Felias

Thank you! I'm quite happy with that picture, considering that it was just a stack of 10 photos with my standard 18-55 mm lens and no mount. I bought my Star adventurer shortly after, and finally a telescope last November, so it kind of helped in getting me into AP. Not that I have done much since then, due to the weather... I took a couple of pictures of the clouds that night, but never processed them. Maybe I should recover them now!

Sounds amazing! 👍

That is not quite correct, there should be a better one in 2025, and quite a few in this century. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_solar_eclipses_visible_from_the_United_Kingdom#21st_century_(AD_2001_–_2100)

You probably did. I saw them at the same time yesterday walking back from work in Canterbury. And I too was lucky to see some when I pictured the comet the past summer!

True, I guess! 🤔 Thank you!

It feels silly to share even more pictures of the eclipse after the amazing photos I have seen posted already. As Borges says in his best poem, "The Golem", Why did I give to the infinite series a symbol more? To the coiled skein on which the eternal thing is wound, I gave another cause, another effect, another grief. Or the Spanish original, always better, ¿Por qué di en agregar a la infinita serie un símbolo más? ¿Por qué a la vana madeja que en lo eterno se devana, di otra causa, otro efecto y otra cuita?' But we are vain creatures, so I'll post mine anyway. I snapped these from work, with a handheld camera and its standard 18-55 mm Canon lens. I started near the maximum and kept shooting at random intervals until the end. I pushed the colours for sharing in Instagram, so they look a bit unreal, but it helps in giving the clouds some structure. Anyway, I had lots of fun!

It affects me, since Ashford lies to the SW from where I normally place my telescope. Not much I can do, the whole Kent is seriously polluted, but I can still see the Milky Way if it's 30/40 degrees or higher above the horizon. It is much worse to the NE, those Thanet greenhouses are, I believe, one of the top light polluters in the UK. Anyway, as it has been pointed out, LED lights are popping up like there's no tomorrow, and if something as serious as the "insect apocalypse" we are witnessing has not helped in reversing the trend, who is going to listen to astronomers?

Nice, lots of nebulosity! I have imaged the NA nebula for the first time this week too, also with a Z61 and an unmodded Canon 77D. It's the first time I picture a nebula (I have tried a couple of galaxies before), but I made such a mess! I can't get my star adventurer to work well with the Z61, I keep losing Polaris. I suspect it's bad levelling, since my observing site is on the side of a hill, with tall grasses, so the tripod keeps shifting. Therefore I have been limited to 30s subs before I see trailing stars. I started shortly after sunset, with a bad gradient yet, and after 30 min I decided that the light pollution was quite bad on the direction of Cygnus anyway, so I stopped and sought another target. Then I realised that I had forgotten to lower the ISO I had used to find the nebula on the screen of the camera (25,600 ISO), so the subs were terribly noisy and I did not bother taking flats and darks since I thought I would discard the lights. But I decided to process the photos anyway, so here it is, the final image. Stacked with DSS, then stretched in PS. Very noisy, as expected, and with some gradients, but all considered, it could have been much worse. At least the star colours seem right...

Thank you all for the kind comments! Yes, although they are obviously a composite of several exposures, I don't want them to feel completely unreal. I found that playing with the transparency of the moon layer over the sky layer helped a lot in blending them more realistically.

I was wondering what people here think about composites. I took these pictures of the supermoon earlier this week, and I combined three consecutive shots with different exposures, using layers in Photoshop. I was aiming for a look close to what I could see with the naked eye, but enhancing the shadows and colours in the foreground. Any comments, tips or tricks to improve the images will be most welcome. Both photos taken with a Canon 77D and its standard 18-55 mm lens. First picture combines the following exposures, all at ISO 100, F/4: Foreground, 10 seconds Sky, 1 second Moon, 1/200 seconds And the second picture, all at ISO 200, F/5.6: Foreground, 2 seconds Sky 1/2 seconds Moon 1/400 seconds

So true. 😧 Since they installed the LED lights in Canterbury, you can't see the stars from the city centre unless you find a corner far from the street lamps. It used to be quite good, but now it's like walking inside an airport hall. I normally set my telescope on a hill near a little village South of here, and they have replaced the street lamps with LEDs there as well. Now I need to make sure that they are blocked by some trees, but there is one that still annoys me even though google maps says it's 380 metres away from my usual spot! They only hope is that as the individual bulbs have started to fail, the older lamps have been getting dimmer and no one has replaced them yet... 🤞

Thanks, happy to be of help! If you want to know how cropped the image is, this is a single light frame, before stacking:

Yes, the 48 mm is just the camera adapter, I don't need any extra extension to focus. Here is the first light of my setup, I believe it's properly focused; I know the moon isn't an ideal target for the Z61, but we haven't had ideal weather in the past few months, so I have only been out three times, I have never tried without the flattener, but you can search images here or in google, I saw a few when I researched about the telescope before buying it last November, and I decided to purchase the flattener based on those.

