The Lazy Astronomer

Played around with it a bit yesterday, there wasn't a whole lot in it really. In areas of low signal (i.e. background sky), the stack appeared less noisy, but in areas of higher signal I couldn't discern any difference between them. Further experimentation required, methinks!

That's actually a decent image for just 10 x 3 minute subs. I'd imagine vlaiv would say the colours are good here (good = natural). However, many imagers (myself included) are guilty of pushing the colours a bit to make pretty pictures. The easiest (and cheapest) way to improve the quality of your images is more integration time. The image below was taken with a 50mm guide scope, but is several hours of integration time, so more aperture is not necessarily needed (granted it was taken using a mono cooled astro camera, but the same principle applies to a DSLR)

Ok, so what you're asking for here is more than one telescope. Medium to large sized nebulae require short focal lengths, small nebulae and galaxies benefit from longer focal lengths. I see you already have an 80ed, so that's basically the short focal length scope sorted. This leaves us free to focus on a scope for small targets. Based on budget constraints, I think an SCT is not in the equation - the edge HD range prices start some £500 over your budget. The standard SCTs are not recommended for deep sky AP, but I don't have any experience with them in this regard - perhaps someone else can comment? The quattro has a focal length of 800mm, this I would describe as a 'medium' focal length; small objects and galaxies will still appear pretty small on the sensor. The vx10l and the vc200l both offer a similar focal length: 1600 and 1800mm respectively, but as the former does it through the use of a Newtonian design, you end up with a very long tube which may be difficult to use practically (long moment arm, very sensitive to wind). This leaves us with the vc200l, which is some variation on the Ritchey-Chretien design l believe. Practically, this seems like it might be the winner of the 4 options you listed, however it's quite a slow scope at f9, so you'd need long sub-exposures, and it's focal length means you'd need a good mount, and very careful guiding. All of them would also require regular collimation for optimal results (the newts and RC especially). Edit: I've assumed you've got some fairly decent experience in AP already; working at long focal lengths is difficult!!

What's the area of interest: galaxies, small nebula, medium to large nebula?

Hmm, interesting. I think I do remember seeing a thread on here a little while ago comparing DSS to APP and PI, the conclusion was that DSS was the worst of the three, but then APP and PI are somewhat expensive software, so considering DSS is free, it's a pretty good option. However, being that ASTAP is also free, this may change things. Will definitely be trying it out for myself now.

Yes, it certainly is interesting to think that if AE Auriga had travelled in just a slightly different direction, this nebula may not have been visible (or at least much less visible)

@alacant can probably best answer this, being the one who did the processing on the image above. I might suggest though, that wipe has not removed the gradient in the image so some further tweaking of the parameters should yield better results. Another thing you could try is creating an inverted star mask and clicking the sample button, then go back into mask, click clear and then invert and keep. This will then apply that sampled colour balance from the stars to the whole image and works on the assumption that the colour of all the different stars will average to white. It usually finds a pretty good colour balance for me.

Here is my first attempt at the two most famous(?) nebulae in Auriga. LRGB capture with Evoguide 50 and ZWO 294MM. Luminance flats didn't correct dust motes properly (RGB flats were fine), so some more work needed on calibration frames... Integration times in the different channels are all over the place in this one for various reasons, and I wanted more luminance, but due to days getting longer and trees blocking my view, I've kind of run out of time on this target this year I think. 132 x lum, 45 x red, 32 x green and 90 x blue, 20 x flats, 20 x dark flats, 19 x darks (all 2 minutes, unguided). 9h58m total integration time. Processed (poorly) in Startools - really didn't enjoy the processing on this one, the were so many stars it was overwhelming, and it was quite a challenge to push them back. Probably completely restarted processing about 7 times. Sick of redoing it, so this is the final image (for now). Have to say I'm a little bit disappointed I wasn't able to get more of the faint gas and dust, but perhaps longer subs would be needed to get that. Anyway, here's the image:

I'll be interested to see the results you get with the rgb filters, I keep thinking l want to upgrade mine (pretty sure the ZWO ones are causing reflections in my images).

