AstroMuni

Did you get any further with this? I am also interested in these and couldnt find much info.

When you are doing astrophotography with a DSLR or astro camera you dont need an eyepiece. But if you are using a phone camera then you would attach it to the back of the eyepiece. You might need to add lenses in between (eg. barlow to zoom in or a focal length reducer to zoom out). Hope this helps.

My take on this starfield using the ASI533mc and Astromaster 130 on HEQ5 pro managed by Kstars/Ekos on RPi. 40x60s subs (no flats or darks) processed in Siril and star reduction done in Gimp. This was taken on Fri night when the moon was quite bright, lots of patchy clouds and plenty of dew. The fireworks galaxy is 22 million ly from us and is named so because of the number of supernovae that have been observed in it. There is plenty of coma around the edges and focus is not perfect, but I quite liked this image. Comments welcome.

Welcome! - Buy a second hand mount+tripod OR weigh down your existing tripod with sandbags/ milk bottles filled with water to dampen the vibration. You can hang these from centre of tripod by strong string/rope. The other option of building a Dob base (as mentioned by others) is another good option. - Get a Rigel or Telrad. I have the Astromaster 130EQ and I purchased a 2nd hand mount and Telrad. I purchased a HEQ5 as I was trying to get into AP, but for taking images with phone an EQ3 should be fine. Also purchase a decent Barlow for planetary work. I have the Baader 2.25x. Good luck. EDIT: You can get decent images using the milk bottle route btw. Here is a picture of the moon taken on iphone 8 attached to holder using that technique 🙂 Just remember to put a long delay for system to stop vibrating after you have pressed the button to grab the picture. I had set this for 2-5sec.

Stacking needs lots of RAM & Disk space. Compute power is also good to have, but if the other 2 requirements are adequate then a slower processor with less cores will just take longer.

Check how much travel is left on the scope (at the moment) when you reach focus. Then you can approximately work out how much extra distance you need to add/minus depending on equipment added. Thats the approach I took before I purchased my ASI224 for a scope that wasnt meant for AP (the Astromaster 130eq) @FLO a wishlist to add a calculator for focuser travel distance please 🙂

I think I understand, you are using the ASI224 with fisheye just to show us how it looks right? And not for actual AP! I was thinking why is he using fisheye to image? Duh 🙂 I have the ASI224 too and so very familiar with it.

And the 662 is the next gen, I guess. No amp glow.

I appreciate that you have concerns on security....You dont need to have cables running into your house, btw. If you have an external powerpoint then thats a good start. You have options of ethernet over powerline or a wifi extender. Laptop and you can stay inside. I use the extender option and sit in a position where I can see the scope through windows. Yes. Keeps the heat in. Any old cardboard box will do too

Have you considered the ASI224MC? Small sensor but great specs for planetary AP. Of the 3 you have listed the 662 would be better as it has faster frame rate which is good for planetary

Out of interest how & why are you using the fish-eye lens for this?

Ah for the next JWST then using them in an array 😉

🙂 I think they left the Y mask in as backup too

Great shot as usual. A bit too red for my liking but thats personal choice 🙂

Have you tried putting the details into the Astronomy.tools website to check out? https://astronomy.tools/calculators/guidescope_suitability Good to know that you also have the Ford Fiesta 1.0 🙂

looks great. The histogram looks clipped at both ends. So there maybe more data in there that you could leverage

Final image using GHT in Siril

You could try using an RPi4. That has plenty of grunt for imaging and controlling the mount etc. I use that powered by Astroberry which is a pre-built image that includes relevant software for Astro. But I agree to do the processing of large images you would be better off getting a laptop. I too have Affinity on my ipad but use Siril on an old laptop that cant run windows but can run linux 🙂

Welcome! Great perseverance and good first attempt. As others have said adding a tracker will definitely help. I would also recommend you learn a processing software like Siril or Affinity Photo. GIMP is a great tool but these have specific functions to help in AP. Whats the budget that you have? Good luck

At gain 0 your read noise would be quite high compared to at 100.

Lovely detail in M63.

As I dont have a dome, I dismantle and reattach for every imaging session and notice that my camera orientation sometimes alters a bit (even though I leave the camera attached to scope). 😞 Good luck and look forward to seeing more DSO images from you now.

And Affinity now supports stacking too. I havent tried the stacking aspect of it though. Is there a reason you prefer DSS?

Once you have read up about the basic workflow of processing, pick a software (try out a few until you are comfortable) and then learn the features and how best to use them. You might decide to use multiple software - eg. one to stack and another to post process. Thats perfectly normal. Here are a few to consider: - Siril - FREE - DSS (DeepSky Stacker) - FREE - APP (Astro pixel processor) - StarTools - Affinity Photo - PixInsight (the big brother of all)