The Lazy Astronomer

It's a great camera, you won't be disappointed!

The 385/178/462 have small sensors and are really more suited to lunar and planetary work. The 294 has a larger sensor than the 183, so is better value for the sensor size, plus the mono version of the 294 allows you to shoot in "unlocked" mode, so you can shoot with very small pixels (2.31um) if you so desired (~90mb image files though!). Another slightly cheaper option than the 294MM is the 1600 - same sensor size, but but a little older, and with lower QE. Also microlens issue on very bright stars, but is a very popular camera.

Wow, ok, I thought it was a bit faster, didn't realise it was quite that significant. Mono all the way then!

The settings you've got there seem to be directing N.I.N.A. to use astrometry.net as your plate solving software. Try changing the the plate solver in the drop down box? I just have ASTAP ser as both the plate solver and the blind solver - once I got it set up properly, it worked flawlessly.

Don't discount mono straight off the bat. Sure, it's a little more complicated/fiddly than OSC, and yes, it can be annoying if your imaging session gets cut short before you've been able to capture all the colour channels, but there'll always be another night to get the rest of the data (plate solving helps massively with this). I believe I'm right in saying this, although happy to be corrected if not, but I think mono + lrgb filters is technically faster than OSC for a given quality of image, all other things being equal. It also gives you the option of branching out into narrowband, so you can still image on full moon nights.

Yes, but with some limitations. It has strong field curvature without a flattener, so you're limited to very small sensors or a very large crop. With the flattener, there is only 17.5mm of back focus, so can only be used with a dedicated astro camera.

Thanks. ☺ No, you are reading it right, the Evoguide is being used as the imaging scope here. The reason I bought it was for dual purpose use as a guide scope and for use as a widefield imaging scope in its own right.

Also, the 462 has a small sensor, so depending on the scope being used, the FOV could be extremely small. In that case, your pointing accuracy would only have to be off by a very small fraction for Mars not to appear within the FOV at all.

Not sure what scope you're using, but the 462 should be an excellent planetary camera. The planets are very bright (relative to deep sky objects) and should be easily captured with exposures in the tens of milliseconds. I was imaging Mars around October with a C6 SCT and I think I was using exposure times of around 20ms. Granted, Mars is now further away from us, so will appear smaller and dimmer, but it should still be easily captured. At 30s it should be way overexposed. As has been suggested, either your focus is off, or you are not pointing at Mars (or maybe the lens cap is still on? 🙃) Focusing on the moon is a good tip (you literally can't miss it!), or maybe try focusing during the day on a distant object (tree, lamppost, aerial, etc). That should get you somewhere in the ball park focus-wise, if you still can't see anything when you try to look at Mars then you know your pointing is off.

Thanks. What does this mean for us as consumers in the interim (until the new prices are released) - have you stopped accepting orders on Skywatcher items for the time being?

Another +1 for Robin Glover's advice. As with seemingly everything in astrophotography, it seems that extreme cooling is very much a case of diminishing returns.

You're right, it would appear to be upside down. I think there's an argument to be made though, that technically there is no such thing as correct orientation for objects in space (that's my excuse, anyway).

I don't have much experience, and can't comment on the performance of Vlaiv's other suggestions, but I'm really enjoying my 294MM. I have seen others in agreement that it is a good upgrade from the 1600MM. Plus, you have the option of 2 different 'modes': the small pixel mode which unlocks the subpixel architecture for 2.31um pixels, or the 2x2 (hardware binned) mode for 4.63um pixels. My understanding of this is that it essentially allows you to choose between 2 different pixel sizes so you can choose whichever is the better is the better match for your setup with regard to sampling rate*. *I probably don't know what I'm talking about, so if Vlaiv comes back and says that's all nonsense, he's definitely right 😀

I'm guessing based on the content of your other thread that you are not entirely satisfied with your Sharpstar?

I've been at this for just over a year now, with a heavy focus on lunar and planetary imaging up until a couple of months ago when I made the move into deep sky astrophotography. For planetary/lunar imaging, it's perfectly possible to capture a decent amount of data inside of 30 minutes, so you can make good use of relatively small breaks in the cloud. I would imagine the same rings true for visual observations as these objects are so bright you don't really need any dark adaptation time. Over the summer last year, I managed 3 decent images of Jupiter, 2 of Saturn, 3 of Mars and 4 or 5 shots of the Moon. Amazingly, the skies were also clear around the time of the oppositions for both Jupiter and Mars! I definitely skipped several good clear nights during this time as well (pubs reopened 😁). Since moving to deep sky imaging, I've been able to get 5 or 6 sessions so far in the last month, most between 2 - 3 hours, with two sessions of 5 or 6 hours. Basically, if you're able to set up quick enough, and are happy to accept you may only get an hour or two of clear sky time, then on average, I would say 1, maybe 2 sessions per week.

Hmm. Do you have any inkling about what sort of increase is likely? Are we talking 5 - 10%, or more like 20% (or more)?

Hmm. Maybe I'll give the RC a miss for now then!

Judging by the recommendations so far, l think you might be right! 😀

I thought about that, but was a little apprehensive as it's more of an unknown quantity, so to speak, compared to the Esprit and ed80 which are well established. Any Sharpstar owners around who can comment?

Sounds to me like you'd put the Esprit head and shoulders above the ed80 then?

Hi all, So, I'm in the market for a refracter for astrophotography (might look through it a handful of times, but l would say >95% photography use). Main use would be medium to large sized DSOs. I'm currently torn between spending more on a higher spec model, specifically the Esprit 100, or keeping costs much more reasonable and going for the Evostar 80. Both have similar fields of view and similar focal lengths, but if I were to go for the Evostar, I could probably also convince myself l could afford a 6" RC for small objects and galaxies as well... 😁 Would be interested to hear opinions of owners, and if there are any owners of both, how do they compare to each other in your experiences? Also open to any other suggestions anyone may have. Thanks.

Thanks 😁 I'm really pleased with how the trapezium turned out. Spent a while trying to get it to not look too 'fake'. Haven't tried any star reduction, but looking cloudy every night this week, so plenty of time to go back and try some reprocessing. I did take flats, but I did not do them well (see my previous post). They may even be creating more problems than they're solving, so will possibly try restacking without them, although l think the vignetting may then cause me problems... I look forward to more tutorials in the future!

There definitely is more colour in there. BUT, I have to dismantle the imaging train to change the filters (very short backfocus from the flattener does not allow the use of a filter wheel), and in my hurry to collect as much data as possible while the skies were clear, I made the mistake of not taking flats before changing filters and thus the flats do not remove the artifacts from the dust motes in the colour channels. Whenever l tried to pull out more colour, it introduced/exaggerated some very ugly artifacts. L was the last channel I took, and I didn't disturb the imaging train between the last L image Saturday night and the L flats on Sunday morning, so that channel is pretty well corrected, but RGB much less so... Anyone got any clever processing tricks to reduce dust mote artifacts?

Thanks very much, well pleased with it for sure, but I am always my own biggest critic, so not sure I'll ever get an image I'm completely satisfied with! Actually forgot to mention l took some shorter exposures for the core, so this is also my first HDR image too. The mount is an EQ6R Pro. Really wanted to get an image together so didn't experiment with longer subs, but next thing may be to work on really nailing polar alignment and seeing how well the mount tracks over longer exposures.

I'll add to the likely hundreds of M42 images in here. Not my very first image, but my first proper attempt. 1 hour each of RGB, and approx. 2.5 hours of L (all 60s subs), plus a set of shorter exposures for the core, so first HDR image too.