powerlord

I mean, what’s going on? Rain in all but name. Dew dripping off the thing. Primary covered the lot. Humph.

Well... About 50% imaging not cloudy. But another 30% by condensation forming on asi1600 glass.. Not had that before..stuffed dew heater between ota and efw at 2 am.. Fixed an hour later. So rosette mosaic time... And cloud again... Plus summit else dewing up. I think I might have a total of an hour of usable subs.

Unfortunately this is what I'll see if clear tonight. I wanna mosaic nb rosette and m42, but even with nb, can't see it working well with the blob out.

Well... forceasts all over the place for Ipswich.. meteoblue showing clear sky, but maybe ground fog. clearoutside showing 100% cloud till midnight, then maybe some clear sky.. It's the sort of forcast I usually wouldn't bother setting up for. Add to that, the big bright white blob that will be hanging over the south sky for most of the night at its biggest, brightest and blobbiest. However.. beggers can't be choosers.. so the 200P is setup on the EQ6-R, with asi1600 and filter wheel, etc. best case, I get to try my first mosaic (though it is going to be terrible thanks to that nasty big blob). worst case, I get nowt at all. Probable case - i have to image the nasty big blob as it's the only thing I can see. In my head I imagined these long winter nights as being the nirvana for imaging I'd been waiting for - 10+ hours of imaging in a night! hmm.. maybe it'll get better if we get some high pressure. humpf. stu

yup. if all you want it for is that then absolutely. right tool for the job at hand for sure.

I'd suggest that that's all a bit of a waste of time for taking pics with a mobile. stick it up to the eyepeice, take a picture. Want to get fancy, I made a 3d printed mount that allowed me to fit phone in, and use it with any of my eyepieces, covering the whole eyepiece fov with each one - so you could go that route. that way you can stack with deepskycamera. But frankly, it will lead you to the conclusion that other than making a very effective cheap electronic eyepeice, it's pretty rubbish for any real pictures. You'd be far better using your DSLR that you have imho. stu

Personal choice for sure whether it's worth it or not. Not sure why HW cost is relevant. My mac was 2500 quid, but I don't expect software for it to cost more because of it. Some software is worth more to me, and I think it offers good value even though it's expensive. Final Cut Pro for example. I just think APP is vastly over priced for what it is. Same with PI. Would they sell 4 times more licences at 50 quid a licence and therefore make more money ? who knows. It's a difficult thing to price up. But they certainly lost a sale to me is all I can say. stu

I like APP, I really do. And it's available for mac. What I don't like it it's 200 quid* price tag for a stacker. When it's up against DSS which is free. Obviously that pricing model works for them, but it doesn't work for me. When a professional image editor (affinity) costs 60 quid (AND has a stacker). At 30-40 quid... startools money, I'd have bought it.. but for 200 quid, they can run and jump. Clearly they see themselves competing with PI.. but I don't see it myself - it's a powerful stacker with some frills (mosaics, background tidy, etc) . And when that competition is also really, pretty good - you've got to wonder where they get off on charging 200 squid imho. *im ignoring the 'renters' aka subscription price as I hate them with a passion.

I'd recommend Affinity Photo. It's easy to use and learn (unlike PI), it's cheap (unlike PI), and it's imho just as powerful, arguably more so. Certainly I forced myself to try PI (yuck yuck yuck), went through the tutorials, etc.. and sure you can get good results with PI. I then went and did the same images in affinity using the techniques in the tutorials - and got the same results if not better. Oh and you can just download a trial - rather than having to persaude a bunch of backwards paranoid mathematicians you are a real person before they bless you with an evaluation licence. you may pick up a slight bias I have here.. sorry about that, but I have no time for PI at all at any level. It's truly abysmal software from a UI/UX viewpoint, from a 'devs are all mental' viewpoint, from a licencing model viewpoint, and from a cost viewpoint IMHO. Don't feel you need to get sucked into it just because others are doing it is all I'd say, it's use is not required to create top level images by any means. Just my 2c.

Not sure how up to date that book is ? Affinity has added quite a lot of astro stuff in the latest version - stacking, background removal, star alignment, etc. Personally I'd just check out 'astrophotography affinity' on youtube. affinity themselves have lots of good tutorials covering stacking OSC, mono, etc and there are many others. Also don't forget just general affinity tutorials - understanding layer blending types and curves, curves, levels, live filters, etc are all base key stuff before you go into astro specific stuff. I will say, after being a 20 year photoshop user and finding myself having to look elsewhere, since I refuse to do subscription software as a matter of principle, I took quite a while trialing affinity before I decided to buy it. After a fair amount of re-learning I can honestly say I have never looked back - purging my macs of anything and everything adobe was very cathargic. Since then i've bought M1 macs and affinity have been amongst the first to support them - making everything supercomputer fast, version upgrades are often and add real value, and their support of the astro community seems excellent. So you've definately made the right choice imho. Once you learn the quirks it's a truly powerful product. Editing everything in 32 bit!! try that in photoplop.

deepskycamera is good for stacking etc. However, I think other than M31 you'll stuggle to get any galaxies tbh, even if OTA is long enough. moon should be fine though, and M42 is pretty easy to get a 'decent' pic on a phone. here's one I took last year when I started and before I went down the imaging rabbit hole.

