powerlord

I was the same - been into photography for 35 years... you soon realise AP is a different ball game - think of taking the 'subs' as just getting the raw ingredients for your recipe. Then it's up to you to make that recipe end up as either a pot noodle or a michellin star meal. Realising that was what helped me switch up a gear and realise I had to learn more for processing. I use StarTools and Affinity. Have a look on youtube for affinity tutorials which are very good at showing how to use Affinity with AP. Filiter wise, if you are in an area with light pollution, if you get a light pollution filter (CLS or UHC ), that will double as an IR/UV filter. 2 burds, 1 stone stu

So, advice help wise - what are you finding ? are you ok setting up your mount ? aligning it (its an AZ one I think ?). I reckon your main problem is you have a massively powerful OTA at 2350mm on an AZ mount. Its really for visual stuff. You're just not going to be able to get long exposure on that I doubt at all (by long I mean say, 2 mins or so). Can you even get 30 seconds ? I started with a mak127 which is 1300mm and and azgti in az mode,and was lucky if I could get 20 seconds or so. you have double the FL. And of course the problem with those celestron jobs is you can't just get another OTA and pop it on. IF you want to do stuff that involves taking pics of nebula and the like, you might be better selling what you have, and getting something like an AZGTI and wedge. That's the cheapest way into EQ goto astro. And get a more widefield OTA - something like an 80ED ? That will get you great views of moon, DSOs, etc. And with your camera on the back you should be able to get 2 min+ subs easy with the AZGTI in EQ mode. No need got guiding, etc for that. And the AZ GTI will cope with other scopes later if you want them - say a mak127 like mine, etc. That'd be my advice anyway. The good news is the market is so bouyant just now you will get a good price for your current kit.

it's not gonna make a lot of difference for stars imho. Usually modified just removes the IR filter, which has the side effect that we want of letting in the h-alpha more. So - you need to point it at something thats got lots of h-alpha. At the moment that means something like North America nebula which you'l see in the same forum myself and another op have posted pics of. What you should then see is a lot of of the nebulosity vs non modifed camera. If it was earlier in the year M42 is the best target to demostrate the difference. As it's full spectrum though I believe you should be putting an UV/IR filter on for astro use otherwise you get star bloat - which I think there is some of in your image ?

What do you call decent ? Just in case your more picky than me. I've been doing this about same as you (5 months with scope, last 3 months doing AP). Took the following last night and pretty chuffed with it. Here a few others I've taken the last 3 months or so. If those pass as decent for you, happy to give you the advice of a one eyed man in the kingdom of the blind.

OK, bit of a breakthrough for me last night - took 85 mins of H-alpha. That's first time I've used narrowband. And it's with a colour Canon 6D. I could not believe the clarity and lack of noise in the resultant stack. I merged it into the RGB data I took a few nights ago, I, for me, it's one of the best images I've managed so far I think (again - only been doing this 5 months so be kind). I love the way the cloud really feels 3d and popping out at you now. Just wow. Next clear night I'll try the same target with Oiii and Sii and try for a hubble pallet job. I didn't expect to get good results with this with the Canon, and my newbie numptyness - but frankly I'm well chuffed with this - especially considering we are a week away from the shortest night and I'm still managing to grab this out the sky. I believe it calls for a G&T to celebrate! stu

Hi chaps, I've just bought a secondhand C8 for 400 quid which seemed a decent price ? what do you think ? Plan is to buy the f6.3 reducer/corrector (https://www.firstlightoptics.com/reducersflatteners/celestron-f63-focal-reducer.html) and use it for AP stuff as an upgrade from my wee mak127. Once I get my ordered EQ6-R mount I should be good for maybe using the whole F10 on wee galaxies, etc. Means I've got the DSLR lenses and 72ED for wider field, and the C8 and 200p for more narrow stuff. sound ok or have I made a booboo ? I'm looking to go asi1600 route soon, and using astronomy tools filter size thing, it all looks good for 1.25 filters for all 3 scopes so feels like I'll be in a decent place for getting deeper into AP ? stu

Oh yes.. learned from years cleaning it off my cars. All clean now. I suppose on the plus side, it was at the end of the session! I know others swear by deionised water, etc - but I prefer Calotherm Calocoat - been using for years for my camera lenses. Cleaned it up no probs. stu

Ah - awoken by the tweet of the morning birds. A successful night of imaging the trunk of a Pachyderm and the land of the free nebula. Time to go outside and take some flats and move stuff inside.. ah the scope is pointing straight up from the end of the sessions last night.. er.. did that bird just take off from being perched on it.. er... no.. you've not have you, you little.... yes.. a bird has sh4t in my telescope - right over the lens. 😫

