Somerled7

I've been adding a Pegasus Astrobox to my kit to power some dew heaters, and as that requires a 12V power supply, I bought a Leisure Battery to power it all. At first I connected my HEQ5 to one of the 12V outputs from the Pegasus but then thought there would be less cable stretch if I took 2 power lines from the battery one for the HEQ5 and one for the Pegasus. Set that up today, switched on - mount LED glows red. I then tried connecting my laptop to my Synscan WiFi - it connects to the WiFi OK, but said it couldn't find the device (I assume that means the HEQ5). At first I thought it might be to do with the WiFi connection, as yesterday I changed it from Access mode to Station mode, but then I tried the hand controller, and got a message that it couldn't connect to the MC (Motor Controller?) So now I'm thinking that the problem is the HEQ5 mount itself, and it's not talking to either handset or WiFi dongle. Maybe in setting up the new power supply I've switched off and on a few times too often and blown something, or maybe connecting to a new battery at about 12.8V was too much? A quick look and a replacement motherboard is about £120, so I'd like to be sure that's the problem before spending that much.

Planets and nebula require two quite different approaches. Planets are very small but bright, so need a very long focal length to magnify them. As they are affected by atmospheric distortions, the usual technique is to record a video stream of hundreds of frames and use software to automatically select and stack the sharpest frames. Nebula are fairly large but dim, so require a short(ish) focal length and long exposures, which basically means a tracking mount. If you already have lenses at about 300mm, you might not need a telescope at first, just a tracking mount.

A reflecting telescope is pretty simple really, so if it's been well looked after, it should be OK. I bought my 200P (and the HEQ5) second hand and both have been fine. However I'm no expert on the finer points of buying second hand scopes!

If you are buying the whole setup as a used package, then it makes more sense - especially if you can get it all at a good price. It should work very well for visual if that's your first priority and the long focal length would be good for planets and lunar when you don't need long exposures. As I said in my earlier post, the scope is a bit big for the mount for long exposures. However the good new is that the HEQ5 is a very good mount for astro-photography, so if you want to get into DSOs later, you could always add a smaller scope.

Welcome to Stargazer's Lounge!! I have a 200P on an HEQ5 which I bought for visual observing a few years ago. I then tried astro photography with it, and yes it gathers plenty of light but it's also a large scope to point and track accurately. I re-started my Astro-Photography journey this summer with a small 72mm refractor which the HEQ5 points and tracks with ease and I'm now building up equipment and experience. Astro Photography is a steep learning curve and trying to learn with a large, long scope makes it even harder. So, if you are buying specifically for Astro Photography I'd go for a smaller scope - refractor or small Newtonian - but if the latter, ensure it has enough focus travel to accept a camera.

Managed to find a couple of hours break in the clouds, so took a last look at Andromeda for this year - I'm still sticking to easy targets! My Guide Scope iced up pretty quickly, so I gave up on guiding and restricted my individual exposures to 60 seconds to avoid star trails. In the end, I managed 87 minutes exposure time and I'm pretty happy with the outcome - at least the stars look round even without guiding. I now need to address the dew problem as I had to borrow my wife's hairdryer a few times. A dew heater for my guide scope actually turned up a few days ago, but I'm waiting on some other bits and pieces, then I'll sort out the installation. Canon EOS80D, Altair Astro EDF72, Skywatcher HEQ5, Wife's Hairdryer!

This is an uncropped image, so is basically what you get with a 430mm scope and an APS-C sensor. I'm sure there's a lot of faint nebulosity in the rest of the frame, but unfortunately I've not captured this with my short exposure.

Since May I've been gradually getting together my first proper astro-rig and getting to grips with the software. A few weeks ago I made some slight adjustments to my scope to try eliminate some star notches and I've been waiting for clear weather to test it out. Last weekend, we finally had a reasonably clear night, so I started getting everything set up. There then followed a comedy of errors as I struggled with polar alignment , dodgy USB connections and my laptop running out of juice because I forgot to plug it in while I was sorting the other problems. I thought I was finally getting somewhere with imaging the Orion nebula when I tripped over the cables and disconnected the laptop, at which point I decided to call it a night. So, this is just 5 minutes total exposure time on Orion. Obviously not brilliant but I'm pleased with it for such a short exposure, and at least the stars now look round, which is a step forward. Any critique/suggestions for improvement welcome. Skywatcher HEQ5, Altair Astro 72 EDF, Canon EOS80D, Altair Astro 60mm Guide Scope, QHY5L-II Guide Camera. PhD guiding, Backyard EOS capture software.

