AstroExploring

Damn. Astro shows only seem to happen when I can’t go! I missed PAS because my daughter was born and for IAS it’s my wedding anniversary. 

Why is my family so selfish? 🤣

Hope you all have a great time, gutted I can’t go! 

Well I will sadly miss the event this year, really disappointed as I know a lot of people are going that I would love to meet in person, but the wife tells me the arrival of our first born will be much more exciting 🤪

Only a 45 minute drive for me so I am hoping for good news this year 😃

Hmmm that’s 2 days before my wife is due to give birth. Can I get away with attending? 😂

Yes please to this! Depending on dates I’d love to do this. I’m moving house soon and will only be 45 mins away from Lucksall 😃

On 09/10/2021 at 12:57, boulderbelly said:

Hi Mate  does the 80 reducer have any better effect than the one for the 72 ED .85x reducer??  thanks

At the time it was the only one available from Sky-Watcher and they supplied an adapter to match the thread for the 72ED. I believe they now make a dedicated one for the 72ED so that would be the one to get as unless you find an 80ED one with an adapter it won’t fit. 

All the very best, Martin. We never got chance to meet but you’ve answered lots of my stupid questions over the last few years! Thanks a bunch and have a happy retirement! 
 

Nick

Well done all! Some great images there!

Thanks for the amazing quality data! Really enjoyed processing this one. Here's what I did in Photoshop:

• Created RGB image
• Lots of curves/levels adjustments
• Made stars slightly smaller
• Used a few actions with the Astronomy Tools Action Set
• Processed Lum data separately and then blended with RGB data

Yeah that makes sense. The compression of a JPEG probably adds too much noise, which DSS picks up as a star because the background will be very grainy. Then trying to align on the noise will be an impossible task! 

What setting did you change out of interest? Glad you got it working 

59 minutes ago, ollypenrice said:

Are you sure you need darks? Plenty of very advanced DSLR users use dithering and a master bias. The chances of your darks really being at the same temperature are not good, I don't think, and the temperature will have varied during the night anyway. 

Olly

This 👆🏻

What setting do you have selected in the Results and Alignment tabs in the Stacking Parameters window? I made a video tutorial for DSS about 12 months ago which you hopefully find useful https://www.astroexploring.com/deepskystacker you might be able to skip to about the 7 minute mark to confirm your settings for stacking. 
 

HTH

Depends where you’re setting up? I regularly leave my rig going while I head off to bed, I wouldn’t be able to do the hobby otherwise due to work commitments. Never had any issues. Of course I check for possible cable snags, if a meridian flip is needed etc before leaving it but my garden is pretty secure so I don’t have concerns regarding theft. 

Thanks for the replies so far. Just to clarify a few things:

• The requirement for 2 inch filters comes from wanting to upgrade to a dedicated astro cam soon. At the moment I have a couple of clip in DSLR filters, and I don't want to keep buying clip ins as I'll need to buy them again later when I get an astro cam.
• The mount I have is an HEQ5 (belt modded)
• Why a refractor? Just personal preference atm tbh. It will be my only scope so I want it to be a refractor, if it was a second scope I would look into other scope types like an RC or Newt-Mak 🙂
• In terms of targets I like to capture, I'm a big nebulae fan and enjoy capturing those the most. I do like imaging galaxies too but less so at the moment (though that's probably down to the limitations of the FL of the scope). No planetary at this time, that's a whole different rig entirely 😃

Hi everyone! 
A bit of context. I’ve been imaging with the Sky-Watcher Evostar 72ED for nearly 2 years now. I’ve been happy with the images I’m getting with this scope and DSLR but feel it’s time for a change. 
The natural progression that I felt was right was to buy a dedicated astronomy cam but I feel the telescope is the next obvious choice because my scope is the older model with the longer tube assembly and so I can’t use 2 inch filters with it, which puts me at a bit of a disadvantage as I’d be left with a great camera, decent scope but light polluted images. 

