BlueStinger

I too live in a first floor flat, but luckily my entrance is external so I get a small platform at the top of the steps to my front door to mount my tripod. Means I only get views West-North-East but I'm happy enough, especially as Orion will be nicely placed soon before moving off south and out of view again next year. Now that darkness has returned I will probably spend half the time at home and the other off at some darker site. Always nice to not have to go anywhere though so a garden would be a bonus but I didnt have this interest when I moved in so maybe my next place... Good luck getting that new window and yes some astronomy is better than none!

Hi, Andromeda has been a favourite of mine since this hobby took off for me earlier this year. I was thrilled to capture it at first, just a little smudge in the sky. Very smiliar to your pic above dated July 29th. Awesome! I have a friend that is also very new and I had to point out that he had caught Andromeda in his shot one night. He didn't believe that that little smudge was a Galaxy at first, now he's looking for it all the time lol. Anyway, I have very basic equipment. Just a Canon 700D and a few lenses but for these two pics below I used a 50mm f1.8 lens @f2.8 and cropped them. I intend to use my 55-250 stm lens now I have a star tracker and get a chance. The first pic was 250, untracked, 4 secs shots with iso 1600. Just light frames. Bortle 5 location at home. The second pic was my first attempt with a tracker (Omegon minitrack LX3) Same location at home, same lens, cropped again, 35x1.5mins stacked, iso 200. Just light frames again too. This pic really impressed friends and family but they don't know better haha!

A nice late delivery today. A new tripod to replace my cheap and cheerful Amazon Basics one. Pretty decent, and the Ballhead is nice, except the release plate which is plastic and not metal like my other ballhead, but happy enough!

I'd be more than happy with that setup. I shall also check used tripods too then. Thanks for the pics!

Hi. Following up from last nights first attempt with the LX3 I now have lots of questions! Mainly regarding a tripod and wedge. Last night really showed just how poor my cheap £21 Amazon basics tripod is when it comes to this. Not only is it too wobbly even when weighed down but the pan and tilt head is far from smooth enough to make any sort of polar allignment with the polar scope frustrating to say the least, for me as a beginner anyway. I knew it would be bad but thought it would tide me over. No, it has to be replaced, asap. My budget is £130ish, as the car is sucking up funds at the moment. Could I even get away with just a better tripod like this Bresser? Or is the wedge really the best option? If so I was looking at something like this one. which I can remove the included ballhead and put a wedge there. Maybe something like the Sky watcher one for the star adventurer or Omegon's own one? Would this be a decent set up? FInally to the polar scope and allignment. The above shots I just pointed the tracker towards Polaris the adjusted using the small scope holder. Not great of course but as I was going widefield I thought it would be ok. I tried the included scope, but couldn't really see much and the tripod heads movement was so jerky it made it impossible for me. I want to use it though. There is an overlay in the eyepiece (which I couldn't see as it was dark) and there is also a clock face around the eyepiece, which I read is for the meridian. How do I do that with this LX3? I see it can be lined up if used on a star adventurer and such but not this tracker. The LX2 just had a tube, can this LX3 make full use of this scope for precise allignment? The instructions just say put scope in and point at polaris, which isn't really helpful as they say the same thing for the tube for the LX2. I do love the ticking noise the mount makes though, it's quite soothing I thought. Cheers.

Hi, Right so tonight was the first night I got to use the tracker. Lack of time, poor choice of location for first pic, iffy at best polar alignment in second shot, forgetting to level tripod, and using a cheap pan and tilt headed tripod didnt help, but colour me impressedwith myself! First pic is heavily cropped from the 18mm kit lens original as there was bushes that I didn't take any static shots of and they were all blurred to hell as you can imagine but kept the final image as it's the most detailed picture I've ever taken and my very first with any star tracker! Having Jupiter and Saturn in there is very nice I think. 5 stacked 4 minute shots iso 800 f4.5 This one I was going for Andromeda, and when checking I saw the little blur and thought all was well, turns out I missed it but managed to get Triangulum instead haha! This was with a 50mm 1.8 lens at f2.8, 6 stacked 1.5min shots iso 200

You could look at a Tamron SP AF 11-18mm f/4.5-5.6 lens thats £120 good and £135 excellent conditions used on mpb. Seems it's got a rubbish autofocus which won't matter much I guess for nightsky work at least. Obviously better lenses out there but could be a solution for the budget.

It arrived today. I can't get over just how small it is! Can't wait to have a go with it.

Today my first star tracker arrived from Germany. Very excited! Bonus point for the pack of Haribo's

Sorry for bump but finally gotten around to ordering the LX3 set direct from Omegon. Got the bag too. My first tracker mount. I'm quite excited to be honest

Hi, I was happy to find I caught this last night while trying to get some milky way shots with my dodgy kit lens from my backdoor. So I made a small giff. Timestamps were 0120. Hope you don't mind me posting it here. TimeLapse 05_15_2020_11_41_45.mp4

First I've even heard of that. I keep finding other options for tracking like this the more I look into it

I've just found out about the Omegon Mini Track LX3. I had no idea there was a modern wind up mount available. It looks perfect for my needs I reckon, so I'm going to get one later this month for sure.

I've spent quite a bit of time looking up cheap trackers over the last few weeks as have decided to get one later this month. Today I saw this thing and after reading pretty much only positives I think I'm going to get the LX3 over a star adventurer or similar. The sky at night magazine review of the LX2 and this review https://issuu.com/amateurastophotography/docs/issue62 (starts at page 14) plus this thread have sold me for sure. Cheers

Thanks. I just wanted to get as much light in without too much compromise untill I find it's sweet spot, which will be when tracking I guess, but it does seem very capable at f2.8 especially considering the price! I'm still learning so things can only improve, I hope. I've looked into these but they all seem a little big for me. I'd like something I can throw in a bag and carry with me without too much hassle.

