Uranium235

Sounds like a plan to me! Im just wondering why you chose an additional PSU - and chose not to run it off a bench supply? (all my stuff is powered by one big phat PSU).

As long as you get the Ha by May/June you wont miss much. But Cygnus should be your first stop when you do get one, its an easy place to get lost in for a few months. But for your first hit, M13 is a good choice - it will give you a chance to work on your star handling & focus, and a chance to practice layer masking (for the core).

You might find others are more expensive, but theyre all pretty much the same price - which is a fair price to be honest (Baader is about as pro as you can go without shelling out serious cash). Count yourself lucky youre not shopping for Astrodons!

LRGB or Narrowband, its up to you mate! Just pull the trigger and you will be happy either way - and each is a skill in itself when it comes to processing.

The Lum filter still has its uses, what if you were going to a dark site? If there is no LP you wont need an LP filter, which is where it comes in handy - or it could be used as a UV/IR blocker for other telescopes/cameras. Anyways, what I did was just use the LP filter for lum.

It is possible to buy the filters separately, but thats 70 quid a go for 1.25" - so not very economical (the full set is just £1 more). You used to be able to buy just the RGB - but I cant seem to find that kind of offer any more (it was about 4 years ago when I had mine).

You wont find any Ha in galaxies (bar M33 and M31), but for the upcoming summer season it will be great for anything in Cygnus (which is awash with Ha) and the M16 region.

Even if you do get the LRGB set, you wont use the L because it has no LP blocking properties - not unless you stack the filters (ie: leave the LP blocker permanently in place on the scope side of the reducer/flattener, and have your LRGB in the FW).

There is nothing stopping you from going into LRGB to start off with, but Ha will get far more use.

Actually, you will find narrowband easier becuase most of the time you are dealing with only two channels (Ha & OIII) - unless you go the whole hog and get SII as well. First two filters to get are a good L filter (CCD CLS or Hutech), and a Baader Ha filter - you wont get any colour out of those but it gives you a quick leg up into making the most of your clear sky (moonless or not).

Colour can come later (via OIII or RGB). Or for now re-use any of your existing colour DSLR data and blend it with mono luminence - it can breath new life into old work.

I only use the ancient LE version of PI, it does a couple of decent tricks like DBE - but most of my work is in Photoshop.

LRGB is still affected in the same way, thats why I switch to Ha when the moon is about. And even is you do get a gradient - its easier to get rid of it when you work on individual channels.

Really, mono imaging is far less complicated than DSLR when you get into it. There isnt anywhere near as much noise, so you arent battling that en route to a decent image. Its a darn sight quicker to process too given the smaller file sizes.

Mono.... every time.

Dont forget to shake your fist at it...lol.. "work.. or else!"

Im grabbing stuff ive never tried before, but its going to be a right laugh trying to sort out the background on it!

Im just going to keep ploughing on regardless, at least there is no moon to spoil things

Yay!

Let me know how you get on, Im gonna try and stay up a bit tonite - probably 1am(ish)