I need help deciding which scope to get and I’m hoping the collective experience of SGL might offer some advice. The purchase is purely down to future proofing my setup so that I can use 2 inch filters and a dedicated astro cam when I have more funds available. 

Sky-Watcher Evostar 80ED. Basically the same scope with a slightly longer FL but with the option of using 2 inch filters. The advantage to this one is that it’s cheap and I already have the FF for it as the 72ED uses the same one. Downside is it doesn’t feel like a long term scope for me, or much of an upgrade. 

WO Z73. More expensive, same FL, same glass as 80ED but I hear a lot of people talking about the quality of a WO scope, which I assume justifies the increased cost and why they’re so popular. Is this really a better scope than the Sky-Watcher 80ED? Hoping somebody more informed can tell me. 
 

WO GT71. The most expensive choice but it’s a triplet. Feels like the most long term solution for me but leaves me with not much left in the funds for extra gear so buying that astro cam would be a while off if I went for this scope. How good quality is this triplet? I assume a top quality doublet is better than a low quality triplet? 
 

I have the funds available for any of the telescopes, and I’d sell my 72ED too, but I don’t necessarily want to deplete all my funds just because I have the money available. I’m also open to other scopes if people have other suggestions. 
 

Thanks in advance

Nick

Well done all! Some great images there 😃

Here's my entry. I've never processed a NB image before so this was an exciting thing to learn on a rainy Saturday afternoon! It's taken about an hour to do while I figured out what on earth I was doing with the stars, still couldn't get it right but here's the process I followed using Photoshop:

• Change each individual image to an RGB 16bit image
• Adjust curves and levels, trying to ensure levels are similar across each image
• Load each image into its respective RGB channel in a new file
• Made the stars smaller by selecting highlights, then using the minimum filter (2 pixels)
• Colour corrected the stars as best I could using the selective colour tool
• Used camera RAW filter to remove purple halos from stars
• Used camera RAW filter to reduce noise and colour noise (which really helped with the sky)
• Used camera RAW filter to sharpen the image to reduce the softening that the noise reduction did
• A couple more small curves and levels adjustments
• Saved as PNG
• Enjoy a well earned cuppa tea while typing this up in the hope it helps others

Nick

I assume your camera isn’t modified? You’ll find that a modified camera will show flats as a pink tint due to the over exposure in the red channel. This happened with my camera, I had grey flats until I got it modded. Filters will also give a different colour of flats. For example if I’ve been imaging using my L-eNhance then my flats will give a blueish colour. 
I always try and get my flats about a third of the way in from the left if possible but as I’m using the white t-shirt method I get slightly different results each time depend on how bright it is outside. If yours are in the middle that will be fine, the important thing is to not clip the data. 

I’m planning on making a light pollution video on my YouTube channel in the next couple of weeks. I can point people to the petition in that. I’m not sure what effect it’ll have as I have just under 5k subscribers, but it’s a start! 
 

As pointed out above, the vast majority of people don’t particularly care about the night sky so I plan to look at it from a health, environmental perspective and just general awareness. Not sure how it’ll land but it’s a topic I’m passionate about! 

I recently started using this bundle myself and have nothing bad to say about it. It’s a great little bundle and I’ve managed to successfully guide with it no problem. I use it with a Sky-Watcher 72ED and HEQ5. 
I have a couple of YouTube videos about it in my channel if you wanted to check them out. My channel name is Astroexploring. 
 

Nick

These filters are perfect for a DSLR. I use the similar L-eNhance with my DSLR and intend to upgrade to the L-eXtreme at some point 

I have a video for this on my YouTube channel. Gradient XTerminator is an amazing plugin that has saved my images more than once. 
 

Hello Carl, welcome to SGL 😃

Hi everyone! 

I just bought the Sky-Watcher 50mm Evoguide and ZWO ASI120mm mini for guiding. I need to attach this to my Sky-Watcher 72ED but can't see how I would do that with the various dovetails etc that I have. Does anybody have any experience attaching this particular guide scope to the 72ED? Note, I don't want to put it in the shoe for the guide scope as I want a nice secure fitting on top.

Many thanks!

Nick