If you had a planet with a distant star lined up immediately behind it, then due to parallax, as the earth turned slightly the apparent position of the planet would change more then the position of the star, and the star would peep out from behind the planet. However the distances are so great and the angles so small that it would be very hard (impossible??) to measure. However the parallax effect of the earth going round the sun can certainly be used to measure stellar distances.

Thanks for the replies. I've done more investigation, and by sticking a finger into the image found the notch lines up with one of the sets of screws on the lens cell (there are 4 sets of two screws around the cell). I've very slightly slackened the screws and tried again - only managed a very quick untracked image of Capella between clouds by ramping up ISO, so there's lots of noise and it's not a very good test, but it looks more promising.

I've been setting up my new scope - an Altair Astro 72EDF, and I'm seeing a distinct notch in saturated stars, as if something is protruding into the light path - example image attached. I've tried changing around the back end of my kit by removing the field flattener and light pollution filter, and rotating the camera, but this has no effect (when I rotate the camera, the notch also rotates, so in same position relative to the scope). Also tried retracting the dew shield, but again no change. I've had a good look down the scope, but can't see anything protruding, so I'm at a bot of a loss. I've e-mailed Altair Astro, but wondered if anyone on here could offer any advice or suggestions for more investigating. Thanks Gordon

OK Steve, thanks for looking into it. It's early days for me and I am still getting together the gear that I need. The CLS is the only filter I have at the moment, but maybe it's too strong and I should see what I can do without it. Eventually I plan to get a dedicated Astro camera , but I'm not quite there yet.

Hi Steve, PNG file attached. I've done a few stretches to lift the histograms, but that's all - the image has a strong turquoise cast due to the CLS filter. looking at the colour channels, the red already shows a fair bit of noise, but unfortunately that's the channel with the nebula detail. The blue and green channels look cleaner, so I'm thinking the filter has cut out a lot of red and pushed what's left down into the noise. Maybe I'd be better without the filter and handle the light pollution in post processing, but I thought the CLS filter was intended for emission nebulae?

I've been spending the last couple of months getting together some kit (mainly a new scope Altair Astro 72EDF) and learning about polar alignment and plate solving using Sharp Cap and Astro Tortilla. I've finally got some extended time on a subject - The Pelican Nebula. My sky quality is Bortle 5 (Artificial Glow around 900MicroCD/m**2 according to Clear Outside). Scope: Altair Astro 72 EDF# Camera: Canon EOS 80D (unmodified) Filter: Astronomik CLS 40 x 300s Light ( 3hr 20mins) 22 x Darks+ Flats and Bias Stacked in Deep Sky Stacker and processed in Photoshop. I'm mainly interested in feedback on the processing. After stacking, I've done some curves stretches in Photoshop whilst in 32 bit mode, then switched to 16 bit and adjusted the background colour using levels adjustments on each channel. A few more stretches, then some cosmetic edits to highlights, contrast clarity etc in Camera Raw, and finally some noise reduction using Topaz Labs. I feel I have a lot of noise/grain in the image and maybe I've tried a bit too hard to hard to pull out detail that isn't really there! Any feedback welcome.

Look what arrived today - a baby telescope. Up to now, I have been using a Skywatcher 200PDS for observing and various camera lenses for astro-photography, but I have finally invested in a small Refractor to develop my Astro-Photography a bit more. Pictured here on my HEQ5, the scope is 72mm diameter and focal length of 432mm, so F6.0. I also purchased a 1 times field flattener so that it maintains the same focal length (which keeps a bit of separation from my 300mm Canon lens). The scope has a nice quality feel to it - everything fits and moves precisely. To start with I'll be autoguiding using the finder-scope from my 200PDS, but I intend to add a proper guide scope at some point in the future. Now, if only I'd ordered a T mount adapter, I could connect my camera and try it out....doh!!

