CloudMagnet

I cant speak for the NGS but I have used the D2 for a while and it really is a good filter. It might be worth considering if your lighting might be changed to LED in the future (already happening in a lot of places) so it would be a good way to future proof yourself.

If you were to go for the uncooled ZWO 294 MC Pro (approx £700) then you would have similar sized sensor and a lot more sensitivity to hydrogen alpha emissions. But further down the line you would probably kick yourself you didnt go for a cooled camera. The other option around this price has cooling but a smaller sensor giving a smaller FOV (183MC Pro) The other option is to modify your existing camera to increase sensitivity to Ha -similar to a dedicated camera, but this proces cant be reversed.

Forgot about the 533 to be honest, gets good reviews again. Only thing to be aware of is that is has a square sensor rather than your normal rectangular sensor in your DSLR. A cooled dedicated astronomy camera has big advantages, mainly around temperature control and sensitivity to hydrogen alpha emissions (present in a lot of nebula). It is more complex to control and setup but I wouldnt go back now to DSLR imaging on my main setup after going for a cooled CMOS camera.

Yep, if you are looking to upgrade, then really you do need the cooled version. That camera gets good reviews but be aware that some people report online that there are issues with taking calibration pictures and getting them to work with images. I recently moved from a unmodified DSLR to the ZWO ASI 071 and it really was a big step up in quaility. If you can do the man maths to justify the higher price, it is well worth it. The next step up after that would be the ZWO ASI 2600 if you can bear the higher price again.

Im similar to Terry above. I started out a 5 inch newtonian and while it was decent for planets and open clusters- I got aperture fever and wanted to see more, so I upgraded to a skywatcher 200p. I live in Bortle 6-7 skies so when M31 showed up to be a little grey smudge and didn't look that much better than looking through binoculars that are older than me, I knew I had to try something else. So I decided to move on to astrophotography to give me the opportunity to view objects that couldnt be seen otherwise. Fast forward 9 months or so and I havent gone back to visual once. I probably will later in the summer for the planets but it just can't compete for DSO's. Light polution has put an end to that for most dim objects. Its also a nice technical challange that can be fun (when everything works) and seeing an image building up as the night goes on is a really great feeling.

Probably not, but its just never felt right to me! Also worth making a note of what temperatures the picutes have been taken at (if it isnt recorded) just so you dont lose track of it.

Dark frames can last for months but will lose the effectiveness the longer time goes on. Also, it wont be a good idea to take darks as the camera is heating up. This defeats the purpose as darks need to match temperature with themselves and also the temperature of your imaging night. I never though it would be a good idea to put a camera in a fridge to be honest, but if you are going down that route, then you would need to take the darks inside the fridge as well. The temperature range you take the darks over really depends on how close you want them to match with the outdoor conditions. Bear in mind that your camera might drop 5 degrees when you are just out imaging normally over a few hours. This means that the thermal noise in the first picture will be very different from the noise in the last picture later in the night. Because of this, I dont think there is much to gain by having darks for every single degree change in temp. Really that precision matters more with a cooled camera where temperature control is possible.

Yep, looking at the streched version, I dont think there is too much more to get out of that. It might be worth adding a little of of sharpen to the image to give a bit more definition to the nebula. Still fantastic though.

A really good start I would say, just make sure that the histrogram isn't touching the left hand side, as this means infomation is lost and only displays black. Also, I would make sure that the spacing on the reducer is correct as there is a small amount of curvature around the edges (you can tell from the star shapes). Apart from that it is a good image in my opinion. Good colours in the neubla and not overdone. I would look to try some curves streches to bring out some of the fainter background as long as you dont bring too much noise into the picture.

I suppose if you are only loading in stacked picutres to Pixinsight previously, they would already have been deBayered so wouldnt throw that problem up. Otherwise, I really dont know what caused that. To fix the green colour, a quick Background neutralization should take care of that.

Wow, great improvement. The background on the second picture is perfect. Once the spacing is fixed, you will have a great setup there

Im not too familiar with the process, but you might need to deBayer the image first before it will show colour.

