Budgie1

Yes, you need to tick the "Narrowband Filters Mode" to change the input.

The original Askar Duo-Band filter does suffer from the odd halo on stars, same as the L-eXtreme. It's a good filter for OSC NB imaging and does pull out good Ha & Oiii data. I have one and used it on a few of my images. The halo's can be cleaned up in post-processing with the CloneStamp after the stars have been removed. I haven't done a profile for SPCC but use the White Reference "Photon Flux", 656.0nm for the Red channel and 500.7nm for the Green & Blue channels for an HOO image, all with a band width of 7nm. See these threads for details and images:

I found some info in THIS THREAD on the APT forum and it seems there's limitation with the Nikon D5300 in that it won't take an image in "A" mode (AV mode in Canon cameras) with no lens attached. So you have to enter the shutter speed manually.

I never thought I'd say this, as someone who started off using DSLR then OSC but; If you want the best value for money and halo free narrowband imaging then I think the best you can do is search around and get yourself a mono setup. "He must be mad!" I hear you say, but no. If you search the second hand market you can get yourself a good CCD mono camera, filter wheel and SHO filter set cheaper than some of these top of the range Ha/Oiii & Oiii/Sii duo-band filter sets. I managed to put together an Atik 428EX camera, Atik EFW2, Baader 7-8.5nm SHO and LRGB filter sets for just short of £800. Sure, the sensor is smaller than my ASI294MC but I can create real SHO images or board-band for galaxies, and it doesn't really take any longer (apart from taking the flats ). Just an alternative which may be worth considering.

What do you have set for your near and blind solver in Pointcraft Settings? Are they the same program or different? I think I use PlateSolve3 for the near solver and ASPS for the blind solver. If you're using similar then try another plate solver for the blind solver and see if that makes a difference.

If you're just starting to use the camera then I'd start by recording Darks, Flats, Flat-Darks and Bias frames. Then produce stacked images using all or a combination of some of these calibration frames to see what works best. You may not have things like Amp Glow with the CCD, so you could try using Bias frames instead of Darks. You could remove Darks & Bias to see what difference it makes, with my Atik 428EX I use Darks but not Bias, although I've not tried using only Bias because I now have a Darks Library. Flats are normally important as they remove more than just dust motes, they remove/reduce any imperfections in the image train and help with vignetting. No point taking 4 or 5 hours worth of subs and then finding that you've got a dust mote, too late to clean the sensor or lens after the fact!

Because the red light allows you to see things in the dark without destroying you night vision. All is explained here: https://www.telescopefinder.com/why-red-flashlight-is-used-for-astronomy/ 😉

Your stars don't look too bad for a 30 second exposure, so tracking is good. If you live in an area with light pollution then try ISO 800 for 30 seconds and take lots of images, as said above. Once stacked, 60 x 30 second images will give you the equivalent of one 30 minute exposure on your target and you should see some nebula in that image. You can download free stacking software, called Deep Sky Stacker, which will put all the images together and give you the final image.

Could you post a screenshot of the settings you're using in the main ImageSolver window and list the scope & camera used for the image? This may help identify a setting which needs altered.

I normally only use the ImageSolver before the stretch, right before I apply SPCC. So, out of curiosity I tried it on a TIFF image which had just been stretched (nothing else done to it) and a completed PNG image. On both images the ImageSolver worked just fine, no errors and no fails. So, for me anyway, it works with both stretched & unstretched. I make sure I do a search for the target, set the correct focal length & camera pixel size and the date. Normally this is taken from the FITS header, but TIFF images don't seem to transfer this data so the data from the last image is reused and this can cause it to fail. I hope that helps.

So, I had the drone up this week and thought I'd share some aerial shots of the completed observatory nearly a year after I started the build. The orientation is North/South, so that's why it doesn't line up with any of the fences etc, but it actually works in the garden and we have strawberrys & black currents on the decking as they're in direct Sun for most of the day.

A little tip which may help. If you haven't done so already then set the mount's Home Position. Firstly, in EQMOD, press the "Park to Home Position" button at the bottom of the main page and let the mount slew to it's Home Position. Now check that the Home Position is set correctly - Here's a video showing how to do this if you're not familiar with the process: How To Set The Equatorial Home Position Once the Home Position has been set correctly, use a Sharpie to mark the body of the mount on the RA & DEC axis, so you can easily put the mount back into it's Home Position if you release the clutches. Now, if the clutches slip or the mount gets knocked, it doesn't matter because you can simply tell EQMOD to put the mount in it's Home Position and then release the clutches to manually put the RA & DEC axis on their marks and you know it's in the correct Home Position every time.

Think of Polar Alignment as the orientation of the mount's RA & DEC axis with the NCP. Star Alignment or Plate Solving is pointing the telescope itself to the target you want to look at or image. As Scotty says above, if your telescope starts off from a know position (like the Home Position) then the target will be close when you slew to it. Plate Solving can be used to get it dead centre by taking an image, working out where it's looking and adjusting the position of the mount to centre the target. No looking through EP's or finder scopes to line up with a star or making fine adjustments on the handset. Let NINA do the work for you. You can also use the Framing Tool to frame the image if you want it slightly off centre. I know it's another thing to get your head around but once you start using Plate Solving you'll realise how much easier it makes things and you'll ask yourself why you didn't start using it earlier!

