Clarkey

Don't do it!! My first purchase was January last year. Everything listed below is since then. Guilty as charged. I do have a problem though. The house insurance has just come up for renewal and my better half wants to know how much cover to add for my astro gear. 😱😬

I can't answer the second question as I do not use Sharpcap (yet). With regards the FOV I suspect this is normal. The Mak 127 has a 1500mm FL and the sensor on the SV305 is fairly small. You can look it up here astronomy.tools

The other negative of going too short on exposure time you will limit available guide stars or the s/n ratio will be poor making them easy to 'lose'. I tend to use around 3 secs on a ST80 guidescope and that gives very good guiding (conditions permitting).

I use APP for stacking and combining the channels, gradient removal and star colour calibration. You can play around with the amount of RGB you put in the data and as it is stretched as you do it, you get a good idea of how it will turn out in the final product. After this I take an unstretched version to Affinity to get the detail and the 'creative bits'. To be honest, in some cases you can do all the work on APP but Affinity has more options to repair and get a the best from the image. I think the gradient removal in APP is excellent. The only negative of APP stacking is that it is slow - or at least it is on my PC. DSS is much quicker. However, the result from APP is better. The other negative is that it is a bit pricey. But given the amount I spend on AP gear £60 a year for APP is not a biggy.

If I did not accept a thick layer of frost on everything in the morning there would be no imaging. Clear nights here means cold in the winter. (There are only two types of weather in Cumbria. Warm and wet or cold and clear😄 Even if I am with my kit all night it will get covered in ice. Most of the kit seems pretty resilient. Dew can be a problem although less so, but again, most of the kit will tolerate some moisture.

I use an app called Rain Alarm. Seems quite good as it uses real time radar data and costs about £2 per year. If the rain is very light or fog it can miss it. There is weather equipment you can get for observatories etc, but I am not up-to-speed on these.

Do you need filters for Bortle 4? I am in B6 and I don't use filters. I would rather remove gradients in processing than lose the detail with unnecessary filtering. My local 'dark' site is B4. 😁

Agreed. I just do my best to make sure it not catastrophic. Yes, my imaging session sometimes fail for one reason or another (usually something I have done), but hopefully nothing to cause major damage. If I did not set it up to run in auto I would never get any imaging done. Working 8-4 every day and having a 7 and 9 year old is no good with no sleep! If only I could arrange for clear nights on a Friday and Saturday....... Oh yeah - and no moon!! 😁

I have found Startools tricky, especially with less than perfect data. I do still use it for some things but rarely start to finish. There is a very good, but long YouTube video by the developer which is well worth watching. I tend to use APP and Affinity now which I find a good combination. I think there are trial versions of both you could try on some of your existing data to see how you get on. Again there are plenty of tutorials from the developers for both. PS is probably best but I won't pay their sky high monthly charge. The other thing to consider is that your expectations are probably going up too. I know mine have from when I started. I also tend to reprocessing the same data multiple times until I get a version I like. Quite often the processing takes longer than the capture. Just keep at it and it will get better. At least that's what I tell myself!!

90% of my imaging sessions are unattended. I'm lucky that I have a secure garden. Rain is a slight risk but I use a rain alarm which notifies me if there is rain within 25km. Fortunately I have a rain radar within sight of the house so it should be quite accurate. So far I have had no issues with cables but it has failed to flip due to duff plate solving. (Platesolving globular clusters does not work very well).

My personal opinion is that these are very expensive for what they are. If you are just running the mount and nothing else I would look at the standard lead acid powertank. If you want to start running dew heaters , camera's and other kit 13.2 Amp hours is not a lot. Admittedly lead acid options can struggle in freezing weather. I built my own (rather over the top) power system which has 4 USB outlets, 4 12V outlets, voltage indicator from a 120 Amp hour leisure battery. This will run all my kit for a weekend, even in cold weather. In total it cost about £150. However, the same could be done with a smaller (and lighter) battery. I use a small heat mat run of the battery if it is really cold.

A mistake I made was to set APT to PHD, not PHD2 - I did not realise there ware two options. Also, check that the 'enable server' box is checked in PHD.

Too late!

