Shaun_Astro

Yeah it's at the 5kg capacity, and 600mm is quite a long FL with this kind of setup I think. I'm happy with 20" over 30" if it allows me to keep this many subs. Yeah I didn't use live view for a while before. I kind of knew I needed a lot more darks and bias & flats, just wanted to see how it would fare without them. TBH I stretched this more than I normally do. Thanks for the feedback and advice, next time I shall use at least 40 darks, bias and flats!

I used 10 x dark and 10 x bias frames, but not enough it was very late. And I stretched it way too much. I'll add to this and calibrate it better with more darks, flats and biases. This is kind of a WIP!

Superbly clear last night, I could see the bands in the milky way over head and Andromeda and the Double Cluster just by looking up with averted vision. Took some frames of M45, I'm still struggling to rid of the vignetting by using flats, I probably need to take more than 10, and I think my mirror was misting up while taking them. Here's 132x19" subs. I realise taking 15-20 second subs allows me to keep most of them. 30" was too much for my mount with this 600mm scope on it, and I was chucking out 70% of frames. I managed to keep about 70-80% now with 20", which means 45 mins of subs out of every hour of taking them, instead of only 20 mins! Planning to add to this in the near future so less stretching and exaggerating of the vignetting is required.

I've been toying with te idea of getting the skymax 127 for a while, and I've noticed the picture has changed now to one with a rather unsightly green dovetail. https://www.firstlightoptics.com/maksutov/skywatcher-skymax-127-ota.html After seeing this video, I noticed that the older one says Schoot glass on the side, and came with 2" diagonal. The newer version seems to have a 1.25" diagonal now and doesn't have the label on the side. Can anyone confirm this? Would it not using Schott glass anymore have an impact on quality?

Thanks, I live on the outskirts of Woking and they are shutting all the streetlights off after 00:00 now, so it's gloriously dark and clear when conditions permit now. There's about 11 degrees of rotation, but I think most of the shots were done with M33 around about the same place in the sky.

Hola! I managed to get DSS to stack M33 from three night's imaging over August. It used 200x30s subs in total. Even with 30 flat frames, the coma corrector introduces some very strange vignetting, that with the field rotation means I had to crop this pretty hard.

Thanks! Lightroom has a manual lens profile function, I used a tad of this, but enough to remove the coma completely warps the diffraction spikes and looks bad. My coma corrector arrived today, hopefully it wont do the same!

I've overlain a less stretched version on top of the core to remove it being blown out. Also have applied a blurred inverted duplicated layer in GIMP as "soft light" which works as a sort of luminace layer. And a version over as a mask over a black layer set to "darken", removed it over the galaxy with a fine spray, and adjusted curves as a sort of "star mask". Looks a lot better I think!

Yeah it was 30s@ iso1600, I prefer the look of 800. Which is what I used here with my 130 PDS. Again binned more than half my subs! Maybe If I used 20s I might have more usable subs with less star trailing, but I think less longer subs would have a better SNR ratio. This is 74 30s subs @ iso800. Still need to get the my coma corrector! ............... Story of last night is pretty funny. I got home from work at 2330. Put my 130pds on the sofa, it rolled off onto the floor and then made a horrific grinding noise when I tried to focus it! Fixed it now and it could have been a lot worse! Then after finally getting set up and taking pictures, after 30 mins I went to check on the alignment, and realized I hadn't properly clipped the shutter release button down. So by then it was nearly 01:30 and I decided to carry on, it was a lovely clear night not to be missed! By the time I finished the darks and flats, and taking apart and repairing the focuser which had jammed one of the focusing knobs into the housing, Venus was due to rise, which I wanted to snap with my barlow and webcam. So I aligned everything up again and waited until 03:30, then noticed the alignment was way off, maybe aligned to the wrong star! So I tried to align again, but clouds and daylight prohibited it, and Venus got covered in cloud. So I packed up and just as I put my mount inside the sky cleared up, Deneb, Hamal, Altair, Venus, Alerberan and Capella were all easily visible to align off of. What a sight Venus is in the morning sky! Next time!

Thanks. I focus with 10x zoom on a star. It's mechanically too course to achieve good focus. I think it's nearly impossible, as the best focus I could achieve gave stars witha /\ like appearance still.