I have the Z61 and an EOS 77D, which I believe is similar to the 800D. I use the WO field flattener and 48 mm T-mount, and I can focus without any other additions, if that helps.

Thanks, but I have used in-built intervalometers like that in the past, so I had tried that approach. It did not work. The interval is truly the time in between pictures for this remote. This, on the other hand, was spot on, thank you! It's a bit silly, but I had only tried 3 second intervals, which is what I always use with the built-in intervalometer, the bare minimum to save the picture in RAW mode. It did not work, and after reading in the instructions "To ensure safe operation, choose an interval at least one second longer than the exposure time", I thought it was just bad design. But it works as intended with a 5-second interval, and even 4 seconds seem to be right. I guess it takes an extra second to save the RAW if you use the Neewer, but I can live with that.👍

Actually that's what happens to my new intervalometer! I have been using the camera built-in intervalomer, but it is limited to 30 s exposures. So I have just bought a Neweer one (this: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Neewer-Shutter-Release-Remote-Control/dp/B00GV4DLP0/), which I have seen recommended, and it seems as if I need an interval longer than the exposure, which is pretty useless. I have been tampering with the settings and watching instructions online, but I can't get around this problem, it seems like it has been designed this way. Am I doing anything wrong? Can any one recommend another intervalometer?

Thank you!

Thank you! I pushed it until the moon started to wash out the sky, next time I'll stay longer -if I ever enjoy a clear night without a full moon, which is proving to be impossible since I bought my telescope...

I also decided to profit from the short window in this difficult weather and took over a hundred 30s shots before the moon rose on Tuesday. It is my first DSO photo, and practically the first light of my first telescope, a WO Z61. The camera is a Canon 77D, and for tracking I used a Star Adventurer on a rather cheap travel tripod (I don't have a backyard, so I need to keep my equipment light and portable). The SNR wasn't great, so this is the best I could do after stacking about one hour of total exposure, plus darks, flats and bias. Post-processing was done in Photoshop/Lightroom, mostly just levels/curves, a bit of sharpening/noise and star reduction (first time I do the latter). Apart from Bode's and Cigar galaxies, you can see NGC 3077 at the bottom, and NGC 2975 in the top right corner. Any suggestions on how to improve the image will be greatly appreciated!

I have solved the problem, so I leave a reply here in case anyone else has the same issue in the future and looks for an answer in the forums, as I did. After FLO sent me an Astro Essentials T-mount that I could fit into the bayonet of the D77, I had a closer look at the two defective WO mounts. The only difference with the AE mount that I could see was that in the latter the little screw I mentioned above was protruding less. So I decided to tamper with the WO mount and screw it a bit in. It took a few turns, but after that I could rotate the mount and lock it into position. Problem solved! I am very puzzled that no one seems to have met this problem before (or maybe the solution was so obvious that no one has bothered to report it). I even wrote to WO, and they replied that they had never heard of a defective T-ring. After my feedback they said that their QC team will tighten those screws in all the T-rings, so I assume that they really can be an issue and it wasn't just me. Perhaps it only happens with the D77, but in any case it's solved and now I just need to wait for the weather to improve so that I can try the new Z61. I may be a long wait though...

Hello. Apologies that my first post is a call for help, but after searching the web in vain I thought that someone here might have an answer to my question. I bought a couple of weeks ago a WO Z61 with flattener from FLO. The telescope seems fine, but I can't attach my camera to the WO 48 mm mount also provided by FLO. For some reason, it won't screw into the body of my camera (Canon 77D), it barely fits in and it definitely does not rotate to click into position, so the camera falls as soon as I hold it by the T-ring. The T-ring is the following: https://www.firstlightoptics.com/adapters/william-optics-dslr-m48-ring-adapter.html Now, they have been brilliant at FLO and they have sent me a replacement T-ring. But it doesn't work either, I have exactly the same problem. They have now offered to send me a generic ring of their own brand to try before I return the WO ones, which is amazing but will take a few days. I was just wondering if I am being stupid and doing something wrong, so before the new ring arrives I though I'd ask. Am I overlooking something? Is there anything in the WO T-rings that would prevent them from attaching to a cropped-sensor camera? I have noticed that the ring has a white dot, which is normally used for mirrorless cameras or EF-M lenses in Canon, is that relevant? There is also a little screw on the sides that is positioned differently as compared to those in my lenses; I don't want to tamper with it because I'll have to return these T-rings, but I wonder if that's the cause? Any help will be much appreciated. Thank you!