The Lazy Astronomer

Hi all, Below is what I consider to be my first "proper" deep sky image (as opposed to test images I took whilst trying things out). Taken with a ZWO294MM and a Skywatcher Evoguide 50ED + Skywatcher flattener. 1 hour each RGB and approx. 2.5 hours L. Unguided so l limited myself to 60 sec subs, plus a set of shorter exposures for the core. Cropped quite a bit because I thought there were some artifacts at the top of the frame, but looking at other's images I think it was actually some faint dust! Basically a complete beginner, so I'd appreciate any advice anyone has to help me improve! Thanks. P.s. thanks @AstroRuz for your GIMP tutorial video, really helped me out trying to get my head around how to use it!

Lacking a suitable counterweight to balance a very small load? No worries, just parcel tape another scope to the end of the counterweight shaft. Works surprisingly well actually. Anyone else got some examples of bodged "fixes" for an astro problem?

I'm in the early stages of getting a remotely operated setup going. I'm a Windows user, so will be making use of 2 laptops and remote desktop. l assume there is a similar remote access protocol for Apple, not sure if it would work between a mac and an ipad though. Another option would be a long usb cable, although that comes with it's own problems. You don't necessarily need an autoguiding setup for remotely controlled imaging, although obviously it would help with longer exposures.

I had a similar problem when I tried some high resolution moon imaging a few months ago (15 panel mosaic). Gave up trying to figure it out and just used st4 guiding in the end - problem solved!

Do you already have a mono camera and narrowband filters (and a filter wheel/drawer)? If not, those items would probably end costing as much, if not more, than a decent 70 - 80 mm ED refracter

Welcome to you too then!

Thanks all for the welcome. Clear skies forecast from 9pm tonight🤞

Long time lurker, first time poster. Some background and an introduction: Always had an interest in astronomy and the night sky, but really got interested when l went on holiday to a villa halfway up a mountain (maybe just a big hill) in rural Corsica with my girlfriend's family. Skies were darker and clearer than I'd ever seen before, and I spent most nights sat out with a couple of beers looking at Jupiter and it's moons with a pair of bird watching binoculars. Finally got around to buying my first scope a few months before the first lockdown (6" SCT). Looked through it about 4 times and quickly realised photography was going to be my passion, so started out fairly gently with a bit of planetary and lunar over the spring/summer and am now throwing money down the bottomless pit that is deep sky astrophotography 😁 Most of the way there with building my setup now, just saving the pennies for a decent refracter at some point later this year. Managing to get some imaging/processing experience in using a Skywatcher Evoguide 50ED as a super widefield scope for an hour here and there when the clouds actually clear... On the bright side, it's given me plenty of practice at setting up and polar aligning quickly! I'm currently working on my first proper deep sky image which is (surprise, surprise) M42. About 2.5 hours of data so far, so you can likely expect a poor quality, massively overprocessed image of that appearing on the forums sometime soon. As my handle might suggest, I'm trying to work towards as automated and remotely operated setup as possible, so I'm sure I'll be seeking plenty of advice when I inevitably run into problems doing that in the near future! Sorry, quite a long intro in the end!