distance. The gpu requires 55mm, so you have only 10mm for the oag. 16mm will take you too far. Why not get one specifically designed for DSLRs? Apart from the economics, this one just works. HTH

Hi Ok, if you're going with the guide scope, maybe best to fit stronger primary mirror springs and set the mirror in its cell with silicone sealant [1]. As long a dovetail rail as you can and with the top of the rings tied with either a second rail or rigid box section aluminium. HTH [1] a blob at each point of contact then allowing the mirror to settle under its own mass whilst the silicone cures.

Hi Leave it out permanently? Is a cover/shed/roof protection viable for your climate? Optics wise, I only do photography but FWIW, the 8se was among the worse I've ever tried. Our renovated blue tube 250p, one of the best. Cheers.

Ah, that's more like it. You had me there for a moment! Yes. Very good.

Hi Yes. You've been amazingly lucky. I've never seen a sw out of the box anywhere near!

Hi My experience with sw is largely unprintable. I have the Bresser Messier nt150s and the 208 f3.9. Both worlds apart when compared to the sw; build quality, aluminium alloy tube, proper 2 1/2" focuser and clean tight stars. Both cover aps-c with the minimum of drop-off. HTH **edit: My nt150s came with a dual speed focuser. Maybe ask at the time of ordering?

Hi By darkening the sky, you're losing a lot of the information you recorded. Even with your uploaded .png, you can see more stars with just a little change to exposure. Starting with your .fits or .tif original, at 1000mm focal length, it should be spectacular; you'll see a lot more stars on the edge of the cluster. Cheers and HTH

.cr2 -> .jpg HTH

Hi JTOL. What @MarkAR says and... Is the telescope OK visually? Is it collimated? Do you have a long lens you could test against? How do you take the shot? Maybe try without touching the camera. At long focal lengths, even at 1/250s, there will be two images recorded. An image -corresponding to a shutter release- and a second when the camera has settled. The atmosphere also has to be still. For the moon, probably better to take a video and stack the best frames. HTH

Hi Excellent shot and thanks for helping to prove the don't-even-think-about-it-big-telescope-on-an-eq5 myth wrong! One thought: I think there are a lot more more stars waiting to be revealed in the background. They're still there I'm sure, but the dark sky is masking them. Worth a try with a paler sky maybe? Cheers

Hi Only have experience of 2 DSLRs. 450d: master dark frame applied to each light frame with a proper dark optimisation algorithm is the only way to eliminate banding. Dark flat frame: no difference. 700d: dark frames of any type introduce more noise. Bias and dither essential for both cameras. Flat frames help with vignetting in both cases but if you have a clean sensor, try without and correct in software. HTH

Well done. On an i7 with SSD -or even an old spinning disk- it'll be instantaneous. Blink and you'll miss it;)

Hi No. The Stellarmate is a rpi. It's still a slow 32 bit single board computer, but with professional support. Exactly. But hey, when you have mastered the os, you have a bulletproof system which just works. You are in control rather than the computer. Cheers

Hi Yes, of course. Details here. If you're not used to impenetrable Linux jargon, easier if you get your local Linux expert to do it for you. It'll cost a cool beer or two, but you'll be up and running with the minimum of fuss. If you learn enough vocabulary, you may even become brave enough to post on the indi/kstars forum To give yourself a chance, use as powerful a machine as possible. You need to be able to take the hardware for granted. Once you've mastered that, you'll be in a much better place to tweak an on-the-limit-of-what-it-can-do rpi. As an alternative and If you don't mind paying for it, you can buy an astro ready to go rpi. Cheers

Yeah. I found out the hard way too. The only way I could get 100% up-time was to throw decent resources at it. A Dell laptop with a 64 bit i3, 16GB RAM and a fast ssd under Ubuntu will go all night every night without a gltch. After all, I don't think windows would be reliable on a rpi either but if you like an IT chellenge and are a Linux guru, single boards are great. Cheers

+1. For hit-start-and-come-back-in-the-morning automation, nothing I've tried comes close:) Cheers

Hi From where are you imaging? E. g. at Alicante today, we have darkness from 23:15 to 04:48. If you're north of here, you will have less darkness. If you want the schedule to run to completion, you must then uncheck twilight. HTH

Hi fitsviewer is part of kstars so you have to have both open. I think what you want is to open kstars the use file -> open fits. That will bring the fitsviewer -if as @MarkAR suggests, in an independent window-. To avoid opening a second instance of kstars, open your next fits using File -> open from the fitsviewer menu. HTH

I agree. I think with really faint reflection stuff like this, the only way is to sit it out night after night. With all the other nice stuff around at this time of year, I just can't convince myself to do it!

Thanks. Works well. I came up with this. Probably too much now. I think this with another hour or so tonight will help.

Hi everyone No laughing please. There's supposed to be blue-white nebulosity here, but despite over 2 hours, almost nothing. Any processing tips for this stuff? Cheers and TIA for your time. 700d @ ISO800

Hi Well done on the guiding:) Dithering: PHD2 log? APT settings? Otherwise there are too many variables and we'd be guessing. Cheers.

Good choice. You'll need to cut a length from the end of the focus tube if you want round stars. But try it first. It could be you'll not notice;) HTH

Hi It depends which cc you choose and if you want round stars. The SW 0.9, Baader and gpu will need the tube chopped. The ES and the GSO won't. HTH