Startinez

Treated myself to a Canon EOS RP in a move to the full frame & mirrorless world. Just a single shot through my 90EQ with no filters or after processing (bar cropping) and I'm delighted with the results! 1/100s with ISO 160.

The mount is almost brand new and has only been used a few times. I assembled it during an evening where it was extremely warm (still around 25c at 9PM) and when I couldn't disassemble I figured it had expanded and tightened due to the temperature, but it's now been a few weeks and several unsuccessful attempts to disconnect the thread that connects the drive head from the tripod. It definitely wasn't threaded on assembly so I'm not really sure what else it could be? I wanted to check I'm not missing anything or making an amateur mistake before getting in touch with the manufacturer.

Saludos y bienvenido Philippe!

Thank you all for your help. I now have a few things to test out next time I get some clear skies!

Apologies, I am manually focusing.

The thing is it's happened on multiple occasions in different locations, so that's what's pointing me towards an issue with the camera body itself. I'll try stopping down although I think my lenses only go to a max of f/5 ish anyway. No tracking and only 10-20s exposures so I shouldn't be losing focus there with such a wide frame.

I haven't tried stopping down (that's going from say f/4 to f/8, right?) but that's a good call. Mount isn't anything special but it's certainly stable enough, and using a cabled intervalometer to trigger the lens.

I've been noticing an issue with my Canon EOS 1100D that seems to pass over between both lenses (18-55 & 70-300) so I'm thinking the issue is with the camera itself, although the 70-300 is a Tamron lens so not actually Canon. The issue is that stars just won't finely focus. This camera has a small screen for previews and post shot review and whilst on this screen the captures look good, but as soon as they're on a full sized PC screen you can immediately see that they're not perfectly focused. I've tried cleaning the cameras internal imaging sensor with a proper kit and cleaning methods to no avail. It seems to me that the issue is that the lenses just don't quite focus far enough to infinity to perfectly focus... I'm thinking about a factory reset before I'm out on the next attempt but I wondered if anyone has come across the issue or anything similar before?

Welcome to the community!

Keeping it simple if you're a complete beginner - I recently got into the hobby with the same goals. I bought an Orion Astroview 9024 on an EQ2 mount for ~£200 and it's really got me way further into the hobby. Great views of Jupiter and Saturn, amazing moon detail, and good for stars. I'd say the important aspects for planetary viewing are to go for a refractor rather than a reflector (the quality of the lens is higher which is a bonus for planetary viewing), a high f (focal ratio) number (f10 for example is good for planetary as it focuses on a smaller piece of sky and planets are small, f5 is better for a wider field of view for galaxies and nebulae), and an equatorial mount makes tracking objects across the sky very easy but you won't go wrong if you get an azimuth mount either.

The maximum useful magnification for your scope is 400x, so under perfect conditions you could in theory get away with a 2.5mm. Obviously it would be very optimistic to actually go this high, but you should get some quite good views with a 5mm lens or a 10mm coupled with a 2x Barlow. I think the 5mm would be a good place to start.

Jupiter, its moons, and Saturn; you'll always remember your first time seeing them!

Welcome to the community Richard.

Welcome to the community. You've already experienced how helpful everyone can be, it's a really great resource to have!

Welcome to the community Harry!

I've gone from the above to this... albeit with a new camera (ZWO ASI 120) and around 15k frames (stacked ~5k), although still untracked it is now on a HEQ5 mount which will provide far more stability. Different colours but I feel that these are more realistic, and also my first experience of recording in mono (with FireCapture) and debayering in PIPP.

Welcome Tony! There's always something to learn with astronomy but you've joined the right place to learn. Enjoy.

Welcome to the site Adam.

Welcome (back)! Seems you've been busy planning ahead which in the challenging conditions you describe will no doubt serve you well. Looking forward to hearing some stories about your views from Iceland...

Wowee, what a huge difference that's made to the clarity! I played about with the RGB align and it seems a little better but still noticeable to me.

Thanks Bryan, I really appreciate the detailed response. I'll take a look at those things as I have some more data from Sunday night left to process yet

This was up towards max on the first slider, and any other alterations didn't seem to make any difference or were perhaps just too subtle for me to notice. I'd planned on uploading the PIPP processed video but this seems to keep failing despite being well below the maximum size threshold, so I've uploaded the post Registax image instead. Would be interesting for me to see if there's a lot I could gain from processing.

I have an IR filter (not sure if they're the same thing?) but I think I couldn't find a good focus with that on, so I took it off. As for the RGB align I did choose that in Registax which took the overall colour from a murky green to the grey/blue that it is now. I did post process the curves and levels in GIMP after that though, could that have flared up the poles? They did get back to me about my initial query but had a question of their own. Its ongoing but they are helping.

For now I've just not used the coma corrector! Easiest solution until I've heard something back from FLO.

Quite happy with the results but also well aware that it could be a lot better. 130PDS, Altair GPCAM3 224C, an untracked ~35s video stacked and processed as you'd expect with PIPP, Registax, then GIMP for final touches. How does this seem for approx. 22:30 last night? Sky was really clear but obviously Jupiter isn't all that high at the moment.