Yamez

oh yeah my bad, i misread the post. I need to catch up on some sleep 

Fantastic image, may i ask how you managed 5 minutes in an alt-az?

Unexpected to be clear, forecast said clouds all night. Well it's wrong again and it is lovely outside just a little nippy.

looking good so far, can't wait to see the finished image!

That is an incredible difference, what LP filter did you use?

3 hours ago, SteveNickolls said:

Hi Yamez,

One 'technique' I use with my Synscan Alt-Az mount is to place a house brick in the eyepiece tray, it's 3kg mass helps to steady the mount, it might work for you. Another is to centre the alignment stars with an eyepiece with a cross hair. As others have said I think your limitation is having to use the barlow lens. You could try some wide view shots having your camera piggyback on the telescope as the mount tracks. You will need to align your finder/eyepiece/camera. I bet you will get longer and accurate tracking that way and some targets are better framed in wider fields.

Cheers,
Steve

I shall try putting a brick on the tray, how would i piggy back the camera on the telescope? Will i need special equipment?

Thanks everyone, I shall definitely spend more time leveling my mount, its always one thing that I never do only if I'm changing from grass to patio. On my 2 star align I always make sure the 2 stars i chose are spread out far apart. For example Vega and Capella.

at 20 seconds on my mount trailing starts to be introduced, is there anyway or any settings i can use on my goto mount to track the object better. FYI i have to use my x2 barlow with this setup otherwise i can't get into focus. The only way to fix this is to move the primary mirror closer to the secondary but i really don't want to be messing around with my scope as it is my first and haven't even had it a year yet. And i will for sure use a lower ISO.

ok i will do that for next time, the moon was a pain so the next time i'm out early in the morning there won't be a moon  

Hi

I was linked to this thread after posting my First M42 image taken with a Nikon D3300 attached to my Skywatcher 130P on an Alt-Az mount. I got 20x10seconds of subs and some darks and bias' before the clouds came rolling in. Stacked in DSS and processed in Photoshop.

ISO 3200 + a 50% moon... Anyway here it is.

It is noisy and am hoping to get some more subs to add to it. This is my first ever image of any nebula.

Wow I have added a lot of these websites to my bookmarks they  seem very helpful and will become extremely helpful to a beginner like me, thanks everyone for sharing this. 2 years to late