OK, I've not used them - only read others experiences, which were very different from yours. Astroberry being very unstable and lacking in updates, etc. People giving up with AB/SM after struggling for ages. I did look for a really in depth comparison between the three, but couldn't really find one. So, the above is simply my opinion based on those other posts people have written, and using the software myself (which is the same whether pc/mac/linux). And that was far far far from plug and play as far as my experience was concerned. Just a small note, that it is not exactly the same- the ASIAIR has a power management board with 12v outputs, all controllable by software. So if comparing like for like, you should account for the cost of buying/building such a board ? And from a UI point of view though I'd argue there really are horses for courses. It may not matter to you, but the ASIAIR mobile app was key to my purchasing decision. I have no wish to try to use desktop apps over VNC on a mobile device. The fact you are happy to, and like it, kinda proves my point does it not ? you are a different type of user from me. You have different priorities. No right or wrong general choice, just whats best for that user type ? Maybe I'll try AB and do a comparison - maybe useful for others. I have no affiliation from ZWO, so other than like it, I'd have no problem at all being impartial and coming out thinking AB is better. I'd like to try SM too, but I'm not paying $50 just to evaluate it. But my feeling looking at specs, UI, etc is that its just not the same thing at all as you say - but for me as a user, that means ASIAIR is better for me - mainly due to the mobile app. atb stu

just a note - that there is a asiair for sale now in for sale section. I will come back to the type of user you are: IF you want every bell and whistle, and are prepared to spend the time learning everything there is no doubt stellarmate or the equiv self build will be better for you. IF you prefer something that is much simpler, and confines you to the ZWO ecosystem (mount and DSLRs accepted), then the ASIAIR is hands down the better solution. Like anything else - it's horses for courses. I'm an IT consultant, and stuff like this is my bread and butter but for now at least - with only a few months imaging under my belt - I'm finding the ASIAIR PRO to be a godsend. I bought an old laptop to try EKOS/PHD2, etc (Im a mac only household) and play with it, but for what I want right now as a beginner, I do not need or want to complexity of all those bits of bobs not properly talking to each other, etc. There may come a time when I outgrow the ASIAIR, but I think identifying the type of user you are now is key to making your life easy. If it's something you dread farting around with every night, that's not going to be enjoyable. I do think ZWO are taking the p1ss a bit with the price of the PRO. If they'd kept it about 150 quid, that would be a fair price imho for what it is (pi4, case, power distro and licence), but it's a small market, and they know they have a uniquely good solution so at the end of the day you can't blame em for milking the price. I sound like a ZWO influencer/shill here ! Another thing to remember is your expert astro imager is a cut above your standard user in terms of computer skills - they have had to master the most atrocious software ever written by humans* - things like pixinsight, sirl, etc - software which is the real world would not have gotten off the drawing board with those UX and docs. So after that,coping with linux on a pi, and installing loads of bits of seperate software and configuring it all is a walk in the park. Don't let that fool you into thinking it's easy. stu *frankly I'm unconvinced it was written by humans - my money is on some sort of alien who was given an PC and told to write it without access to any other example software at all.

what sort of experience does stellamate give the mobile client ? As far as I can tell it requires VNC, so its exposing a desktop client to a mobile device ? I've not used it, and would be interested in peoples view if it's worth getting to play with (I've got the keyboard form pi4 for amiga emulation). Feels like it's not going to be anything like as user friendly as asiair pro. Much much more features of course, but if my understanding above is correct I wouldn't want to be fannying around with that every night - but sounds like a good option for experts or for the odd time you need something particularily tricky and outside the bounds of the exposed asiair stuff. stu

thanks - i meant my processing. Yeh, I was surprised to get that much with 20 mins. I wasted 100 mins on elephant trunk getting nowt much at all - almost no nebula at 45 seconds - clearly needs much longer, but with limited time I figured stick to 45 seconds and stack, and that way less frames ruined by satellites, etc. However after 100 mins of live stacking it was still just stars so switched targets. Saturday night looking good, so will possibly try again, though I also want to have a go at Jupiter and that needs me to drive somewhere else. But yeh, next time I SHOULD stick to more of the same.. and will try.. but I do fancy trying my narrowband filters just for the hell of it.

ooo. I dunno there are so many, I was just going with what folk were recommending. and it comes in package with filiters and filter wheel with a decent discount. I'm a numpty - it's not a choice I've made. is that the general view ? are 1.25in sensors still enough with the slightly larger sensor ?

thanks. My plan was to setup as normal anyway - i.e already have bahtinov focused on a bright star, etc. and once plate solved and PAed, asiair will take me to jupiter and track it. I'll then setup guiding too. So at that point I can experiment with different capture techniques. I'll post my results. thanks again stu

I'm using asiair pro, so frankly my plan was to let it do the hard work of finding the thing 🙂 I dunno about the LARGE out of focus circle, according the sky safari, without a barlow its gonna be pretty tiny. I've never tried to image with a barlow and asiair though - so that might be too much fun and games for one night/morning. So.. no sticking to unity gain, etc ? I thought that was a thing ? with my asi224 that 275 for 8 bit - which I think I should be using for planets right ? saying that.. don't think I remember seeing an option to set it in asiair, so if it forces 16 bit, I understand my gain should be 135 ? stu

Have you considered an ASIAIR ? The pro is 300 quid, but the old model sells second hand for 80-100 quid. The pro is a pi4 under the covers, the old one a pi3. yes it ties you in to zwo cameras, etc - but it does work well with loads of DSLRs - your canon included. And no fuss or bother. I read about lots of folk getting sick of trying to get the clunge of astroberry working and giving up, and decided to go the ASIAIR PRO route, and frankly it's awesome imho. I bought a nice big samsung tablet, and got it connected to my home wifi, and can now happily sit in my bed at 2am, moving around the sky and setting targets and shooting stuff. I plan to move to asi1600 at some stage, and filter wheel, focuser and it's compatible with all that too. At present my setup is either a 1200d or 6d, asi120mm guide camera and hacked up EQ5 EQSTARPRO mount. For me, I think ZWO have really nailed it - it's simple to use, powerful, reliable and 'just works'.

huh. thanks - glad i asked. i mean the birds start singing at 4am. it's nearly daylight. I wouldn't have thought of trying then tbh. I'd be very happy with something like that shot. ok - will give it a go. I'm in west ipswich.

Now they are back, I can't see em from my garden. I've not imaged a planet yet, but I'd imagine my mak102 and asi224 should be a reasonable combination, maybe with a barlow to get em both ? Looks like being a perfect cloudless night sat night here, and no moon.. On other hand.. nearly shortest night, and a target 10 degrees above horizon.. My question is, is that likely ? As I'd need to [removed word] around sticking all my stuff in the motorhome and driving somewhere for 2am or so.. and even then it's gonna be at 10 degrees altitude...SE from me, which should at least be reasonably dark.. but would like some opinions before I go on a fools erand really ? stu

ok that was terrible. used affinity from the stretched file. here is another attempt, using startools and orientated correctly. @craney - nope. bortle 6. And of course at this time of year it's not really dark. Only got about 20 mins at 2am or so. I tried elephant trunk nebula and got nowt at all there, so at 2am moved to North American and tried, and could see a bit of red in a single sub, so gave it a go.

Only 20 x 60 secs. no filters. no flats either as i screwed em up If I get another chance, I might try H alpha NB filter and see what I get. 72ED, canon 6d.

got a few minutes, but not enough to get exposure right video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vb8Bdh6KKis

not sure what you mean by only one of your USBs deliverying that many volts. USB is 5v. They vary in how much load (amps) they can provide, but for a focuser I doubt it will be over 500ma - which is the basic standard of usb2.0. So any of your usb ports will work fine to power it.... But I mean, assuming you are going to have it controlled by a PC or ASIAIR you need to plug it in there of course - and it gets power and comms from that. I imagine that's the way they expected most users to use it. stu

I can recommend the latest M1 macbook air if you are happy to use macos. firecapture runs fine. And the SSD is 3000Mb/s (yes.. not a typo). It has no problem pulling data out my asi224 as fast as it will let it. If you must, you can now run windows on the ARM M1s (parallels and the windows 10 arm64 beta) too, but frankly if you plan to use windows all the time, probably a mac is not the right choice. They also barely get warm, and the battery lasts 10-12 hours.

Just for kicks, I raked out the video I took in 1999 when I saw a total eclipse in Hungary. That was pretty special stu

All same as dave here. They are a pain to focus. As for OPs star selection question - don't pick brightest. You want a star that is medium brightness of ones you can see. It will then calibrate. If its not moving check your guiding is working - what mount is it ? Try changing to just north and get that working. Also bump up the aggressive on axis. Lastly, just try moving to a new bit of sky for a bit