Shibby

I'm a bit surprised that the Altair guide scope only suggests guiding 500mm focal length. FWIW, my guide-scope is a mere 162mm in focal length and I have no trouble guiding my 1000mm FL scope at 1.14 asec/pix. The guide camera does have pretty small pixels at 3.75µm. This gives a 4.77 asec/pix and a healthy enough ratio of 1:4.2 (You'll often here 1:5 quoted as a maximum).

Just thought I'd add that you can also use a custom white balance to correct the colour. I have a 50% grey card that I take with me everywhere for this purpose! (It's a cheaper option than the filter)

Looking great - keep up the good work!

Awesome. Isn't night sky is supposed to be dark!?

I really like this - it's nice to see a glob in context like this. It makes them seem even more remarkable, if that's possible! Awesome star colour, too.

Very nice. Great effort with all that data captured! I don't think I've ever heard of or seen this pair, but they must be extremely faint. As you say, the background does need some work - could you just drop it back a bit in the meantime?

Great job, that's better I always have the same problem when using any sort of star layer, which is maybe why I noticed!

Maybe it's just me, but I prefer the first image! In the second, you've lost the reflection nebulosity and the stars aren't as fine.

??️ Awesome! Fantastic image of a great nebula. I hope you'll forgive a bit of nit-picking, but there's a few dark halos remaining around the stars in front of the nebula. The image is otherwise perfect!

Well, it's one of the regions where stars are "created" so perhaps we can forgive

Yeah I think I'd agree with John. If you can't save up or look second-hand, then the Orion and Seben are probably better for lunar/planetary observing as they have higher out-the-box magnification options. The Celestron would be better for wide-field deep-sky objects such as Andromeda, however I would recommend the Skywatcher version over the Celestron, as this doesn't have a finderscope.

Hi, Well, all three of those have the same aperture, so in terms of bang for buck I suppose the first one is best. However, I'd find it difficult to recommend any of them. It may be better to save up a bit longer and go for something like a Skywatcher 130P, which is a great starter scope for visual astronomy and will allow you to see a lot more than the 'scopes with 76mm aperture. The cheapest way to get hold of those optics is with the dobsonian: https://www.firstlightoptics.com/reflectors/skywatcher-heritage-130p-flextube.html Edit: Or, look second-hand. Most of my kit is second hand and I highly recommend the used market. I hope that helps,

That's really very impressive given the equipment used! Nice work

Very good job! I know exactly how faint it is, having tried once and just captured the wisp on the right hand side!

Well it certainly works well. Not sure how you blended the two and maintained the RGB style colour balance, did you blend in the luminance?

Very classy! I particularly like the bi-colour.

Quite an introduction! Superb image.

Definitely try clearing your calibration data in PHD after you've set up. Also, check you haven't accidentally reduced your mount's guide rate - it looks like the commands can't keep up with the alignment error or aren't getting through at all.

Great work Rob. Nice to see you getting an image out. Of course there would be a lot of stars to deal with in that region, with this enormous FOV!

Excellent rendition. Very nice, natural processing - love it.

What a spectacular nebula! Sounds like this star has a very short, but very glamorous, life

Nice capture, you should indeed be pleased! I think you just need more data - lots of subs with the CMOS should help reduce the noise and make the processing easier.

Brilliant image. I swear that level of sharp detail shouldn't even be possible with 80mm of aperture!

Very impressive! Such strong detail you've brought out. We wouldn't have a clue what any of these dark structures really looked like without modern cameras and techniques, would we?

Good job; nicely framed and you've clearly picked up plenty of detail. I think perhaps the background/stars are a bit over processed as they're an unusual colour. I always have respect for unguided images!