fifeskies

GIMP (free software) can also be used to align the colours again. Your filter is removing the yellow/green component (as most City Light you are Suppressing, ie skyglow, is in the yellow/green part of the spectrum) Depending on target it can also be good to convert to a mono (Black and White) image.

BST starguiders are the best at this price point BST StarGuider | First Light Optics

I use a single supply for everything , just fuse every section when using a big supply. Those bare skeleton supplies will need to be built into a suitable external box however.

An LED stop light intended for a car (so runs on 12v also happy on 13.8v which is a fully charged battery voltage) , being LED uses very little power but is very bright on axis. Nice and cheap from a well known auction site , or any car parts shop like Halfords. You get the small rectangular screw on type that are intended for DIY trailer board lighting.

Strongly suspect this is just Sirius. Sirius is a very very bright star and is usually quite low down in the sky. Turbulance in the sky makes the star "twinkle" and Sirius is very well known for twinkling through the colour spectrum. The star confuses the autofocus in many cameras so you get a fuzzy out of focus blob , but this actually helps you see the colour flashes better.

Amazon sell many varieties of distilled water (sold for use with steam irons for the most part)

+1 for adding a highly visible light to the power supply output I have done the exact same thing but luckily caught it before any damage was done. A short run of low voltage cable to a red light is the way to go , just make sure it is away from the telescopes and ideally visible from afar. I can see my "power on" indicator from down the garden.

Just multiply by the reducer value. 600mm with a 0.85 reducer is 600 x 0.85 = 510 715mm with a 0.79 reducer is 715 x 0.79 = 564.85 (use 565) EDIT Josh beat me by seconds

Spirowrap does a good job , handy if you want to break out cables along the way as well Available Amazon among other places.

DSO without tracking will be limited, typically these will need minutes rather than seconds to get good images. However if you use high ISO and stack lots of very short images you will get something for the very brightest targets like the Orion Nebula. (Look up DeepSkyStacker the free software to do this) Bright planets will be rather more successful with untracked mount, but dont expect to get extensive detail.

The reducer changes the effective focal length of the telescope so in a 500mm scope a 0.8 reducer changes this to an effective 400mm. The main reason to do this is to allow a camera to see a wider field of view than it would without the reducer. As this is a photographic function it is common for a reducer to also have a field flattener combined with it. For visual use you would use a longer eyepiece ie 25mm to view a wider field (compared to eg a 10mm eyepiece)

Depending on the quality of the Cat5E and the "noisiness" of the environment you may get away with the lower spec cable if it is one of the better quality ones. If its in the middle of nowhere it could be fine , next to an industrial zone with lots of RFI or under overhead power cables probably not.

available on Amazon, they have a single usb port version and also the more expensive 100m range version. StarTech.com 4-Port USB 2.0 Extender - 165ft USB Over: Amazon.co.uk: Electronics also direct from Startech in UK , (but Amazon is cheaper) USB Extenders - Add-on Cards & Adapters | United Kingdom (startech.com) For a full 50m they recommend a Cat 6 cable rather than a Cat 5 which works up to 40m, check you don't need to use the higher specified version that works out to 100m. Datasheet usb2004extv_datasheet.pdf (startech.co

Yes you can Click settings in bottom box on left , stacking parameters , then set folder under the "output" tab

My first decent scope was the 200 version of your 150 , My very first upgrade eyepiece was an X-Cel 25mm. (2nd hand on Facebook) It was a chalk and cheese moment , the stock 20mm I got with the scope was the better of the 2 supplied but the difference with the X-Cel 25mm was a "Wow" moment. First thing I saw in it was the Pleiades, and it was so much clearer and with so many more stars that I had seen in the cluster before, and of course a much wider view of the sky. I am sure the BST 25mm would be just as good a choice (tho not used one). It is the eyepiece you will