6footgeek

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!

Hey guys thanks for all the help = looking like I might be able to capture this tonight or tomorrow, but if this isn't too cheeky, would someone mind uploading a previous log for me? Im looking specifically for PHD2 guide logs @vlaiv@Demonperformer @chrisshillito Cheers

Ah darn, and here I was hoping I could just ghost align it

Thanks @Demonperformer - will give it a go at lunchtime

Hello everyone! Just looking for pointers on best way/software or alternative to capture raw data for my (HEQ5 Pro) mount? I have a Lynx Astro FTDI EQDIR USB Adapter cable, just looking at pointers for grabbing the data I want to build some charts from the raw data so if I have an easy reliable way of grabbing the data I can build the charts. Much obliged as always.

Thanks! - I'll get onto that tonight Learning all of the many tricks in photoshop I think is the biggest struggle of all of this. I also have a bunch of longer exposures which I might stack onto there tonight and see if that yields some different results!

Brand new here, so this is the first DSO that I took on purpose, 4 days ago. Andromeda Galaxy from my super light polluted back garden near Birmingham, UK. Canon 450D Canon 18-55mm stock lens. Amazon basics tripod! 100 x lights @ 8 seconds - 55mm - ISO 800 20 x Darks 20 x Flats 20 x Bias