Crackabarrel

Beautiful, excellently done

Result of my first light with the 2600MC, 2hrs on IC1396 taken 27th August under a 60% or so moon.

ZS73 w/ Flattener, IDAS D3, ASI2600MC, HEQ5PRO

Captured with: APT & PHD2

Processed with DSS, Starnet++, Photoshop, Lightroom

Best 60 of 81 subs (2min, Offsest 50, Gain 100, -5C)

Calibrated with 40x Darks, 40x Dark Flats, 40xFlats

Ended up throwing all the subs before the meridian flip as my guiding was suffering from very large spikes in RA, settled after the flip however, flattener spacing not quite right either as evidenced from perimeter stars, good bit to work on after the summer break so.

Enjoying the dedicated OSC compared to my old D5300 though, much easier to calibrate, set point cooling very useful, nice and easy to use.

Any comments, criticisms or suggestions always welcome, thanks for looking.

Some clear skies would be greatly appreciated yeh, very poor lately over here.

Looking forward to having a go on Jupiter and Saturn with my recently acquired Mak102

Decided to slew over to Jupiter at the end of a DSO session the other night with the WO ZS73 and 2600MC.

First attempt at planetary, Took a minutes worth of video, processed with AS!3 and Photoshop.

Tiny though it is I was pretty surprised to get something that could be considered recognisable with such short focal length and large a sensor.

Anyone else getting some pleasant surprises with their imaging lately?

After getting first light for a couple hours on my 2600MC I decided to slew over to the moon at about 5am, 

ASICAP took 17sec of about a minute, giving me 52 frames with top 20% chosen.

Forgetting to remove the light pollution filter from the train definitely complicated the colour balancing.

WO ZS73 + ASI2600MC on HEQ5PRO.

Processed in PIPP, Registax and Photoshop.

Thanks for looking, long time since I took a lunar image.

Any criticism or recommendations greatly appreciated.

18 hours ago, FenlandPaul said:

Great image! Is it tracked? It says a 60s exposure but I can’t see any trails, which is super.

Thank you, yes it is tracked (Skywatcher StarAdventurer 2i), I took about 30 x 1min exposures that night.

This is the result from 25min or so

Milky Way rising over Turlough Hill, Wicklow mountains during 90% moon (just setting behind hill)

60sec exposure, Nikon D5300 w/Sigma 18-35 @f2.0 

Thanks for looking, and comments or suggestions appreciated

Great image and well done!

Great work, very crisp.

Thanks for the heads up I'll give it a watch if able.

Generally I'm using DSS and Photoshop but I'm sure Ill be able to get something out of this.

Just received my order of an ASI2600MC after using a Nikon D5300 for the past 9 months since starting my journey into astrophotography.

Currently building my dark library with gain 0 & 100 and offset 50 after a bit of reading.

I'm wondering if anyone has any general tips on calibration frames and imaging in general with this particular camera?

Any input greatly appreciated, thank you.

Moving up in the world with my new ASI2600MC, not a great time of year to get it though I admit with astrodark set to leave in the next week or two.

Plenty of time to build the dark and bias library though.

Beautiful capture, nicely done.

7 minutes ago, tomato said:

Great M13, you have NGC 6207 in there also.

Good choice with the ASI 2600mc, I have the QHY version and have been mightily impressed.

Thank you, aye I was happy to see it pop up.

I blame the 183mc for having me pull the trigger on the 2600mc, ordered earlier this evening, hoping to get something out of it before astro dark leaves for the season

Thank you all appreciate it.

1 hour ago, scotty38 said:

Nice, l managed to blow the centre with 30 second exposures so you’ve worked some magic there.....

I think it was more luck than anything having never used a dedicated camera before

Hi All,

A friend kindly loaned me his ASI183mc to get a feel for dedicated astro cameras (I usually use a Nikon D5300), so I decided to give it a go this weekend on the Hercules Globular Cluster.

Set up was fairly painless I must say, the only issue being focusing as I hadn't roughed it in during day time first, that and I forgot to bring the sensor temp down to 0C as I originally intended.

I ended up with an hours worth of 1min exposures, of which 52 were used, before clouds rolled in.

William Optics ZS73II + HEQ5Pro

Gain 111, Offset 10, Temp 4C

20 x Darks, 100 x Bias, Dithered.

Stacked in DSS, processed in PS.

Cheeky diffraction spikes via prodigital astro actions.

Quite looking forward to investing in a 2600mc in the next few months now.

Thanks for looking, any input appreciated as always.

I can't speak for the ASIAIR, but as far as PHD2 goes if a cloud blocks the guide star PHD will throw an error stating the star as lost and it will continue looping while looking for guide stars.

The mount wont move erratically, it will continue tracking normally in unguided mode, once PHD2 has found a guide star again the guiding will kick back in.

Congrats, well deserved, some lovely IFNs recently  

The Skywatcher Star Adventurer 2i and iOptron Skyguider Pro would be a good place to start, lots of people using them with good success.

I myself and a friend of mine have the Star Adventurer and have good experiences.

Both are available from First Light Optics and can sometimes be found in the Buy/Sell forum here.

Welcome to the hobby!

There is something to be said about those magnesium bodies alright, pity everything is plastic now.

Still waiting to get some use out of my Star Adventurer 2i, looking forward to your work 

Nice work for such a short exposure time.

The D300 is how I got my start, heavy old thing though

A great set of images Richard, tough choices all round.

I voted for The Veil, with the Double Cluster a close second.

Currently trying to decide on my third entry, M42 and The Heart Nebula being my first and second submissions.

Best of luck.

Pretty close to pulling the trigger on the same camera for my own WO ZS73, looking forward to seeing your results.

The T3i seems to be just the American name for the 600D as far as I can tell from looking at the specs

I've been having success with the Nikon D5300, good image quality and nice Ha response stock, however the T3i is well regarded and would be a good choice of starter camera.