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Quetzalcoatl72

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    Astrophotography, Photography, Astronomy, Gaming, Lego enthusiast, Collecting, Geology, Minerology, History, Conspiracies, Ancient History, Megalithic Sites, Exploring, Paranormal.
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  1. That's what I was going to buy because they're the cheapest and smallest, a lot of favourable reviews on FLO, to use for for FMA 180. ST80 would be quite a big guidescope for this, though I am looking to put weight on as i need to counter 5kg.
  2. The ED80's finder is useless to me as my camera makes it so that I have to remove the locking ring, making the lens wobble and go constantly out of focus especially when I wrap a dew heater around the thing. I'm trying to look for a solution, if not then mini finder from FLO it is!
  3. I've seen a few finder scopes that just have a focuser, no rings or anything that you would adjust to star align... However, I don't even do star alignment anymore, It's just a quick polar alignment on sharp cap go to my target plate solve then I'm done. I could just have one guidescope for all 4 of my telescopes right?
  4. I settle with 4 hours now since this post. I hardly see nights that last 6 hours or more and I could splice sessions together but again I've only seen a couple of times where there were multiple clear nights in the week, I can't leave my scope outside so it's not a permanent setup. I've noticed you have a RC8, I did my longest exposure for that scope which was about almost 4 hours on M106. It's never been collimated and my NEQ6 struggles with this load as 3minutes is the max it can go guided and even then you've got eggy stars. I don't feel like spending hundreds to get a collimation kit for it but I really want it to perform at it's best as I prefer using my other scopes that have more success.
  5. That's exactly what I was doing, since this post I only settle for at least 60 240second subs. My sky is very limited being in the suburbs, pollution, obstructions and bad weather so I'm missing a lot of objects. At the moment I cannot see Saturn from my garden, any object below that is Impossible, I predict another 2 years and I may have a chance. Orion is the limit when it comes to that and even then I can only get maybe 3 hours of it before being obscured by neighbouring houses.
  6. See image attached for my plan. I want a new guidescope attached to my Askar 180 which will be mounted on my neq6 but I'm not 100% sure it's going to work. I don't know how to put these items together as I'd probably need special screws. I have zero access to 3d printers or any other expensive high tech machinery, I just want easy access to things I can buy online on a budget. I already have the Arca swiss style plate, I just need the bracket and the Losmandy bar which are both 20cm long. There is a threaded hole on each end which I'm hoping I can fix together with longer screws which I don't have. If that doesn't work(OR) then I skip the swiss and just put both pieces together and hope that they are aligned. Also I am in need of another guiderscope as I don't want to have to keep changing the calibration since I have 3 telescopes I use and It would be better if each one had their own guidescope, however I only have one guide camera so I still have to swap over. A lightweight one would be best to fit on the shoe on top of the silver bracket, OR a new bracket for the Askar which would line up with the other one then I can put a new or existing guidescope on as I use the one from my Evostar ED which is terrible. Another thing is trying to balance all of this with a 5kg weight on the EQ6 as well as balancing on the other axis, but I can't see that being a problem honestly. So can anyone tell me how or if I can mount this all together with screws etc and recommend a guiderscope for my Askar 180 as I take 4min subs usually.
  7. I've went though all my sessions and found that they all habit the same colours, became a little tedious, however these are my first attemps on these objects and the detail is nice for what I can get from my backyard and limited exposures. Here is some of them, It feels like I'm having issues with flats and the light pollution removal tool, not sure. Looks like I will invest in a new filter though.
  8. I've used both camera types, dlsr was modded but I don't use that now, the ASI533-MC is my end game camera, so I wont be changing unless I move to a much dark area for it to be worth the investments. I prefer natural as best I can so no 'artistic' edits for me, I only want to increase my experience, speed and efficiency now . Can't see investing much more money, besides maybe a new filter, some ease of life and probably collimation for my RC8, the nebulas on that 8" are pretty bad, blurry etc.
  9. Attached is my first real attempt in January this year of the christmas tree cluster. I was impressed with the blue and red contrast, being an amateur I only do short exposures this was about 2 hours ish, i used to do only 1 because I wanted as many objects on my capture list as possible, but seeing what an extra hour can do I had to change. I have wasted precious time by trying to image other obscure ones as a test but either they don't show up or are really poor in single lights, for example Iris, catseye, owl, spider&the fly and elephant are a struggle for me, I can make them out but I'd probably need 3 hours+. I'd like to avoid buying a mono with filter wheels but do you think it is worth my time investing in one of those optlong filters you mentioned, as they are probably more expensive than my current one with was over £100. Different story if I lived in bortle 4-5 however, I also don't have much access to the sky due to north garden and internet cables ahead.(for reference the seagull nebula is never in reach). To get the blue from this image it became apparent during the star colour calibrations in APP. You also mentioned reduction in galaxy detail, would make sense since my m31 images are very underwhelming compared to my m42's which I never understood, with it being the largest galaxy. Thanks guys
  10. I've been processing my images from January, managed to capture a lot, California, Orion, horsehead, monkeys head, bubble etc etc. Some of them come out great and just about the right colour to what I match on stellarium. But there's some that don't, for example the monkeys head, all the pictures i've seen of that is blue with orange/yellow around the edge of it, weird, because it's just red and uh lighter red for me. meanwhile I captured orion the same as everyone else does, I even tried the jellyfish and that came out brown as it should be. Do I need special filters for those? or is it all in the editing? I'm using an optlong ccd L-Pro i think, I don't use filter wheels etc I don't find it worth the money living in a bortle 8 zone. I've heard that certain nebulae produce certain glasses or something, I don't quite understand it all. Oh yeah I captured the blue from Christmas tree cluster and Pleiades.
  11. Been looking for a solution to keep that locking ring, the ring I use to attach my asi120 is different from the one provided at FLO would there be a better focus if the camera was moved further or is that the opposite?, mine is very thin and the thread isn't great, takes many attempt to screw the guider since I have to keep swapping it with both my scopes back and forth.
  12. In the picture is my current setup for using the Askar180, It is mounted to an ED80 I use the finderscope from that, it works but annoying and unnecessary, I also hate taking the ballhead from my tripod everytime since I use the tripod for my other photography. Looking for a solution to not have to take out my ED just to use the askar, but instead a mount that just takes the Askar and a finderscope for guiding. Also I want to keep using the standard finder for when I setup the ED so I would like a recommendation for a new one to use for the Askar. The setup would also have to counterweigh the 5kg weight from the NEQ6 mount, I do have a small weight which attached to both dovetail types. I hope you can help me save setup time, thanks!
  13. I use a custom marker because the little green square is not always in the middle of the nebulas on stellarium
  14. I always use N.I.N.A and I get a meridian flipped failed message, but technically it didn't, but the image was not centered. I like to stay in the house when ive setup and only check on it now and then. All the time I have missed when the mount does the flip because I don't really know how it works, I look at my output and I can see that the images flipped but didn't exactly center them, I use a platesolver to do that. I'm imaging the california nebula at this very second and i've wasted 6 images because I didn't know when it was going to happen. It cut off a small portion of the nebula so I'm not sure what will happen when I come to stack the images, I'm hoping there's no weird artifacts, hopefully just that it's less exposed on the bits that were cut off. Is there a way I can fix this error or work out when it's about to happen so i can do it manually. It's been a problem for a long time now, sometimes theres a cable snag I'm not aware of, I just don't want to sit outside all the time.
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