When you say "3 point alignment", is this Polar Alignment or 3-star alignment, because they are different things? Polar Alignment lines the mount base with the NSP. 3-Star Alignment (normally done on the mount handset) tells the handset where the mount is pointing. If you're using NINA then try using the Plate Solving utility to find your target. It's less time consuming, more accurate than 3-star alignment and you don't need to use Stellarium, although you do need some more downloads of this.

For your first exploration into PixInsight, I'd say you've done well. Compare this new image with your first one! As Wim says, a little SCNR green removal would help with the background, I would probably go with 0.70, rather than the default 1.00, just so you don't remove all the green in the image. You can also have play with the CloneStamp tool (Processes > Painting) to remove that line and the dust mote. Go with a good size radius, softness at 0.70 & opacity at about 0.50 and just take your time.

Probably you best bang for your buck in your current price range would be to go for an astro modified DSLR. You get a nice large sensor which is more sensitive to the Ha in nebula at a fraction of the cost. I have a modified Canon EOS 1300D and these are two images I took with it:

I always like to be there for the Meridian flip when using new software. Even using APT I still like to check it's all gone okay because I've had a couple of times when the auto-focus after the flip hasn't gone well and the it starts taking out of focus images. I think I've now sorted that by tightening up the focuser a little. You'll definitely have darker skies in Spain! This was midnight on the 25th May from my garden, and we're currently getting 3 minutes a day more daylight.

Thanks Steve. I've now completed six profiles in NINA, but still only used the one to date. I would love to be out again tonight because it's a beautifully clear evening, but it's just too light up here now. It's 22:15, as I type, and we haven't switched any lights on in the house yet because it's still daylight. You enjoy the evening. M3 should be far enough away from the Moon so it's won't cause too much of a problem. You could always go for M13, as that's even further away.

I'm not going to be much help with advising the actions you need to take in Photoshop, because I use PixInsight for my own processing, but there are a few tutorials around which will help and I'm sure the more experienced Photoshop users will be along to advise. In the meantime, I did run my standard workflow with your image through PixInsight and I can assure you that the colours are there and you have good details in there. It would help to use Flats in the stack and there's also the remains of a satellite trail in there (which I removed during processing). So this is what I managed to get with my basic processing:

What do you want it image with the new camera? The ASI178MC & ASI385MC have very small sensors when compared to your Canon EOS 450D and attached to the Explorer 150P. This is fine if you only want to do planetary or Moon imaging, but makes it tricky for deep sky objects. There's a Field of View (FOV) calculator as part of Astronomy Tools which will let you play around with different camera/scope combinations to give you an idea of what you'll see. Here's one of M31 with the three cameras you've listed above, plus your Canon. The Altair 183C wasn't in the list so I used the ZWO version with the same sensor.

At nearly half the new price, it is priced to sell. However, is this really the right camera for your needs? The IMX183 sensor is getting on a bit now and does suffer from amp-glow. With TEC cooling this isn't an issue because you set the temperature and create a library of dark calibration frames for each exposure length you're likely to use and just reuse them. Without TEC cooling you would need to take darks after every session to get them to match the sensor temperature. If it were me, I'd wait and save up a bit more to get the right camera for my needs. That way I'm only buying once.

It's definitely worth having the L-eNhance as a tool in the box, but not as a complete replacement for the UV/IR filter. You will need both for different targets because the L-eNhance will block the wavelengths from reflection nebula, like the Iris, and galaxies, as Ian has said above. You will also loose the star colours to a certain extent and they will look more blue than normal. You can get around this by taking some exposures with the UV/IR filter to get the full RGB star colours back. This is IC59 using the L-eNhance which I took last year as an example.

Normally I don't bother imaging at this time of year because at nearly 57° North there's no astro darkness and this is my view at midnight on a clear night, like last night: But then there's this Supernova and I've never had the chance to image a supernova before, let alone have a clear sky when something like this is visible! So I thought I'd give it a go last night (24th May) and see what I could get with about two hours of usable darkness. I fired up the Obsy at about midnight and used my Evostar 100 ED DS Pro with 0.85 FF/FR connected to the ASI294MC Pro at 200 gain & 30 offset (I already had flats for these settings ) and limited the exposures to 60s. This is what I was imaging into (3s hand held DSLR image so sorry for the stars but you get the idea ). I managed to get two hours worth with questionable subs at the start & end of the session, but I used them anyway and managed to get this image of SN2023ixf. Nice and bright with a hint of blue in the halo. I didn't do too much with the processing, so the stars were left alone (no star reduction at all) and only minimal use of curves to get a usable image to share. So, not my finest work but it shows the supernova in as natural state as I can.

I'm jealous you manage to see it for 19 minutes, from my location it doesn't even get above the tree line.

I think the camera you're looking at is the fan cooled version of the 183. This is better than no cooling at all, but is not the same as set point cooling the Altair TEC models have. So just be aware that this may not necessarily be the bargain or the camera you think it is. Here's the specs for each: Hypercam 183C Pro Hypercam 183C Pro TEC Cooled