Celestron4

 Thanks very much for the advice! I have a Celestron AVX mount and my main imaging scope is a Celestron Nexstar Evolution 6 SCT. I tend to balance the setup with the imaging camera (Canon DSLR) attached if this helps.

Thanks for the advice! I will have a go with longer exposures next time 8 get a clear night. It’s the colour on the smaller galaxy that on some images seems to be a bright orange. Not sure how to get that with my setup. I have a celestron AVX equatorial mount and I use PHD2 for auto guiding  if that explains the star shapes. Would a light pollution filter help at all?

Have you got any advice on how to improve the image?

here is some detail. I may have gone slightly overboard with the sharpening but still seems to be lacking colour. Would Ha make much much difference or is it just a limitation with the camera that I am using? 

Thanks for the advice. I am looking at Ha filters but am using an unmodified DLSR so not sure how well it would work. Longer exposures is something I am definitely looking at trying. 

 I am using an Altair GP-CAM AR013 OC colour camera (which I realise may not be ideal) with a 60mm guidescope. I have ben able to get up to 3 minute exposures without star trailing becoming an issue but am struggling to get the guiding to allow for longer exposures. I have attached my settings and a log file from last night. My target was M101  but ave had the same problem with M42, M51 and M81. Any advice?

PHD2_GuideLog_2020-05-20_221618.txt

I have an image of M51 taken over two nights in the last month. It currently stands at about 2 hrs with of 3 minute exposures and I am planning to add more the I next get the chance. I would like to be able to get more detail (bring out the dust lanes, etc) and was wondering how to do this. Should I be looking at a filter of some sort?

My imaging scope is a Celestron Nextstar Evolution 6 and I am using an unmodified Canon EOS 1100d DLSR to take the images. According to the Clear Outside app, I have class 4 Bortle skies if this helps.

Thanks for the advice! I haven’t got much of a budget in mind at the moment. Just trying to work out how much it would cost but would ideally not be too expensive. My MacBook Air works for the processing at the moment but I want to avoid filling it up with Deep sky stacker files.

Thank you very much for you advice. Is there anything I should look out for when I get a newer PC?

I have an old pc that I was considering making my astrophotgraphy processing pc. It has a 2.8 ghz Dual core processor, integrated ATI Radeon 4270 graphics, a 500gb HDD and I have upped it to 8GB of RAM. Would this be enough to run photoshop and the astronomy tools plugins? I am currently using a 2015 MacBook Air for processing and an old laptop for imaging inch works but would be ideal to avoid filling my MacBook hard drive up if possible. I hope you can help!