Do you have more than 1 layer on the colour image? I found first you need to flatten it and save it under a new name before loading it in Pixinsight.

Have you tried moving the focus in or out? Yoi might need to turn the knobs quite far before it will move into focus. Also it will sound really silly but we have all done it, make sure you have taken the cap off the front of the scope before looking through the eyepiece.

This is a narrowband filter so is more suited to emission nebula targets whereas the IDAS D2 really is more for broadband targets such as galaxies. These are actully the two filters I use in my setup and I wouldnt really compare them directly- both are really great at what they do so I would recommed getting both of them- just use them for different targets.

I tend to use M13 as a test bed as well strangely, easy object to find and a god test with the bright core. I would make sure your spacing is correct for your coma corrector and that will take care of the edges. Otherwise a good image with a lot of detail. Have you tried to remove the background gradients?

Yep, I wouldnt recommend this for astrophotography, I upgraded from this scope as it was only suited to visual work. Mainly due to the 1.25 inch focus tube not being a good match for a DSLR and being very difficult to collimate as the center of the primary mirror isnt marked very well. Most would recommed looking at a short focal length refractor and a big mount to get started. A decent setup will get you into four-figures very quickly so just make sure this is what you want to do first. Once you starting getting involved with the endless accesories you can buy it adds up quickly. For me, it is all worth it when everything works and you take a picture of something millions of light years away from your garden

I started out with an Astromaster 130 EQ, not too disimilar to yours. It did me well for a few years so there is plently to do with a scope in that range. Before you invest, make sure you know what to invest in. Its easy to make the mistake of thinking what works for visual will work for photography. First, aperture is NOT king and longer focal lengths will make it more difficult. Things like accurate polar alignement and telescope balance play a huge role in long exposure photography and cant be just done quickly like you can get away with for visual. Its really a change of mindset. It will become a can of worms very quickly, but once I put a camera on my scope, I never really went back to visual stuff as a result. When you make a list of a mount/scope combination don't be afraid to run it past people on here first before pressing the "buy" button- it can save a lot of hassle to get the right set up first time rather than spending a lot trying to bring a bad setup up to standard.

Great for a first attempt. Really with that telescope you will struggle to get fantastic pictures- you will be mostly limited to moon/planets. I think the focus might need some adjustment but otherwise a good start. If you are looking to really go down the astrophotography route, just be prepared that you will spend a LOT of money very easily so bear that in mind. Spend as much time as you can learning best practice for imaging now and you will save yourself from a lot of problems in the future

With some time off work and the nights fast disappearing, this was last chance for me to get some decent hours outside. I recently bought the ZWO 071MC Pro so this was my first time with a cooled CMOS camera instead of a DSLR. The pictures were taken on the 5/6th May (with a full moon). I first set up at 9pm on both nights before going all the way through to dawn at 4am. All images were taken with my Skywatcher 200p with EQ5 mount, and the ZWO 071 cooled to -5. M13 was taken with the IDAS D2 filter and the two nebula were done with the Optolong L-eNhance Dual Narrowband filter. The Crescent nebula I think would benefit from longer intergration time but I was suprised how much background nebulosity showed in such a short time. Any feedback would be very appreciated M13- 145x 45s (1hr 45mins) Crescent Nebula- 25x 2mins (50 mins) Veil Nebula- 30x 3mins (1hr 30mins)

Its nice when you start guiding and it takes away the worry of star trails... most of the time! When you feel you are on top of guiding consistantly, a good way to reduce noise is to use dithering. Its not that much of a step further after guiding and will help get rid of banding/walking noise in your images as the noise is averaged out more in stacking. There is plently of tutorials online about how to do this- it really does help your images go up in quality

That doesnt look right to me either, what filter were you using before this?

Have you tried just aligning the RGB channels within DSS when it finishes stacking? Its not the perfect way but if you align the 3 histogram peaks together using the sliders, it should give you a fairly good colour balance.

Wow, what bortle sky was this shot from?

DSS wont work for lunar images, it is only for deep sky objects. Something like RegiStax should be better suited to use.