Just get Cox on, he's some up Philosophy quite succinctly as a load of codswallop. one step up from alternative medicine and religion. 🤐

TV (and the BBC specifically) just doesn't get it. Most folk watch more youtube than tv nowadays, but TV still chugs along like a dinosaur - reminds me of the record companies 20 years ago. Unable to comprehend that there is a point in making TV for small groups of educated viewers. Here it's just dumbed down to the level of idiocy. Even the guardian complained: https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2021/oct/27/universe-review-brian-coxs-trip-to-the-stars-is-sheer-cosmic-cowardice If you want proper cosmology, watch PBS space time https://www.youtube.com/c/pbsspacetime Cox can be ok on the proper medium (infinity monkey cage podcast is great) I've not had a tv signal (terrestrial, satellite or cable) for 15 years. Still forced into a TV licence by the threats of louts knocking on my door right enough. Surely, as the older generation disappears tv will finally die ? - it's such an anachronistic form of entertainment - born from the days when the only way to getting moving pictures was to broadcast the same thing to everyone. It makes as much sense in 2021 to the generation under 40 as a horse and cart.

Usually NASA's astro pic of the day has me aspiring to be able to get to that level (well unless it's hubble). today... I think is the first pic I feel, mine is as good as the one posted! I'm missing some Ha, as mine was just shot in RGB. And the photographer took a bit of a different approach to colour than I did, but I think I've got a bit more detail there ? https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap211112.html M33.mov Course it's all subjective - but I prefer mine to be honest. Maybe it's time to start submitting some pics ! 🤪 stu

I'd check your lenses on stars. Many/most kit lenses and zoom lenses are pretty rubbish on stars. I got a Canon 300mm F4 ULM for my 6d, which is amazing, and I've got a bucket of old vintage lenses I picked up from ebay, some are great, some are terrible. But as a general rule, don't expect a camera lens to give you nice sharp stars, and no CA - test them first. For DSOs you only need around 2-300mm for most. even 135mm for wider views. So doing it all with camera lenses is a great way to do it, just be aware you might need to buy a few if your nikkors don't cut it. stu

frankly for hiking, I'd have thought a good pair of binos is best ? and of course, useful during the day. I carry a wee pair of pentax 10x21 binos with me. Optics are super clear and bright. i suppose a bigger pair with a tripod mount gives you better views, while still having the flexibility of using during the day ?

https://astronomy.tools/calculators/field_of_view/?fov[]=1945|104|||1||&solar_system=moon just saying.. still reckon if you want to be awed with big magnification, consider the skymax 102. and it comes with a number of EPs ready to use usually. that view is with a 13mm which will take the whole view up with the moon. and a cheap barlow will be usable and get you right in close. At the end of the day it depends what you want to look at. big bright things(moon), big dark things(constillations, clusters) , small bright things (planets). Looking through the 72ED or 130 at the moon will be like a good pair of binos. or super zoom camera. Looking at it with a skymax 102 is the sort of thing that awed me when I started. however, all good choices.

I sacrificed a virgin chicken for you an hour ago. I have no doubt that fixed it. I would suggest you start doing this yourself daily, as they are in short supply here. Plenty of chickens mind you.

you don't on 'real' computers. sorry cheap jibe - but on linux (pi, asiair, etc) or on macos they don't have the issues that windows has had since the beginning of USB 23 years ago and still have today.. installing drivers again every time you change ports, NEEDING to install drivers and reboots, com ports changing all the time, etc etc. I'm gonna get reamed for saying this, but your happiness is being affected by the hell that is windows imho. However I suppose if you are wed to NINA and APT your stuck with it. You seem to have all ZWO stuff though - so my advice for what it's worth, is get an asiair. even a second hand original one. I bet you'll come away wondering why you didn't do it ages ago. stu

https://www.theregister.com/2021/11/06/ai_algorithms_satellites/

Thanks all. 200P it is. sigh.. big bl00dy thing. anyway, forecasts are so bad it would appear there is not danger of this happening soon 😞

It doesn't matter that it's dimmer - just means more integration time. It's not visual. The 72ED and 1600 covers it fine, but I get 12mp. A 4 panel mosaic gets me 48MP (well overlap, etc more like 40mp). the brightness of the image has nowt to do with the resolution of the image. It comes down to seeing as Vlaiv says - But I'd like to think I can eek a little bit more details from a mosaic over my 12mp asi1600 that's all. I could be wrong, only know if I give it a go really.

aye fair enough, tatty second hand not much good as shiny gifts. well, over to the OP. I know last well.. this time last year.. that's what I started looking at to buy - then decided to up it to the az-gti/skymax102 bundle. Frankly personally I've found goto undispensible, but I am a lazy git and just didn't want to have to learn to start hop. Let us know what you decide Stephen and how the pressie goes down of course! stu

I don''t have many pics from that time with the skymax 102, as I sort of got on to new kit..and it got left on the shelf... but here is IC434 shot with my canon 1200d, mak 102 and az gti mount. bear in mind I'd only been imaging for about 1 month and didn't really know what I was doing. that's 30 odd 30 second exposures stacked. Which frankly at the time I though was absolutely frecking awesome.