Bishkek

Well, after literally reading every single page of this thread for inspiration, motivation and pointers, I began fiddling with some settings in DSS, and I finally have some photos that I believe are worth sharing. These are still projects I would like to add more data to with more clear nights, but this is the season of eternal clouds here in Singapore. Although I'm not completely satisfied with these photos quite yet, I thought I would share my progress with this incredibly wise and helpful community. These pictures are all taken over multiple (at least 3-4) nights, as there is practically no such thing as a house with a backyard in Singapore unless you are a multi-millionaire. So, I have a narrow window to photograph each target through my apartment window every night in the city lights, so all things considered, I'm pretty stoked I managed to capture anything at all. All subs are 30s, with darks and flats taken too, through my Canon 600D with a 75-200mm lens. I had to upload as jpeg as the tiff files were too large. The crab nebula is 1.2 hours of data taken through my telephoto lens piggybacked on my 130SLT Alt Az, processed in PS. I think I need to add more data to this one to get some more of that detail and colour out of it. The Orion Nebula is 1.5 hours of data, same setup, processed in Pixinsight. The obvious go-to for any beginner. The third is NGC2903 in Leo, 3.5 hours of data, processed in PS. I think this one is limited more by the focal length of my lens than anything else, as I began to notice very little increase in SNR after about 2.5 hours of data, but I was glad to see that galaxies can be photographed with this humble setup. Most of them are bigger than I thought they would be. Finally the Pleiades Cluster. This one was a big struggle for some reason. I was trying to get the nebulosity out of it for quite some time, and I was very pleased that I was finally able to bring out some of the glow from the nebulosity not just around Merope, but Alcyone and Maia too. I dont know if adding more data to this one would help too much, as this is already around 3.5 hours of integration processed in PS. I added my 30s subs to my existing fixed tripod subs (1102 x 2.5s) to get a total of 3.5 hours of exposure. Pretty much none of these objects apart from the stars of the Pleiades and the core of M42 are visible visually from where I live, so this was pretty much the first time I was seeing any of these objects for myself without looking them up online. I have a few more projects that I'm still acquiring data for, just have to wait for those rare clear nights. Sorry for the long post.

Thanks so much for these resources! Some incredibly useful information in there. I think I will have to limit myself to 30s exposures given my situation. As some others have suggested, I might look into getting a LP filter, however as I am going to move abroad for university soon, I think I will hold off until after university starts to see if I have the time or funds to continue with AP. No point investing a lot now when I have to leave everything behind in a few months. I'm just a little confused as I have multiple targets on which I have taken up to 500 subs at 30s, However the signal and fuzziness does not seem to be getting any better than it was at 200 subs. Maybe I'm just terrible at processing (I use photoshop). Any advice or tips would be greatly appreciated. Heres some info if it would help: Im using a Canon 600D with a 70-200mm Telephoto lens piggybacked on my Nexstar 130SLT, all subs are of 30s (the most I can manage without any streaks). I stack using Sequator (more lenient than DSS and it rejects less subs) and post process in photoshop. Btw loving some of the pictures on here, this thread is an absolute lifesaver

If anyone is still active here, I'm just moving from static tripod astrophotohraphy to piggyback astrophotohraphy using a Canon 600D attached to my nexstar 130slt mount. (I'm not going prime focus as I am not keen on fiddling with the mirror and bolts, and a Barlow restricts what little light can be seen through the intense light pollution.) As I live in Singapore, an extremely light polluted city ranking at bortle class 9, I have a question regarding my exposure and ISO. I can take 30s exposures without field rotation becoming prevalent. However I am unsure what ISO setting to be using. I am afraid that setting the ISO too low will cause me to lose details in the data I capture, and likewise if I set the ISO too high the pictures become almost completely red. For reference, an ISO of 400 at 30s will already start giving me a pretty strong red tinge in my photos. I am aware that nothing can be done to fix the absolutely abysmal sky conditions, so I guess it boils down to which is will cause less detail loss. Should I stick to the lower ISO and lose some fainter detail and get less red skies, or crank up the ISO to try and maximise the detail captured at the cost of having very red skies and attempt to fix it in post?