AstroNebulee

If I were you stick with your Canon firstly to see if you really get into it. I used my unmodded Canon 450D and 600D for a year before biting the bullet on an dedicated astro camera. Then you can hone your skills in gently with learning the basics in AP (and I'm still learning so much now and will never stop 😊) I'm glad I used my dslr at first. Just adding a T-ring to the scope and dslr will pull out some great images. I run my AzGti in eq mode and run firmware 3.37,brilliant little portable mount for AP. Cheers Lee

Agreed its a great mod indeed. I generally keep mine as locked as much as possible, the only time I undo the clutch is when tinkering with the mount. Then will stay locked till the next tinker.

Yep I wanted to try as osc first to see what could be achieved. It was easy removing the purple /blue fringing. I used the repair module to reshape the stars as I have an eggy issue (maybe I can fo away with the repair as SV decon does a pretty good job and I've hopefully sorted the back spacing in the camera better) But if I didn't use the repair module the edges of the stars looked better. To remove the grey halo around the star core I wert back into filter created the mask for stars and then chose 'nudge screen' and clicked the grey halo part which lightened it. Then I'm trying to soften the edges of the halo, the inage using the extra shrink worked best, still a lot of playing about to do but progress made I think. If you can decipher my scratch pad good luck haha, the other side is worse. It will need a touch of tweaking but the body of it is there now. Reading the notes in the manual, synth module may be my friend here to help the edges of the stars. 👍

What is the sleeve mod, not sure I've heard of this before? Or I may of I the deep recesses of my ickle brain.

I have been trying all weekend to get some sort of workflow sorted for this issue. I have also been reading a lot in the star tools forum and realise the stars aren't meant to be this way rather than blobs. Theses are very roughly processed and not had the final tweak in photoshop but I'm much happier with these. I'll post a screenshot of my scribbling workflow if anyone can decipher it. There are two examples one using an extra shrink module with halo extend and one with using the flux module and noise. It still needs a tweak here and there but I'm much happier now.

This was in reply to @Ratletquestion on imaging with the 130pds. Though as your just going to be doing visual with the bresser 102 give it a go. It could work well😊

As @badhexsaid no harm in trying but as stated maybe a bit heavy and long for the az gti. But hey we are all pushing the boundaries of this great little mount here 👍

Maybe to much vibration for deep sky imaging but maybe OK for planetary and lunar imaging, just a thought.

Good luck and looking forward to your reports 👍

Brilliant, fantastic news. So pleased it worked for you now and you can accurately align. 👍 If your mount isn't permanently set up outside I think you have to reset the alignment, then when you take your mount out again perform the 3 star alignment. In the depths of my poor brain I think anyway.

I'd like 2 setups like @LaurenceT. I'm purely imaging but do hanker for the simplicity of visual.

Sounds like you had a brilliant time, yerp the best time to check the kits all behaving like it should is a full moon. Really pleased that your happy with your az gti and the first outing 😊 Plus you did well getting anything last night. I could even get the moony, was blowing a hooley and the moon wasn't clearing the trees fast enough so losing my mojo big time and came in.

It could be a number 12 yellow on a quick Google search but probably wrong, I was advised of a ir uv cut filter for use with my 294MC pro so that's what I bought, maybe these dont help the CA but then my 72ed is a low end scope 😞

Thank you for the suggestion, sadly way out of my price range but maybe when funds allow I'll look into it 👍

Thank you, it did cross my mind about creating a starless and separate stars image to see if that could help, thank you plenty to try out over the weekend 👍

Your correct happy kat, it'll be a case of making the halos less obvious with the CA in processing. Thank you for trying to help me too 👍

That's looks quite lovely indeed. I think I will have to accept some grey halo around the stars in this image. It's giving them a softness too. Sadly my version of photoshop camera raw cannot cope with this. I shall have to find a workaround somehow. Like I said if I could soften the edges of the halo would be good enough I think. Thank you for trying to help this baffoon 👍

I have tried this but they still have the grey halo around the star, something im missing here i think.

Thank you, I've tried in my version of photoshop it doesn't seem to do a great job on it to be fair. I'll attach the tiff file of the steps before I'd use the fringe killer in startools. Im completely at a loss for a moment and will have to step away for a few hours I think. Before fringe killer.tiff

Thank you I shall have a look at that. I can see what you mean with this, I have a shed load of stars with the purple fringing, it would be nice if there was a way of really tightening and the halo left behind. I find that the sv decon module tightens up the core and leaves a big halo no matter which decon mode I try. I will look at user notes in the forum. Edit..... now read the special instructions and will try it and see if it helps. 👍

Hi I am using star tools 1.8 and after using fringe killer in the filter module im left with a grey halo that i just cannot get rid of in any other module. Could someone please help me in bringing the halo tighter to the star core. My workflow to this point is: Autodev-Bin-Crop-Wipe-Autodev (with roi)-Contrast-HDR-Sharp-SV decon sv mode-Colour-Filter fringe killer. I have tried lots of combinations in the shrink module but cannot get rid of it. My setup is skywatcher 72ed az gti in eq mode, zwo 294 mcpro with 2 inch zwo ir uv cut filter, guiding with zwo f4 guidescope using an asiair pro. I shall add the full unstreched tif file when home from work. I have attached a screenshot of the issue and tif file of the process after using fringe killer. I should add I have used the astronomy tool reduce purple halos in photoshop cs4 version 11 and leaves a grey halo around the star making it look awful on nebulae. Startools after fringe killer.tiff

Sounds perfect 👍 I did mine like I have so to keep everything central and in line to the ota, which should keep balance better, in my way of thinking. So camera and guidecam wires stay in place along the ota. So only the eqdir cable and power cables are the ones needing to be carefully routed to stop snagging (if you see what I mean)

Mines not an asiair plus, but I mounted mine on the underside of the ota dovetail with an angled camera bracket.

Fantastic, can't wait to see the pics and your first light 👍

Yep true, better off in a osc setup I guess, not really looked into oag before.