Well ideally, yes, but then that's another step up in price - OP had originally mentioned the 1600mm was their ultimate target, I was just pointing out that in the 4/3 sensor size the 1600mm has been superseded by the 294mm

I'm by no means an expert, but basically: 1. The 4/3 sensors will have a larger FOV than the 1" 2. The different pixel sizes will dictate the sampling rate for a particular telescope. Very short focal lengths will benefit from smaller pixels. However, at longer focal lengths, very small pixels are likely to just be "wasted" resolution. I.e. you're not recording any further detail, just spreading it out over more pixels.

Just a side note: the 1600mm is relatively old now, if you were in the market for a 4/3 sensor in the future the 294mm would be the way to go.

Those plastic waterproof enclosures provide virtually no insulation - I keep three power supplies in one when imaging (2 brick type for the equipment and 1 laptop adapter), and they're no warmer than they would be if I were using them indoors. I would also imagine that those 'proper' power supplies, like the one you linked above have some kind of safety thermal cut off as well?

If l might make a suggestion - instead of you processing someone else's data, you could post up some of your raw data, and some of the more experienced guys on here can go at it to see what comes out. I think this would be better, for several reasons: 1. You'll be able to see the results from a variety of different processing software and techniques 2. It will allow you to see what's possible with your current data (and people will happily share their workflows, I'm sure) 3. Experienced imagers will be able to identify any faults/issues with your data and provide suggestions to help improve on the capture side of things Alternatively, you could download some of the IKI observatory data from this forum, process yourself and compare to the efforts others have posted. This would at least allow you to see what your current techniques are able to pull out from high quality data.

+1 for a talk from Ivo about Startools - seems only fair as there have already been talks for pixinsight, affinity, APP and Photoshop!

Welcome to the forum! You're in the right place, the breadth AND depth of knowledge on this forum is phenomenal!

@Stu - the shape of the top of the scope in that second picture reminds me a bit of that well known (misleading) picture of a blobfish. Looks a bit sad too ☹

Not really a horror story, but of the 4 new bits of kit I've bought over the last year I managed to immediately drop 3 of them. No damage done in any case as only short drops, but still, I'm being super careful with the 4th item!!

I'm in the same boat - ordered a few weeks ago, and partly based the decision on the strength of the reputation of the esprit range. Thankfully bought through FLO, so have every confidence any issues with it will be rectified appropriately. If it turns out to be a bad one though, might just exchange for that new triplet from Williams Optics...

The groups in DSS should really only be used if you shot over multiple nights and have different calibration frames for each night. You shouldn't be stacking subs of different exposure length.

Spent about 30 minutes imaging before realising l hadn't focused. Another time I spent about 10 minutes trying to work out why my mount wouldn't connect to the laptop... helpful hint: much easier with usb cables plugged in.

I'm a NINA user also - never tried to see if option 2 is possible, but never really had a need for it. You can use stellarium to set a target for framing (either an object or a specific star) and import into NINA, or use the sky atlas and framing wizards in NINA directly. Once you're happy, hit slew, then run plate solving and wait for it to centre target in the frame (takes about 2 mins). Whenever I want to add some more data to a project, l just make sure I set the same object/star as the previous images and the plate solver lines it all up nicely for me (I very rarely remove my camera from the scope, so don't usually have to worry about camera orientation).

Have you tried deconvolution? That can help recover detail smeared by atmospheric conditions.

First up, don't be afraid of mono! Yes, it's more expensive than OSC, and is a little more fiddly on the capture side of things, but (all other things being equal) for a given integration time, you will get a better image. Plus, mono is much better for narrowband. Aside from having to stack each channel seperately, there's really very little difference in the processing side of things. Secondly, a warning: starting out deep sky imaging with such a long focal length will not be easy (and it's hard enough already!). You'll need to have a high quality mount (EQ6R minimum, probably), and you absolutely will need to guide. And, while this set up would be pretty good for galaxies (M31 excepted), you may find it's not ideal for nebulae as these tend to be quite large. M42, for example (the go to target for beginners, myself included), doesn't quite fit in your FOV in the best-case scenario (0.85 reducer & ZWO 071 - see below). Now with all that said, to answer your question directly: due to the long focal length of your scope, you may find the larger sensor to be better for you. You'd probably also want the 0.85 reducer as well, to slightly increase your FOV.

We've all been there - my first attempt at flats were so bad they, if anything, introduced more dust motes. I find it helps if I think of astrophotography as one long, continuous string of mistakes which occasionally produces a passable image 🙃