A nice clear night last night. I tired using my 1300D and 75-300mm lens (impossible to properly focus manually) at 300mm on M31, Managed to get 65 usable frames out of about 130 with my star discover mount. Might be that I kept walking past it, and there was a little bit of wind. Would be nice to add to this, but the focus is off, so doubt I'll bother.

That is a nice clean image. Galaxies require so many subs. I attacked M71 in Saggita the other night, bit of a noisy image, and I need to make better flats, also need a coma corrector, and forgot bias and needed more dark subs! But it turned out reasonable. Had to lay waste to 70% of subs again!

Thanks man! 33x30 sec subs, darks and flats. What competition?

So I messed up, and used a load of bad subs and a set of bad flats. It looked terrible compared to this version, which is only 16 mins instead of 30, but notice the difference...

**Removed**

Crystal clear last night. And they turn the lights off at midnight now.

Good idea! 130pds, Star Discovery Mount, 1300d, SW 200pds, Thinsulate 40gm hat, insulated slippers.

Need to have ten posts before I can have a signature apparently; I'll find some threads to spam

Very clear last night, for the first time in ages. Here's a shot of M13. Taken facing East, with light pollution from nearby town. 60x30s.

This is what I managed when clear the other night. Not exactly happy with it, had to bin 70% of subs, left with a measly 26 mins, and at iso 1600, I get lots of noise. Still, better than nowt.

Thanks, yeah I've been reading about how to put a false luminance layer in, might try that, but it needs more detail added ideally, I'll add more subs at some point.

I tried imaging the Crab last night, but the mount wouldn't track accurately enough. It was balanced and well aligned, but I still couldn't get it to give pin point stars on 30s subs. They were more like """"\ shaped. I had to bin about 75% of 'em. I took 30 mins worth of M42 and got about 14 useful 30s frames. Used Flat, Bias and Dark frames on this one and it's certainly made the difference.

Nope, I stupidly bought a Windows phone, which nothing works on! I got the 130pds yesterday. it's lot heavier than anticipated (didn't know the published weight didn't include the OTA rings), with the camera it's 4.9kg, and my mount's limit is 5kg. The OTA rings and dovetail is nearly 1kg alone! I've made a dovetail and scope holder for it out of wood, which is 300g, but need some large rubber bands to stop it slipping about when pointing 60 degrees or more. I collimnated it, balanced it, then took it out and aligned, then the clouds came over. Moved it all back inside. About 11pm it was clear again so took it out again and aligned it, then the mount's batteries ran out! Replaced them, re-aligned it, and found it wasn't tracking accurately AT ALL. With lighter scopes it takes about a minute for the stars to become pin sharp, but with this lump, it took about 4-5 minutes, I think the software has some feedback on the tracking controls. Anyway, finally it stared tracking Okayish; but about 50% of frames have trails or zig-zaged stars. Thought it might be the DSLR mirror, so looked up how to turn on mirror lockup, but Canon have removed this feature for the 1300d! Anyway, TLDR; here are some pictures. I FORGOT to take darks! And REALLY need a coma corrector, I didn't think an F5 would be this bad! M35 Notice the light pollution difference in this one! M3

Thanks Steve, I haven't got a timer remote so am stuck with 30s exposures atm, and M42 is South currently, so 30s is probably max doable, it is a very widefield shot and higher magnification probably would have had trails. The mount is really good! I wanted it over the Alt az for that feature, and it is good to move it about by hand, it's VERY stable and good value, still using the remote is best for small adjustments. Thanks Happy cat, that's a good idea for a dew shield, but I have just bought a reflector so I don' have to worry so much! Cheers Filroden, I did some initial work in lightroom, then removed the gradient in PS and pushed the curves out a bit more. I used a mixture of levels and curves, levels mainly for setting the black value, pushing it up every time the image is stretched in curves just enough but not clipping. And there's some coma about the top because I cropped the other three sides :0)

I've been following this thread for a while, there are some amazing pictures here! I've been struggling with my mount trying to take photos for a while and have finally got a reasonable image with my DSLR and a 58mm lens on a Star Discovery mount. Previous sessions were ruined by bad focus, the mount being set to the wrong day and the battery having ran out a bit, causing star trails imperceptible at the time. I only managed 60x30s subs and 10 darks before the lens froze over. Processing done in in light room and photoshop. The original had very bright streetlights in the bottom right which I managed to eradicate thanks to a tutorial vid by Doug German, a great channel! I'm getting a 130pds tomorrow so hopefully should be able to produce better results in the future.