6footgeek

@vlaiv - following on from our discussion a while back about a galaxy hunter for a HEQ5 with a 1600mm - is this in contention for that? or is it too slow? thanks in advance as always

I have the neweer tripod - it’s fairly good! I’ve definitely overloaded it now though. I was just using this setup temporarily but I found that it wasn’t particularly stable - ended up going all out on a heq5 as well but I got it out (the SA) last night to get some shots of Jupiter and it serves its purpose well Was very nice carrying the whole setup in one hand and have everything running off of batteries!

Looking fantastic! Do you fancy nipping over to Solihull and building one again in my back garden?

Thank you so much for sharing - looks like it will meet my expectations perfectly!

Did anybody manage to get some images with this yet? I’m so tempted to buy one!!!!

Thats great thanks @vlaiv and @cotak Vlaiv - Which mono to go for? I understand that the 1600mm is the one most people seem to be using. Any thoughts? I definitely want to go mono rather than OSC - just so that i can play with different things. Thanks for the models - that comet hunter looks very promising. Budget wise, this is a future planning type of post so as I have a setup thats more than good enough for now, I can just merrily chuck money into savings until I get to the price point required. That being said, I would prioritise a new camera over the telescope in terms of which one I bought first! Cotak - The edgeHD 8 looks brilliant but i'm not sure i could jump to that prior to buying the camera. Noise is the bain of my life at the moment (even with aggressive 8px dithering) as my canon just seems to generate the stuff out of any situation Your galaxy pics are brilliant, exactly what I envision from this proposed setup so thanks for uploading them - im bookmarking them for inspiration. I do have a SkyTech CLS Canon EOS Clip in filter, but whilst it does an excellent job of suppressing light pollution (i can quite happily take 5 minute subs without skyglow taking over) I do have trouble processing any natural colour out of the image... I think that may well just be to a lack of skill on my post processing skills though. I saw some images with Ha regions in galaxies and I think it looks brilliant - good to hear that the cooled CMOS can bring out that detail too though. Thanks!

Hey everyone! Im looking for ideas and or suggestions for a new telescope. I have been imaging a little while and have become a little bit obsessed with galaxy's. The maths just blows my mind and they are really interesting to process. I have a 72ed on a heq5 Pro with a canon 450d (unmodified) I have paired this with a ZWO asi120mm with the ZWO mini guidescope for guiding.Everything is working well (yay for ASCOM) and I’m enjoying spending the limited summer darkness playing with plate solving and tweaking the guiding. Oh and I also have a skywatcher 150p that I’ve never used in anger but I just bought it for last years star party (the rainy one so it never got used) Im looking for something that will get these galaxies a bit closer - obviously the 450d with a 72ed results in a massive fov and I fully intend to keep that scope but I have some questions around which kind of telescope to get for imagining galaxies from my bortle 6 back garden! I understand from using fov calculators that changing the camera can also result in bigger objects but would like suggestions for either just a telescope or a telescope / camera combo or indeed, just a camera change! I’m not averse to the idea of narrowband imaging either in case that helps. Thanks in advance as always

Hello again! The 18-55mm stock one is good to start with. I then bought a sigma 70-300mm one which obviously allowed me to get much closer to objects, but I never quite worked out the f stop for that. I have borrowed a really wide sigma (10-20mm) one off a friend which is probably my favourite dslr lens at the moment. For objects without tracking there are all sorts, you just have to keep the exposure length under about 15 seconds on the lenses I used - but you can get an remote for your camera and just have it fire off hundreds of shots. Don’t forget to keep the object in view from time to time though haha! At the moment with summer time star clusters are cool, also the moon

I haven’t guided with that setup yet no, I bought a heq5 and added the 72ed with guiding to that as I was struggling to find objects whilst keeping polar aligned with the setup I had. That isn’t so much a problem when on DSLR with a wide lens, but I struggled once the 72ed was on, mostly because here in Birmingham there are only about 8 (slight exaggeration here) stars from which to work out where your object is That being said the star adventurer is absolutely brilliant, I won’t sell mine - I learnt how to take correct exposures and calibration frames and everything from that setup and It was brilliant. As it happens to be a perfectly capable mount for times where I don’t want to drag a power supply and 20 cables / a laptop etc out into the night I see the value it creates, especially as a gateway mount if you have the bug and know you are likely heading down into the bigger mount category later as funds / experience allows. I think the beauty comes from its capable simplicity on that front.

More evidence for your idea - my tripod struggled but it’s just a clone of better quality ones like the one you linked. but the mount + scope combo definitely works

I’ve used a 72ed on a star adventurer- it works fine! Only problem I had was the tripod really was overloaded but my 72ed + star adventurer plus nice big heq5 tripod is now my travel companion:)

Id say no, but only because you can find better camera's then that with a bit of persistence for the same price - have you looked on facebook marketplace for instance? There are some very cheap camera's on there - I put in a 60km search around Cardiff (no idea where you are in South Wales!) and lots came up Also you could put an advert in the wanted section of the classifieds on this forum too

I can vouch for the 450d - its nice and cheap on ebay I got mine just to wet my feet in this hobby. Its a great cam and the only thing I would really comment about it is that it has no flip out screen (not a big deal but when starting I found myself struggling to find focus on the cheap lenses i had which meant very careful adjustment in often awkward neck positions!) the other thing it doesnt have is a video crop mode as the 550d does, which whilst ok for lunar (in my experience) is basically a requirement for planetry. So, to sum up - flip out screen + video if you can find a bargain! (cash converters is quite a good place to pick up those 2 models - as is ebay if in uk!)

Excellent work! Having recently graduated from a star-adventurer with 50mm / 300mm lens to a fully guided HEQ5 with a 72ed, I couldn't agree more about platesolving. It blows me away every single time - in fact, so far, it has been so accurate on the first attempt that it centres the image after 2 images are taken. I know its selfish, but I would really like to see it do a 12 image sequence to figure out where it was... #firstworldproblems right?! On the guiding front - your guidescope looks very sharp and in focus. I got better results on my setup by making the guidescope slightly out of focus, and it seems to be more stable - The next thing on my list of tweaks was to do some cable management - like your photo the camera cables were just dangling, ive now looped the cables up to the adjustment bolts where the scope attaches to the mount. I've included a pic of my autoguiding with the slightly blurrier stars (without cable management), and the new attempt at cable management - ill post a thread on the next clear night detailing the difference (if any ) With the cable management, ill be keeping a very close eye on what is happening whilst slewing but I *think* that the loop I have left will be fine. Just my 2 cents man!

It was the same situation in Birmingham! Managed to get set up by 11:30 and got alignment nailed for the first time with sharp cap. Also got my guiding working once the clouds had truly cleared and managed a small run of 300 second exposures on the whirlpool galaxy. Yes I’ve been up since 7am but this is the first time everything on my new setup has worked. Everything went so well that I started hitting issues I’ve never had before like trailing cables throwing guiding off. I’m one happy chappy!