wornish

Had my first go at NGC4725 last night using my Esprit 100ED. and my ASI 1600MM

This is a basic RGB combination 10 x 180 sec images each channel.  Tempted to have a go using my reflector but not sure the mount is up to it?

Single hand held shot. Olympus OM-1.

I have a Celestron 925HD Edge bought from FLO  just over a year ago.

It's not getting any use and is in virtually "as new" condition.

I have struggled with the long focal length on my AZEQ6 mount as I need to set up every time.

It's a great scope but I now realise its beyond my capabilities

I have only used it for Lunar and a few Planetary images a handful of times. See my posts on here.

Its spends all its days inside in my study wrapped up.

It deserves a good home on a good mount!

Open to a sensible offer if you are interested.

Topaz DeNoise AI certainly helps.

I changed my setup to use an ethernet cable connection and it made a huge difference. WiFi even with dongles still had drop outs and caused all sorts of issues.

One thing you can do is set up an Ekos profile to use the simulators and then you can practice the plate solving and get to know Ekos in the warm in the daylight.  Make sure you load the GSC file first or their won't be any stars showing.

The internal platesoving StellarSolver2 that comes with the latest stable version 3.5.8 works much quicker than others. Need to make sure you have all the required library files installed or it won't work. 

This is my first attempt at using guiding for my HD925 to capture a deep sky target.  Previously I have  only used it for Planetary and Lunar imaging.

Moving to 2300mm from 550mm is one big learning curve for me.  

I have realised that manual focussing is a real challenge for reflectors I need to get the FWHM down considerably.  

The tracking was not bad but still could be improved.  Lots of other issues and I need more data of course.

Anyway, this image is probably not worth sharing but at least its mine.   

I have only used my HD925 on Planetary and Moon shots so far and so didn't need to bother with guiding.  I built my own little power distribution box to hold a RaspberryPi 4 and  run KStars/Ekos to do guiding and control the imaging Took my first images of the pinwheel galaxy last night.

Here is my setup in action taken with my iPhone.

Clear night last night so got the scope out for the first time in ages. Was a bit rusty, me not the scope.

This is a stack of 120sec exposures 5 x red, 5 x green, 5 x blue, 2 x Lum

This is a stack of three HHHR shots taken using my OM-1 with 300mm+MC14.

I use Astro Pixel Processor and it does a really good job.  It is very easy to use and handles mosaics as standard, way simpler that Pixinsight.

The latest version now has a star removal tool which works well.

It claims it can align images with comets, not tried that though.

Taken with  my EM1mkIII on Celestron scope.

Some great info in this video.

Very interesting early responses on here have to say. 

ZWO have certainly  "put the cat amongst the pidgeons" as the saying goes.  

I think we should wait and see what the real world tests show before writing it off.  

IMHO technology moves on last time I checked.

Its on their website now.

https://astronomy-imaging-camera.com/product/zwo-am5-harmonic-equatorial-mount

Look at the price!

Great to see you on here.  I have already commented on your latest YouTube video it is truly excellent.  For all those on here who are not familiar with what you can now do using affinity photo I really recommend you take a look.  Especially those who use Photoshop for their Astrophotography processing.

Single hand held shot.

I think olIypenrice hit the nail on the head "there is not much Red in M33".  I had a look at some of my images of M33 and there is very little Red.

Affinity Photo now has significant astro post processing tools built in. 

In PS

from top menu open Preferences Select File Handling click Camera Raw Preferences 

In the new window. make sure Tiff: is set to -  Automatically open all supported TIFFs

I don't use DSS but I can load all the tifs I have tried.

There are quite a lot of users of. the 135 and the 300 on the Cloudy Night forum.

Single hand held shot taken last night during break in clouds.

Olympus EM1-mk3, 300mm Pro +1.4TC

Just had a try using Registax 6 on your first image.  Your ADC Is certainly not helping.  

If you open the RGB Align tool and click estimate it will show you how far off you are.

Need to adjust each of setting manually before using any wavelet settings.

and click Auto Balance in the RGB align Tool panel as well.

I then used these simple wavelet settings no need to use more than the first two layers according to the guy who wrote Registax 6

It gave a much clearer image but still not perfect.

A few tweaks in PS will help.

If you have an electronic rotator Ekos will allow you to adjust the rotation.  If you don't then the only way is to physically rotate the camera in its mount or the whole scope by hand. Failing that you can rotate the image in post processing.

APP is excellent for most stages of image creation. I always finish off my images with a few tweaks in PS anyway. 

Releases of new updates seems to have slowed to a halt though. Last 1.083 Beta 3 release was back on 31st May 2021 with a promise of a stable release soon?

I paid about £40 for a 50 Meter Ethernet cable and run that to my RPi on the Mount in the garden when I set it up.  Using VNC now just works! No pauses no drop outs. Wish I had done it long ago.  Trying to get a reliable WiFi connection just caused more frustration.