AstroMuni

I think you have said it in a nutshell - we never stop learning! Book or no book....a lot of the stuff that I learnt as a student is either out of date or more new discoveries have been made. Just in the last few years software like NINA, Kstars, Siril and several others have come along and are now taking over from the established software products of the past. CMOS cameras are changing the way we image as compared to CCD. So its all about keeping up with change 🙂

Have you looked at the ASIAir ?

To add another grenade 🙂 ...if you are a Mac/Linux/RPi user you could use Kstars/Ekos for planning and control. If you are a windows user you could use it for planning. You can tailor the planetarium to look plain or add the full DSS map view.

Thats a great start...As others have said try adding a UV/IR cut filter and see if you can reduce the FWHM on the stars to improve focus. The aim is to get lowest FWHM ie. sharpest stars. 🙂 Good luck.

Where in the train is your OAG? If you put OAG first thing after the scope and then CC, DSLR you should be able to get backfocus is my guess?? Guiding doesnt need coma free stars

The overall image is looking much better. I think the reason for the oval shapes in the left hand side is a combination of tilt and collimation. If you are getting similar ovals on the right hand side which are like mirror images of the ones on the left then you will also need to look at adding or remover a spacer between CC and camera. And as alacant says, take a look at your processed images and decide if you still wish to improve it.

I suspect the circle is as a result of a combination of focuser tube being too far inside (as vlaiv said) and the fact that you are now capturing the image thro a 2". In the 1.25" image this circle would still have been there but closer to the edges.

Lovely image for an untracked mount. You should be proud of yourself 👍

Very nice image 👍

I would suggest taking images where the stars are slightly out of focus so you can see if its collimated properly. Its tricky to get the back focus distance correctly and it took me a multiple tries to achieve a situation where I was happy with it. Also worth checking the tilt as I struggle with getting the camera+CC perfectly in line with the focal plane. Have you upgraded the eyepiece clamp to a compression ring one so that this can be better addressed?

There could be a couple of reasons for that - no internet connection, the provider's server (eg SIMBAD) is down. Otherwise I havent had any such issues

As long as Astroberry relies solely on one person to take it to the next stage then we have a potential problem. IMO it should be a collaborative effort. So lets hope there are others out there who can help push Astroberry onto the 64bit space.

We could include our own as we can see the core 🙂 And we can see a few nebulae too eg M42

One aspect thats also important is the mount. Get the sturdiest mount that you can afford. Generally the stock mounts supplied with these scopes are its weakest link.

Dont be put off by it...heres the good part..if you are not collimated perfectly, its still OK. All it means is the scope is not making full use of the optics. The chance that your scope is delivered to you badly out of collimation is low so you should be able to make a start. If you are seeing stars with strange shapes other than round then you know you need to collimate. Learning to collimate is a bit like learning to drive a car, initially it seems hard and confusing but in a couple of days it seems routine. And once collimated, you may just need to tweak it once in a while to make sure its still aligned.

As already mentioned above they are all going to be stars from our own galaxy. Galaxies will appear as fuzzy blobs even in telescopes when viewed visually. With cameras you are likely to see more detail. Think about it this way, our nearest galaxy is around 70,000 light years away. Our very own galaxy has a radius of approx 50k ly and we cant even see all the stars which are possibly there on the outer periphery. So the only time we can really observe a star from another galaxy is when there is an event like a supernova (eg the one thats visible in M101 at the moment)

I was referring to EQMOD/ASCOM drivers. This has more info https://eq-mod.sourceforge.net/docs/EQMOD_Doc.pdf

How about something like a MAK, something like this https://www.firstlightoptics.com/telescopes-in-stock/skywatcher-skymax-127-eq3-2.html This would leave you some budget to get decent eyepieces etc.

Have you got the right drivers and have you rebooted after the driver install?

While we seem to have a glimmer of light for RPi being more readily available soon(?) there is no clear future for astroberry. Whilst there is stellarmate OS, there is no prebuilt like for like equivalent for astroberry in the 64bit space. There are many scripts available to compile your own version of Kstars and PHD2, but the rest of the useful tools that astroberry provided are not in the mix. 😞 Just my rant...

I have used the Celestron 130EQ for astrophotography (see my signature line) but as @ONIKKINEN has mentioned, the mount is not suited for that and I upgraded to the HEQ5 pro. The scope is more suited for deep sky objects than planets - you would need something with a longer focal length like an SCT or Mak for planetary.

I have the HEQ5 pro and its definitely PA first and then place in home position. The bit that was confusing for me in the manual was the polar scope reticle. Mine has a clockface and not the one shown in the manual. If yours has the same then you just need to get polaris at the right position on this clock. I use an app on my phone to tell me the correct position of polaris at the time of alignment. I actually ended up writing a short FAQ on this after various discussions on this forum. The other thing that got me down a rabbit hole was people suggesting opening up the polarscope to realign the reticle so that 0 is up in the home position. You DONT need to do that, just rotate the mount around the RA axis until the 0 position is at the 12 o'clock position. The important thing to check is what @carastro has mentioned about checking if the polarscope is correctly aligned. There is no bubble level on my HEQ5 pro. The paving is quite level where I set up so I havent felt the need to use a spirit level. Others have explained other tips quite well so I wont repeat. 🙂 Good luck.

Nice one @tomato 👍. Here is my attempt - a quick 120s x 30, captured on Saturday night. It must have been a massive SN for it to be seen at similar brightness as the foreground stars from our galaxy.

@DPF also remember that when you increase the magnification, you will find that the slightest touch to the scope will cause the image to jitter. So bear this in mind and you may wish to go for a more sturdy tripod to reduce this jitter.

It seems odd that such a small exposure is causing so much drift 😞 Perhaps someone who has done imaging without tracking can comment. This may help https://beltoforion.de/en/astrophotography/camera_settings.php