AstroNebulee

Hi I have a star adventurer 2i wifi pro on order with FLO since 5th Feb, through no fault of their own, the next star adventurer next shipment may now be mid to late May. They have offered me a chance of the ioptron skyguider pro package instead as these are now in stock. The equipment I shall use either tracker on are a sw evostar 72ed ds pro on it and the other set up will be my Canon 450d with kit lens, nifty fifty and tamron 70-300mm, then maybe also if my az gti mount would fit on the ioptron wedge. It'll all be mounted on my star adventurer tripod I received with my az gti mount, I really am smitten by the star adventurer 2i wifi pro pack and researchrd it thoroughly. Thoughts and advice anyone please. Clear skies

Try processing it and see what you get, nothing to lose there, great start 👍

As lazy astronomer said a little refractor and a mak are the two scopes to aim for ideally. Both planets and DSOs require a good level of processing but planets and Luna are easier I find in my very short experience. I use a zwo asi120mc-s for planetary and lunar imaging on my skymax 127 az gti (also my dslr for lunar imaging full disc also on my skymax 127). Then just my dslr at the moment for DSOs, shortly to be used with an evostar 72ed and star adventurer. I used to have a sw 150p on eq3-2 which could just about fulfil use on DSOs and planets, it's not an all rounder by any means but it's close to me anyway. I had to sell as it wasn't portable for me in a flat. You will need a good mount and tripod for AP so that's another thing to consider, clear skies.

+1 for making every photon count, I really informative easy to understand book, essential for astrophotography beginners

Got my ticket, had a check on CO and MO first, both showed cloudy so boutght my ticket, probably be clear now 😂, really looking forward to this webinar, I always loved stargazing live

Plus 1 for a x2 Barlow, I use much more than my x3 Barlow which hardly gets any use.

+1 for a bahtinov mask, can be focused using a bright star to get the refraction spikes correctly lined up, then move back to the moon and should be nicely in focus.

When I use my dslr in prime focus on my scope, when focusing I use the 5x and then 10x zoom function with live screen on my dslr to get the focus as sharp as possible. Clear skies

Here is my attempt at the moon this evening before it got proper dark with my Canon 450d, Skymax 127 az gti, iso 100, processed in pipp, best 12% of 74 images stacked in as3, conservative sharpening in registax and curves in ps4. Plus my first attempt at earthshine with my dslr, I only had my nifty fifty with me at the time. Everything began dewing up pretty quickly after this and got quite cold, transparency was poor.

Hi I think if that view of the HH nebula was through your st80 we would all be buying them pretty dam quick if they were in stock. The sky at night magazine is very good for listing things happening or to view in a calendar month and even the sky at night planetarium monthly vlog on YouTube proves very useful. If you have a smartphone try stellarium app it's very very good and you can use it on the pc to plan your viewing sessions. I use it a lot. Also try astronomy tools website where you can input your scope and Eyepieces to see what the real view would look like at certain objects http://astronomy.tools/calculators/field_of_view/ Clear skies

On mine when it slews to a target the right and up arrows flash gently and these have to be pressed before the alignment bar will be allowed to be pressed to confirm alignment, hope this helps, clear skies

Thank you, I generally use my old smart phone to control my az gti mount so won't let that one update to android 11. Also when I get my sear adventurer with the Sam console app. Thanks again, clear skies

Welcome to the most friendliest place for all things astro, they have helped me no end on here with my baffoonary questions, it's a good thing your doing all the research first before getting your scope also as there's not many available at the moment but a few are starting to appear on the used market. Most of all have fun and enjoy this wonderful hobby and the slippery slope of astrophotography 😁

Exciting times ahead 😁, saw the st80 thread here last night (including mods video bt astronomy shed I think) and just how versatile they are and the little mods that can be done on them to make a relatively cheap frac a worthwhile piece of equipment, hope you enjoy this beaut, clear skies

I'm definitely going to try this next time as my max iso on my Canon 450d is 1600 so a good experiment by just taking flats along with the lights, I do take darks normally, bias as well as these are only quick as flats. Thanks again. Astrophotography the hobby that just keeps taking 😉, the slippery slope ensues for both of us.

Thank you for sharing your settings, it's interesting you didn't take any darks, that'll bring the taking time of the calibration frames down , I may experiment with this. I often use starnett ++ when processing DSOs as you can alter the nebulosity and dust lanes much easier. Your images aspire me for when my SA will arrive using my dslr and tamron 70-300mm lens. I love your images and your set up in the previous photographs is very portable which is what I'm looking at, so I can walk to dome dark sites around here and a couple of miles to the cliffs for wide field imaging. Hopefully when my evostar 72ed is delivered I can get some nice images. Keep up the good work, clear skies 👍

Thank you, I have a spare longer dovetail from my old 150p so hopefully that'll be long enough to balance the scope on the SA

They are fantastic images, how many subs and settings on both images did you have. The rosette nebula with your unmoded dslr is fantastic 👌

I use stellarium and bump up the satellite slider in the settings and put the time to when the satellite passes the preferred object

The star adventurer and evostar 72ed ds pro are very capable and compatible for astrophotography together.

Mars, Pleiades and Hyades with a cheeky NGC 1646, 29x30 sec 1600iso 3.2f 50mm, plus extra Beehive cluster 5x30sec same settings, stacked in dss and processed in ps, the slight glow in the bottom left of the Pleiades image is when a neighbour decided to turn on all the lights in their house, thus creating more LP for me. Never going to win any awards but I'm happy with the results so far, stars are a bit eggy but Omegon lx2 mini track was playing up a bit, good to get some nebulosity in the Pleiades though and NGC 1647 in shot. Clear skies

I'd be interested in this also after the review in the sky at night magazine, I have a star adventurer and 72ed ds pro on order so be good to here what others are achieving unguided as this is what I'll be doing. Clear skies

I was using my skymax 127 az gti with canon 450d and tried to get a few double stars for the first time. Visually I could see quite a few double stars but was harder to image them. Anyway here are my very poor first offerings in this genre. First up is Castor then Iota Cancri which looked so much better through the ep and lastly Mintaka. Clear skies

I've only just got around to processing this as best I can. Here is the lower half of Orion taken on the 1-3-21 with my canon 450d unmodded on lx2 mini track. 56x1min subs 1600iso 3.5f . 8 x darks, 8 x flats, 10 bias. Think its the best I'm going to get unless I get my dslr modded or take many more subs. I do have 28 minutes worth of subs from the previous night shot at the same settings and the outside temp was the same so may try and add those to the 56 from here, well its worth a try and see how that goes. Bit of light pollutio coming in at the bottom of the image due to the local high street and side road off it.

Yes I agree they are good for bridging visual to imaging, plus good to learn the constellations and star positioning. Good luck with the astrophotography later on with Pleiades and Mars, it's not looking great at the moment for us in Cornwall but I'm hoping to also attempt it again with much better framing (still learning the ropes here) as I think I'm ok with the Orion image I'm working on now. Clear skies