I've had the same problem with removing the blue-green colour with the CLS flter. I tried taking a white balance image (picture of a white card) and use the auto white balance eye dropper in Lightroom. Both the temperature and tint sliders went all the way to the right, which seemed ridiculous. However, when I've applied that correction to my Raw Files and saved as a Tiff it does give a better starting point for the stacking process.

It's the Canon B(W) mount ring, but needs to be a third party version that hinges open - I think the proper Canon version doesn't have a hinge, so wouldn't work. It's slightly large, so needs a bit of padding to clamp the lens barrel tightly.

I have a QHY5LII Colour camera which I was using for guiding a couple of years ago. I've recently re-started Astro-photography with a new laptop, but am now having problems getting the camera to run. Both laptops are running identical versions of Windows 10. On the older laptop (which runs OK) I have QHY drivers dated 23/04/15. Sharp Cap, EZPlanetary and PHD all run fine with the camera connected to either USB2 or USB3 sockets. On my new laptop (USB3 only), I have tried QHY drivers dated 12/12/14 (from the original disc with the camera) and also drivers from 23/04/15 and 19/05/16 from the QHY website. SharpCap runs OK on my new laptop, which shows the camera can work, however EZPlanetary runs for maybe 30seconds and then locks up, and PHD runs without reporting errors, but shows a white image with a few speckles that never changes even when I cover the camera - that's during the day, I haven't tried it at night yet. I'm at a bit of a loss on what to do next. I could continue to use my old laptop, but it's a bit slow, so any suggestions welcome. (PS - I'm not up to using ASCOM drivers yet - that adds a whole extra layer of complication!)

Thanks guys. Sounds like I'm doing it about right, but having a specific target for the blacks is useful to know.

I recently bought an Astronomik clip-in CLS filter, so now instead of a pink sky I get a turquoise one. I can get longer exposures before the background sky dominates, but I'm still left with a major colour correction to do, as shown in the attached image. So any advice on the best way to do thus in Photoshop? I've been using a Levels adjustment, shifting the black level on each colour channel up to the bottom of the histogram peak, but I've also seen it suggested to use a white balance correction (which I've tried, but that gives quite a muddy image), or create a custom white balance by photographing a white card. Any advice welcome.

Here's my second attempt at the North American Nebula. 25*300s exposures at ISO400:- - 300mm F4 Canon lens - EOS80D + Astronomik CLS filter - HEQ5 Mount - QHY-5LII guide camera + Skywatcher 50mm finderscope used as the guide scope I finished taking lights as the sun was coming up, so I went to bed and left the camera taking darks, but the battery ran out after the first 6.....doh! Processed in Photoshop, I've experimented using the Screen blend mode and luminosity masks to bring out the detail whilst preserving the star colour. This seems more repeatable than applying arbitrary curve stretches., but I'm still experimenting with the processing.

It's on a crop frame (EOS80D). ED80 was due for delivery by end of this month, but who knows - I'm expecting it will probably be delayed.

I've seen reports that the Sigma lens can be a bit soft at 600mm, but I've found it acceptably sharp for wildlife images at full focal length and it's a lot of lens for the money, so no complaints from me. The hardest thing is holding the weight of the lens, so I get more poor images because I shook the camera rather than due to optical limitations of the lens. For astro work, there's a little bit of distortion on the stars and a bit of chromatic aberration, so not ideal. That's why I've ordered an ED80 - it gives a similar focal length/aperture to the Sigma, but I'm hoping the simpler optical path will give sharper stars.

I'm already finding that there's probably no such thing as a 'do-it-all' scope. I was observing visually and picked up a second hand 200mm Newtonian at a good price. Great for observing, but not so good for the steep learning curve of astro-photography. I think if photography is something you are interested in pursuing, the advice is always to start small. You can still do visual observations with an ED80 and adding a larger Newtonian for observing later is not that expensive (in the context of astronomical prices !!)

600mm. The image is also cropped in a bit.