Thanks a lot. I like the variety of star colours, which I'll come back to in a bit....Yes, focus wise being able to go in that bit more is the key I think, even with the 10x mag of liveview. Vega is in the right place for me and nice and bright, so have been using it for focus. I may invest in a Bahtinov Mask once I get the tracker, to get the best focus I can. I wasn't going to go that far, as in get a tracker, but I feel that since I got the dslr last month, and only use it to shoot the sky at night, I may aswell get the best from it. So that means a tracker, which I'm kinda excited about. Also maybe getting the camera modded, but that one I'm not too sure about yet because I've read about star colours changing too much, even though I would LOVE to see some more colour overall. Maybe a clip in filter... So many things to think about for a complete noobie like myself. Anyway sorry to whittle on. I also took a couple other shots last night if you're interested. Well I'll post them anyway. All just stacked and just a light edit. Same camera settings I think. You can see some chromatic abberation but today I downloaded the lens tool and updated so my camera now can sort it. If not I'll learn how to do properly with lightroom. I was trying to find Comet Atlas here but then realised I don't have a hope in hell of seeing it with what I have lol. Still, I'm always amazed at just how many stars are actually out there. Capella to the lower left. I think I can see The Jolly Roger cluster over to the right? Here I was trying to get The Great Hercules cluster but was way off, I should have just checked. Vega to the bottom left. It seems like there is a word spelled out in stars to the bottom right

That's pretty cool, nice one EDIT, Thanks for mentioning the focus, it's about the only thing I mange to get right at the moment hehe. I use a very old magnifying lens my grandad gave me many years ago to get that extra close up in liveview when focusing on a star. Works a treat.

Such a lovely constellation and one that is easily visable all night from my location, helped me find Andromeda for the first time, and is interesting to PC gamers in that AMD's current GPU architecture is codenamed 'Navi' (although I currently own a previous 'Vega' gpu). So I got myself a 50mm F1.8 lens yesterday and wanted to try it out. Not great conditions with the moon up and lots of clouds rolling by, but that wasn't going to stop me. I had to crop somewhat as my framing was awful and clouds didn't help, but hey, they can only get better! I'm really looking forward to getting a star tracker at the end of the month, I'm sure this will help a ton! 20x4s, iso1600, f2.8. 50mm f1.8 stm on a stock canon 700D.

Second and final delivery of the day. Three aftermarket lens hoods (inc the one I didn't know I wouldn't need) and a cheap intervalometer.

Hi. My first post here, but I'm sure it won't be my last in this awesome thread! Had the dslr nearly a month now and wanted one of these little 50mm F1.8 lenses since. Looking forward to comparing it to the kit lenses I have been using. I'm getting a Star Adventurer or similar at the end of this month, then a 14mm f2.8 lens then maybe get the camera modded, and then some other things I guess haha. Anyway here's the new addition! Now I did order a lens hood (and for my other 2 lenses) mainly for protection and there was no mention of this coming with one. I wasn't going to pay for a Canon one so ordered a cheap one for 1/3 of the price. Then I open this and there's a Canon one included, typical! Lined up next to my other lenses. A selfie I love the stubby looks.

Magic Lantern is compatible with the 6D and as far as I know it will allow for more than 30sec exposures.

I also watched the Nico Carver video you mention Robindonne and bought the exact one he used (just a coincedence as it was the cheapest and only one in stock I could find) https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B008A3PDMY/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s03?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Skyview is a nice app. The augmented reality is pretty accurate and has some other nice features. Worth a quick look. On iOS and Android. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.t11.skyviewfree&hl=en_GB

I have a pair of cheap and cheerful Celestron Skymaster 15x70s that I've owned for about 6 weeks now. I can hand hold them for short bursts but I usually just pop them on my equally cheap and cheerful tripod for anything more than a quick look. I will say that every review I read before I purchased them mentioned that the included tripod adaptor is rubbish. I'm glad I trusted them and bought a cheap metal L shape adaptor at the same time because the included one really is awful. It's so flimsy it takes upto 10 secs for the wobble to subside with the slightest touch. The metal one eliminates this and cost £4.60. The carry case is ok, again it's flimsy but looks nice enough. All in all I really like them. I get a nice sharp image In each eye and the main focus wheel is smooth and easy to operate with one finger. I was using them to take pictures with my phone, the cheap adaptor I got works well attached to an eyepad, but I soon learnt that cameras are better for taking pictures and binoculars are better to observe and just enjoy the nightsky with both eyes!

Sorry, I should have given a bit more info in my first post. I'm new to astrophotography and image processing etc but have been a pc gamer for a long long time so when I hear high end I think of high end for gaming and that gets expensive when trying to push above resolutions beyond 1080p. Anyway, I'm just going to echo what has been said above and say the cpu is most important. Any Intel i5 (or better i7) or AMD Ryzen will be fine and I would avoid i3s and older AMD based systems. Too few cores and/or too slow core speeds for a modern windows system. 8gb ram minimum (speed not really important unless gaming on a Ryzens integrated gpu) and if you can budget it in I recommend an SSD for storage, but either can be upgraded in most laptops, especially the latter, for not a lot of cash. You should be able to get a nice 1080p screen but size would depend on budget and of course it will effect battery life and weight. The site old_eyes above links to seems pretty good, lots of choice and looks like some good deals to be had. I wouldn't worry about what brand it is, it doesn't make any difference to how it will perform overall.