MarkAR

If you can afford it there is the Samyang XP range, there an 85mm F1.2 in the collection.

Duplicating exposures just doesn't work. The noise picked up in darks is not consistent in each frame which is what you want to cancel out noise. With lights you will be doubling the signal but also doubling the noise. I'm no expert but it's something along those lines.

The new Sigma ART lenses are superb, at a price though. If you go Sigma it's worth getting the dock to fine tune auto focus. If you just want a lens for astro work then no need for auto focus. Irix lenses might be worth looking at as well.

I think the colour will come with more exposures and careful processing. A light pollution filter will mean taking even longer exposures as they cut out a fair bit of light. I wouldn't use one now if you are going to add the data to the first batch.

Samyang 135mm is very popular on here, even cheaper are some of the old M42 thread lenses. Soligor I think is one that comes to mind.

To start with I think you might have some pretty good data. You could take some more exposures at say 4 mins which will help a little with the fainter dust lanes. When it comes to post processing, little by little is better. Don't try to make the background too dark as you will hide faint dust as well as any left over background noise. Push colour curves around gently to see what works best, the same with sharpening.

Thats a great start, well done.

Excellent image. Very difficult not to burn out the central cluster and I think you've done well.

Wonderful image Carole. Takes skill and patience to tease out that level of image in Bortel 8.

I would have to say you should try to get the best focus you can on each filter. Your final image will be better for it.

Great attempt, I think for nebula mosaics you really need good skies over many nights. Maybe de-saturate the lower portion to balance the colour depth better with the top.

Lovely image. Colour looks great, not over saturated just gentle and pleasing to the eye. I don't think there really is a "correct" colour in NB, just whatever takes your fancy.

Stacked images looking good, misalignment is pretty negligible. I think what you have been creating with your 3D printing is brilliant, I couldn't really get my brain into CAD work.

Always worth having a fiddle to see what works or not. You've managed to bring up the outer halo more but maybe at the cost of noise. Maybe try a little noise reduction masking off everything but the galaxies. Yes a little bit on the blue side me thinks. Dialling that back might make it look less noisy as well. It's all about gentle tweaks, carefully looking at before and after and also trying different processes for the same purpose.

Superb image John, looks like you got some really good data.

If you're on grass then the hot dry day can cause ground shrinkage moving your scope off PA.

One of the great things about PI is that there are a lot of processes that are not order specific. One thing I picked up early is to get rid of noise and background before any stretching, though you can still use other methods after stretching to reduce noise. With video tutorials, most of the time I try to follow them to see how they work and what they do. Then adapt to suit my image, taking some advice from one vid and some from another. Adam Blocks latest series on Weighted Batch PP is very in depth at explaining what the process is doing with your data. Most of it applies to the standard BPP.

Absolutely fantastic shots, superb proms and surface detail.

Looks like a fairly easy repair. Rake out any loose stuff from the break and lay some fibreglass over the top. You can get patch kits from places like Halfords.

Superb, lovely colour balance.

Guiding is a bonus, you should be able to take longer exposures. Probably not necessary for dithering, give it a try.

Youtube wise: Adam Block AstroAddict Harry Page Chris Woodhouse Richard Bloch Mitch

Looks really good. Dithering will help in reducing background noise so you don't have to be so aggressive in post processing.

Cheers guys, looks like it's well worth me dithering and drizzling at my current sample rate of 1.454 "/px though some say you should only drizzle if under sampled.

Super set of images, well done.