barbulo

Interesting. I normally use a home made dew shield, though I remove it before taking the flat frames because the light panel mask has the exact size of the OTA. I thought it wouldn’t affect the light path, but now I’ll try and take the flats with it on (or the lights without the dew shield 😜) to see if it improves their effectiveness. Thanks @alacant By the way, I’ve just put the mirror clips away and glued the primary to its mirror cell. Now I have to tackle the mysterious tilt.

Hi all, This is my first attempt at a mosaic. IC1848 (Soul Nebula) in 2 panes along 4 nights. Total integration time of 11h in Ha and OIII (<3h per filter & pane). OIII signal was very weak, noisy and with strong gradient, so couldn't bring up the blue naturally. I pretended to get the stars in RGB but clouds came in to stay for a while. I'll have to wait until the next season to add those stars and more NB data. Captured with 130PDS and ASI294MM. Processed with PI. Comments are more than welcome.

Hi and welcome to SGL

I solved the same issue in my 130PDS playing with these 3 screws (I have no locking screw since I use a EAF): To do so, I put the payload inwards (vertically I mean) and adjusted the bolts until the EAF was able to move the train upwards against gravity.

Stared with a 150P (sold), moved to a 200PDS, substituted complemented with a 130PDS. And sometimes I feel just the opposite: fighting against collimation and tilt, I wonder why not to go for a shorter frac (SPRIT 80-kind). Should I have darker skies or more clear nights (more than 1 out of 20 would be nice), I would be using my gear instead of thinking about spending more money. I believe cloudy nights have a good share of guilt when it comes to spending money. Agree?

Hi and welcome to the Lounge!

Hi and welcome to SGL!

Nice pic. One question if I may: Do you dither between frames?

Welcome to SGL @Tim Jennings For astrophotography I wouldn't recommend to go above 60-70% of max capacity of the mount (3 Kg in your case). Star-trackers are meant to be used for widefield AP with light setups, such as a DSLR attached to a lens or a small refractor. Andromeda galaxy apart, you will need quite a long focal length to frame a galaxy properly, and that would mean relatively big and heavy optics for the SkyGuider. You can check the field of view of a given setup in the "Imaging" tab of this well known FoV calculator. What camera will you use? What is your budget?

Might be wrong but I'd say it is a bit out of focus: the four long diffraction spikes should be thinner.

A good balance is the key. The rest is a matter of how tidy you want your rig to be. Although my mount would handle it, I’m one of those who doesn’t like putting stuff on the OTA, so I put everything I can in the mount.

Beautiful target. “Different” colors, I would say. But nice framing. I like it. I’ve tried this target early this year, though Propus produced weird reflections somewhere along my optical train. Sad.

That simple, but ensure the reticle’s axis are horizontal-vertical.

Nice pic! I'm getting the grip with the ZWO version (ASI294MM) but so far I'm very pleased with it. I've never tested the bin 1x1 mode though. Someday.

First of all, welcome to SLG. Congratulations for your first lights: In my opinion, those are a good entry to the dark art of AP. I don't know what can cause that banding in your images, but posting the exposure time, gain and offset might help to determine. There are many IMX571 users around that surely will help you. 😜 Since you are using a field flattener, the coma is caused by a wrong backfocus: the distance between the sensor and the FF. That radial pattern means that that distance is too short: try using some spacers. To help you with the flats, you could explain how you took them and attach a FITS file. Did you use other calibration frames such as darks or bias? Did you correct the flats with its darks? Finally, a very personal opinion: cropping that M51 image the way you presented it, you missed a few other smaller galaxies that would have fit in a bit wider FoV:

Welcome to SGL! Have a look at this thread:

All right. 30min per channel sounds "affordable". Will 30s-60s subs do the job?

Perhaps too low iso? Try with 800 or 1600.

No need to tweak them before? I’ve processed nebulae separately but never stars. Yet to learn!

Thank you very much. I’m afraid the processing is going to be the difficult part.

Ready to catch a few photons:

A whale in the distance:

To me, the most important step in the PA routine is to square the reticle N S E W. To do so, I place Polaris in the center of the reticle and then move the mount’s AZ bolts to one side. Should the reticle was squared, Polaris should be exactly on the horizontal line (doesn’t matter if it is 0, 3, 6 or 9). If it is not, I rotate the RA axis and put Polaris on the line. And that’s it: now just place Polaris in its position in the reticle and beg the clouds haven’t rolled in.

I've heard of pixel peepers or star peepers in this forum. But any animals peeper? I've found a few in this re-processed Rosette. Anyone up for it? Start myself with a goat: