Prathab

Captured on Sunday night. Integration time on both - 47x180sec. Setup 1 - AA 533c, tamron 150-600, L-Extreme Setup 2 - 500D, Tamron 70-200, AA triband Thank you for looking, C&C welcome.

Thank you for your feedback. I suspect haze, but I can't remember the last time I had perfect seeing here. This was captured using a C8. Manually focused with a bhatinov mask at the start of the session. But it might have shifted on slewing. I have since added a focus motor, hopefully will help with focus accuracy.

I've been watching lots of tutorials and learning various processing techniques. I go through a lot of trial and error and see what works with the data. But I would like to know what other experienced folks can pull out of my data to see if I'm getting the most out of it. Please feel free to process the data and post the results here. This is 47x180 sec lights + darks, flats and bias from a OSC camera & L-extreme filter. HA and Oiii extracted using Siril. Thank you for taking a look. WizardHa_result.fit wizardOIII_result.fit

Quick 51 min integration on pacman nebula. 17x180 sec lights + calibration frames. Ha and Oiii extracted in Siril and processed as HOO.

Any EF or EF-S mount lens are compatible with your camera. If you are looking to buy used, a 70-300mm F/4-5.6 lens can be found around £100. In the £300-£400 range you can get a Rokinon/Samyang 135mm F/2 which is a no brainer or a 70-200mm F/2.8. The additional money will get you bigger aperture and cuts down on the required exposure time. There are 3rd party manufacturers (like Tamron, Sigma, Tokina) that make some great lenses and are cheaper than Canon made. Look in mpb and you'll have plenty to choose from. Read some reviews online to make sure the specific model you are considering is not a dud. As people have already suggested an Alt/az mount will be a limiting factor as DSO imaging is based on the premise of long exposures. A used star tracker is not a bad way to start and are not too much money.

Thank you

I was in the same boat as you in January. I upgraded everything except my lens. I had to do a few mods to make the lens work, but it works great. If you want to change just one thing in your setup and see the most difference in your deep sky imaging results, it would be your camera. Unmodified DSLRs, in my experience are frustratingly ineffecient for capturing sky fog. A modded DSLR to start with is a great option or if you don't want to do it twice the 533 is a great camera. Invest in a broadband LPF and a multiband narrowband filter. First time I used a triband filter was like turning the lights on. If you are still smitten down the road and have some cash to burn, a goto eq mount will make your life infinitely better. But capturing data is only the half of it. I'm still a struggling beginer at image processing. But we are blessed with many cloudy days to learn. There are many free resources and software to start producing some results. Play around with publicly available image data on some of your processing tools to see what you can produce. Good luck and have fun!

Got a small clear window to get some data on the Crescent nebula. Stacked and processed as HOO image in Siril. 20 x 180 sec light + calibration frames. Image train - C8 + 0.63FR , Lextreme, AA 533c

Surprised that I got no response. My C8 is probably older than 2006. The back of the scope is flat and focus knob cover plate was black (instead of the orange in newer models). The screw slots in the orange cover plate that came with focus motor matched perfectly. Took a screw to a few local stores with no luck identifying the size. So decided to throw money at the problem and ordered all the UNC sizes between 2&3mm in various lengths from accu. Screws arrived today. The size that I needed was 4-40 at 1/2 inch length. Installation went smooth and was able to calibrate it on first attempt. Was able to test focus on a distant tree. Hope it works ok on the stars. Hope this helps anyone with a similar C8 model to install celestron focus motor. Image of the rear of the telescope to show the model I'm referring to.

I'm trying to install a Celestron autofocuser on an old C8 OTA. The 3 screws that hold the original cover plate are too short for the new cover plate included with the focus motor. The countersunk screws look like they are between 2-3mm thick. It would be a great help if you can tell me the screw size, so that I can order some longer screws. Thank you for your input. Cheers

Thank you Steve, it was challenging to process. I will revisit the target in better seeing conditions.

This is my second outing with my new (to me) scope. Captured on Sunday night. There was some high clouds/haze, but shot right through it 😀. I've managed to fix most of the guiding issues I had during my last outing. I got sub second RMS error all night long. Total exposure - 180sec x 81 + calibration files Equipment - C8 + 0.63FR, Altair 533c, Lpro filter Thanks for looking, C&C welcome.

Thank you, for a change the box did not include clouds 😀

Thank you!

Picked up an old used C8 over the weekend. This is my first telescope. I have been shooting with DSLR lenses so far. Had a clear night yesterday with good seeing. Took all of 5 mins to Collimate. But I was having tracking issues. My guiding error was twice that of my normal. My 600mm lens had no issues in 20mph gusts. But this is twice the FL and atleast 3 times the surface area. I also think I can improve on balancing by adding some additional weight and moving it up the CW shaft. Yesterday I had to stick to shorter subs and still had to throw away over 50%. I will keep tinkering with my mount and guide setup to improve performance. Anyways, I'm chuffed to get some results on a night that I wrote off for setting up and testing new gear. 1. M13 - 34 mins 2. M27 - 48 mins Image train - C8 + 0.63 FR, Lpro Filter, Altair 533c