Mr Thingy

Fate must have been looking the other way as I failed to tempt them. Believe it or not, I have my THIRD consecutive night of clear skies 🥳

I believe the temperature changes can affect the various materials in the optical path and focus can be slightly affected. I refocus periodically. Lat night I focused at the start of my session, then refocused 1 hour later, and it needed a small adjustment.

Lovely! Such a photogenic target. I love it

I had to fit a longer dovetail bar on mine. They really should come with a longer one as standard, as you simply can't balance the thing without.

Whoops! I guess I just tempted fate... 🙈

Shot in Ha over the last 2 nights (just over 2 hours of integration time). I messed the framing up, hence the weird cropping, but overall I'm really pleased with this. A freak occurrence may be on the cards tonight too, with a THIRD clear night on the trot 😱!! If so, I'll start grabbing the colour data.

Awesome stuff! The horsehead and flaming star nebulae also making a nice appearance too.

Miraculously it is a another clear night - second in a row. Imaging rig set up for more Ha imaging on the Rosette nebula, I have a coffee and a chocolate brownie, and some great views of the moon in my other scope. 🥳

Target now behind house but got 2 hours of Ha data on the Rosette nebula. Now packing up and generating the calibration frames in the warm. Oh, and dropping my laptop in the process 🙈. Thankfully it seems to be working still.

Kudos to you, sir!

Snap! I was just looking at the same with my binos.

Guess the target, win kudos

I have a 1-page process flow table, with very basic guidance (e.g settings, things to consider). Then more detailed guidance on the next pages, linked to the steps in the process. This helps keep the steps succinct and not get lost in detail.

I would second the idea about creating a workflow/checklist. I recently dived headlong into AP, but rather than ease my way in step by step I opted to go mono, use guiding, platesolving, autofocuser, etc, all from the off. I'm not good at restraint! I must admit that it was daunting but I already feel confident now to set up quickly and effectively, and get some shots off. However, right from the start I created a workflow and guidance document, which was a godsend. I hope you get your mojo back though. Hopefully the next session will deliver some lovely shots that make all the pain worthwhile.

Thanks for going to the effort to show that comparison. Very helpful indeed 😁 The difference doesn't look massive but also good to hear your opinion that the difference is significant. I think I will order myself one. Thanks again.

It's supposed to clear here later but that will be too late for me, but thankfully it's supposed to be clear tomorrow night and Saturday night. I'm going to get as much imaging in as possible and some observing too.

That's also my plan for tomorrow. Have a good session.

Can't decide on whether to get an Astronomik L3. Not sure on the extent to which it will improve things, plus it's another bit of glass in the optical pathway. Decisions, decisions. I looked back at my first image, a mono shot taken with my Luminance filter and the stars are very bloaty, so it's tempting to get an L3. Does anyone have any experience of how much this filter improves things?

Looking to get my first proper astro picture printed. Does anyone have a recommendation on good companies? There are countless companies online and difficult to know which are any good. TIA

I converted back to my local coinage: "Just my 7.09 pence...." 🤭 Doesn't have the same ring to it though.

I must say that this hasn't been my experience of this forum in the limited time I've been here. I see a lot of people going out of their way to be helpful and supportive and in the most part providing very balanced advice. When called for, it's often nice to know what benefit you can get with "the next model up", to help with decision making. I'm a proud owner of 4 relatively cheap SkyWatcher scopes that I've accumulated over the years, including a basic 120mm achromat (which I use the most incidentally) but I enjoy reading about the higher spec gear others have and their experience of them. I expect I will seek a higher spec 'scope in the not-too-distant future and glad others have shared their knowledge of what benefits to expect and the relative extent of them. Just my 10 cents...

+1 Looks great to me too.

What was the target, by the way?

Yes, definitely an option, though I'm debating whether just to live with it and learn to try and minimise as best I can whilst I learn the ropes of AP, then divert my money into eventually getting a 'scope that handles colours better and use the 72ED for narrowband imaging. Despite the bloaty blue stars I'm pretty pleased with the image and thanks to SGL members I have a greater knowledge now on the cause and how to mitigate. Cheers

I don't know the process for colour cameras but I assume that the blue and green channels contain no signal due to the the Ha filter. I would then assume that by stacking the B and G channels you would just be diminishing the signal from the red channel. Someone knowledgeable in the DLSR process can comment better than me - so just a thought 😁