FWIW I live in a similar bortle 6 area with LED lighting and do not use any filters. I would rather deal with the gradients in processing but keep the maximum data. Admittedly I generally shoot mono, but it should not make that much difference. Also, the lights the council have used are quite downward pointing with less spread than the old sodium ones. So generally, for me at least, better. Having said this, personally I would wait until they change the lights and decide then. It's coming up to summer and imaging will be put on hold until the autumn. The Optolong L-pro does seem to remove most of the LED spectrum. (I think the LED spectrum used in the Optalong 'blurb' is specific - some of the spectra I have seen seem to be more broad). You never know, you might be pleasantly surprised. (LED lit cloud rather than sodium😂).

Much as imaging over a full moon is more difficult it is not impossible. This was taken over 3 nights during the last full moon. It is not perfect, but I have certainly done worse. Made more difficult by my own incompetence! M51 in a Full Moon - Imaging - Deep Sky - Stargazers Lounge

No, you are just another crazy AP obsessed loon like the rest of us😆

How portable to you want to go? I would say a 120mm refractor is pretty portable as it will go on the back seat or boot of a car quite easily. I'm not sure a Mak or Dobsonian is going to be much more portable. However, I would go along with the Mak suggestion if you plan to stay on the moon / planets. For £500 you could even get one on a goto mount (stock permitting).

Possibly. You might still lose some of the detail but less so than the other filter option. It also depends what sort of lighting you have locally. LED is a bit of pain due to the broad spectrum but standard mercury vapour and sodium will get removed by the L-pro The wipe module in Star Tools should help remove gradients, but you might need to 'play' with the settings to get the best out of it. I'm not a ST expert as I used APP and Affinity for most things.

Definitely 4 hours as a minimum. If you have not already done it, have you thought about M106? It is a bit brighter and larger than M109 so might be better.

You are probably right but personally I would still try for M42 due to it being so bright. I live in B6 which is not ideal but unless imaging NB I would rather remove the light pollution and gradients than cut out most of the detail with aggressive filters. As you are using BYEOS you only need to try one 30 second image and see what you get. You can do this before full darkness to get an indication of how good / bad it would be without eating into your imaging time. Either way - good luck with it. I look forward to seeing the result on the forum.

Just to add to above. Given how bright M42 is you can probably shoot without a filter and get away with the full moon. Just use short exposures.

Don't forget F ratios are not linear so it will be much more than 3 times. Probably nearer 8. However this value will have so many other variable that you need to take it will a large pinch of salt. FWIW here is an image I took whilst I was waiting to start a 'proper' imaging session and I had 30 minutes to spare. This was 15 and 30 second exposures with no calibration frames. Just a bit of fun really. This was at just over F6 with a mono camera (ASI1600MM) but it shows what you can get quite quickly.

Don't forget anything imported is liable for 20 - 30% on top due to VAT and import duties.

I'm not sure how to link to another post, but if you search 'M51 in a full moon' you will find my post. I did have a few technically issues which did not improve things. There is also a post of M106 taken with a first quarter moon which was more 'normal' integration time of 5 hours. In terms of integration time it is a diminishing return as you increase. It's all about improving signal to noise ratio. I don't normally do 17 hours but I had 3 clear nights in a row so I thought I would try. Imaging during a full moon meant I needed more than normal due to the increased background brightness. I think you need to try your kit and see what works. I have only been imaging for less than a year so I am still learning myself. Also, it was a new scope so I was still experimenting. I think your Redcat will come into is own for widefield work. You are right about choosing kit carefully. AP is expensive. I was in a lucky position to have some spare money last year which is why I have got so much kit so quickly. (My first scope/mount was January last year). However, with relatively modest kit it is possible to get some great results. Keep looking on this forum and asking questions - everyone will do their best to help.

I think with some moon at 90 degrees or so to the target is not too bad for brighter galaxies. Beyond about 50% you will find it harder. I tend to go for narrowband once the moon gets too full. However, I did manage an M51 around the full moon - but I did get 17 hours of data. Even then it was not brilliant. I don't use a lot of filters so I can't really help too much with the best for moonlit nights. You could possibly look at one of the dual band filters - they seem to give some nice results.