AstroMuni

Spot on 🙂 Install the relevant software on your laptop (ASCOM, EQMOD, PHD2) prior to doing these. Get the right EQDIR cable for the mount as that will allow you to connect the mount directly to laptop (without synscan controller in the middle). If you find that your laptop doesnt have enough USB ports you will have to invest in a USB hub. The advantage with ASIAir / Raspberry Pi/ NUC is that you can have the luxury of sitting with your laptop inside your home while these smaller devices are sitting out in the cold with the mount. Some folk leave a laptop outside on a small table beside the mount and establish a remote connection to laptop via ipad/phone. That is also do-able. Here is a suggestion - get the laptop to mount connectivity working first and learn to control the mount using EQMOD, Stellarium etc. Then you can add the cameras, guiding etc. To be fair you DONT need guiding to start with as a mount like EQ6-R can give you very good tracking without noticeable star tails upto a minute and possibly more. I can get between 30 to 60s with my HEQ5 Pro. Good luck.

Siril complained that it couldnt do photometric calibration on mine, perhaps due to the small FOV. Astromaster 130 on HEQ5 Pro, ASI224MC, 30s x 60 subs. Bortle 6. I didnt muck about with the symmetry point, just left it at default. Something new to learn about Barnard-29. I wasnt aware of this 🙂

Gave it a try using one of my images of M13. On the left is using asinh, histogram stretch and on the right is using GHT. Certainly makes a big difference without blowing out core or star bloat.

Are your images taken by attaching DSLR to the scope? Dont be put off by the fact that your scope is considered basic. I have got very decent results with my basic Astromaster 🙂

Not sure if this solution would help. But this is what I use - A Netgear AC1200 that is plugged in outside my house. This has an ethernet port and I have connected a ethernet cable between this and my RPi which then connects to mount. And when I remote in, I connect to wifi extender rather than home router.

It absolutely does a fantastic job with those. I havent managed to put in as many hours as Padrepeace but even with the few hours that I got the images have come out quite beautifully. A few of them are in my signature link.

Good start. How do you suggest this be used?

You are beginning to sound like me 😉

As already mentioned above, this setup may not be very portable but would be a good place to start. I have a similar setup and you can see my experience in the link in my signature. BTW, I dont have a permanent setup hence I carry and assemble & disassemble the kit every night. (when its cloudless and thats not easy in this country) No you dont need a guidescope, camera if you are taking short exposures. You should be able to get 30 seconds quite easily with that setup and the images you get are quite good. Regarding filters to block unwanted light - the Ha filter just allows Ha in and thats a very narrow part of the spectrum. So its only suitable for certain objects like nebulae. You could look at other light pollution filters but those are targeted for street lights etc.and not sunlight. In a nutshell, these dont help much in summer 🙂 Good luck.

If the budget is to spend £450 on a DSLR then there should be quite a few astro cameras eg. ZWO that will fit the bill. These days the read noise is quite low hence the difference between regular and cooled cameras is fast diminishing as we generally end up doing image capture in winter months in the UK. The other bit that you will need to consider is hardware & software to process your images. eg. PixInsight, Affinity Photo, Siril etc. My approach to getting into AP was begin on a small budget hence started off imaging with an AstroMaster 130 mounted on a 2nd hand HEQ5 pro. The camera is the ASI224MC. Total spend less than £1000. See my link for details on what you can expect to image using this kit.

Have you considered using 2 scopes mounted side by side ? 😉

I am partially responsible by asking the question of 533 vs 294 🙂

Would you rate the 533MC better than the 294MC ? I know it has no amp glow.

Remember that some of these images you are seeing have been stacked using software like Autostakkert and are not necessarily what can be seen with a single image.

Welcome to SGL. What is your budget and where do you live - ie. city, rural etc. Light pollution makes a lot of difference when viewing. One of the simplest and economical ways to get started is to buy a dobsonian telescope - the larger the aperature the better obviously. But remember they get heavier and bulkier as they get larger. Set aside budget for getting better eyepieces once you have learnt the basics. There are plenty of discussions on this forum on choosing a telescope so have a read through them. Some of your queries and doubts will be answered by these. And this is what I tell everyone who is new to the hobby...join a local astro club. That way you can learn quickly, even get to borrow scopes to try out etc. before taking the plunge.

Great image @George Sinanis and considering the level of darkness here and the size of your aperature, its amazing ! Do the darks help - as I thought ASI533 had no amp glow?

I started off using my laptop to run Kstars and the RPi running just the INDI server and drivers. This arrangement works great as all the images come back to my laptop directly and I didnt have any problems with this arrangement. For the past few months I have switched to using everything on the RPI and using laptop to simply remote into RPi using VNC. And that works fine too. In both cases I have tried with just the Ekos internal guider and also using PHD2. I have other friends who use this same configuration in their domes and swear by it. My connectivity between laptop & RPi is ....laptop --wifi--> wifi extender -- ethernet cable --> RPi. This gives me ability to stay indoors with laptop while wifi extender, RPi are outside.

Check this out...Its in release 1.0.2 https://siril.org/download/2022-05-16-siril-1.0.2/ And the updated gradient removal tutorial https://siril.org/tutorials/gradient/

I was of the understanding that the background extraction capabilities of Graxpert are now integrated into Siril. So am I missing something here?

Great widefield shot 👍

How is your camera connected to the mount - Are you using ST4 connection? Have you checked if the ASI224 is receiving any image at all?

You could try using PIPP software. It has a feature which detects quality of image and scores them. I have used it for planetary images but not sure if it will work with NCs but worth a try.

My suggestion is DONT buy any more eyepieces until you have mastered how to get best focus with your current setup. Slowly go up from 10mm to higher magnifications. This way you will realise if scope needs collimation etc. As others have mentioned its not just the eyepiece that gives you a clear picture, there are other factors like stability of mount, alt of planet/moon etc.

Thats not true. The focal length and F-ratio will be the same. Its just that the point at which it reaches focus will be pushed outwards (i.e further away from OTA) in the focuser. You may need a larger secondary mirror as well to make better use of the available FOV.

In my experience, the bigger glass makes viewing easier on the eye. The detailed explanation has been provided by vlaiv 🙂