Grant93

7 Hours on the Sadr Region Flats and Bias no darks. 2 min exposures with the Lenhance. Stacked and processed in siril.

Taken over 3 nights due to the lack of night time, Moon lower on the horizon for most of the time. Taken with the 600D + LEnhance, Samyang 135mm ontop of the Skyguider Pro. 7 hours of 2 minute exposures. 25 Flats and Bias. No Darks. Really quite minimal processing in Siril only, also stacked in Siril. If anyone wants to try and stretch some more out of it feel free, ill attach the FIT. Let me know what you think . Grant Sadr 7h.fit

Thats excellent you can tell theres a lot more of the dark nebula in that than mine. ZS61, Sorry forgot to put that! Cant wait to see your attempt . But yes the difference is shocking when you see them imaged from dark sites. Hopefully a .fit file is sufficient, Siril converts and stacks FITs files. But please do share your attempt at processing, I'm interested to see what I'm missing . And anyone else reading this, please have a go . result.fit

Hello everyone. Life and weather as usual have been getting in the way of my astrophotography as usual. With the shorter nights this makes useable nights even fewer and far between also But hey ho, still got a night in. First time leaving it outside from dusk until dawn also, so got all 5 hours in one night . However this is a reminder to myself not to try dark nebula from a bortle 5 again. The iris itself is showing quite nice, but not the surrounding dark dust. Had to choose a target which also didnt reach meridian during the night, so I wouldn't have to wake up to do any flips🥴, I've not set it up to be that automated just yet, plus I wouldnt trust any automated flips without myself there anyway, terrible cable management. 100 subs at 3 minutes each (5 hours) Dithered every 3 frames. 40 Flats 40 Bias 800d on the HEQ5 Stacked and processed in siril Both cropped and uncropped image.

I haven't read through the answers, so this may already of been said. So sorry in advance if this has already been pointed out. For the Skyguider pro and the 5kg weight limit, really you're limited to a few bigger galaxys here in the northern hemipshere, Andromeda and Triangulum, but also you can do widefield on the Pinwheel and Whirlpool for example, and you can do galaxy groups like the Leo Triplet and Markarians Chain. As far as telescopes go you could use a Redcat 51 or ZS61 With FF, although all in thats a little over budget, but you would be well within weight limits, and you would have seriously good quality glass. Also if you happen to be in the southern hemisphere there is the LMC and SMC, and maybe other galaxys I am not aware of

I have some cheap dew heaters off Amazon. When I go to pack away after a night of imaging, I can feel the dew heaters are ever so slightly warm, all you need to prevent dew is to keep the glass above the nights dew point, even if its only a degree, so to my belief, these things don't need to be significantly warm, just enough to keep it hovering above the dew point. Still yet for it to fail me. I assume this would be very different if you're using something with wide aperture, so need the heat to travel further. Could be wrong though, just a guess.

Cheers! Ill try this Uhm it was around its meridian, about 40/50 degrees. But this has been happening a while on many of my captures on many different targets using the ZS61, I've been aware of it, just blissfully ignoring it 😅 Now wanting to perfect things I wanted to figure out the issue..

Not sure either, Just gotta hope its coming from the T ring.. if not then I'll have to look at the focuser 😆

Sounds like it could be the T ring, Has only been happening continuously when swapping out cameras but leaving T ring on there, rather than keeping the T ring together with the camera, if you know what I mean. So that will be the first one to test. If it isnt the issue, how would you test / fix the focuser? Cheers

Hello everyone, A bit disapointed on my 3 hour Leo triplet. Although don't know what else I expected to be fair haha, probably a bit to small a target for a ZS61, heavily cropped due to a dust bunny that didnt get caliberated out from flats, must of moved before I did the flats. But yeah on all my photos from the ZS61, whether using the 800d or 600d, I notice I have some oblong shaped stars, regardless of exposure or guiding accuracy from that day. Is this some sort of tilt? Where abouts could the issue lie if it occurs on both cameras? Let me know your thoughts. But the image is 3 hours at 150 second exposures. 30 flats and bias. ZS61 & HEQ5, guided and dithered. Cheers Grant

Dont think we can venture this far south in the uk 10 degrees above the horizon at max for us here

I have decided on the f5.. hopefully I don't come across too many problems. What modifications would you recommend?

Would that have any negative effects even if it is oversized?

Download Stellarium or similar on your phone, and you can add in your location and fast foward the time on the bar along the bottom, this way you can see where objects are and at what time, this includes the milkyway. Just by a quick look at my phone now, I can see at 8:30 the only portion of the milkyway that is visible, is the winter milkyway, next to orion and arching over the western sky, which is less dramatic as the summer core which is often photographed. If I scroll along the time bar, as other have said here, you can see it rises with Cygnus at around 3am, with the full core not being visible until 7:30am (at which time it is light then, obviously ) So yes, this is more of a summer object to photograph really, Just wait a little longer!

https://www.firstlightoptics.com/telescopes-in-stock/ts-photon-6-f5-advanced-newtonian-telescope-with-metal-tube.html This I assume? Looks more fancy too Cheers

Haha yes I saw that too! Also I think there is a returned coma corrector I assume buying from a shop like FLO I'm not gonna get bitten in the ass by buying a return, I assume they check them rigorously when they come back.

Is that recommendation the same as the SW150PDS F/5? Cheers

Yes DSO is the primary interest, Lunar/Planetary for them short June/July nights Thank you for the answer, makes it a lot easier to make a decision Grant

Hello everyone, I'll try to keep it short and sweet, often get carried away and write essays when trying to ask a question. Just trying to decide on which one between these two to purchase, as I understand these are about the biggest scopes possible for imaging on a HEQ5, I hear some people get away with an 8" imaging on a HEQ5, but I heard its not recommended, as by the time the camera is attatched with guidescope and guidecam, you would be very close to hitting the 11kg max payload for imaging, and by how I understand it, its recommended against. If most people think this is a non issue, let me know, because I could be tempted to get the 8" versions instead. Anyhow I'm looking at one of these as I want a bit more reach, both for DSO imaging and moon/planetry. Would both these scopes be able to handle planetry with my ASI224mc + a 3x barlow? Conclusion - StellaLyra for that little less reach of 600mm, but the faster optics of F/4. Or the 150PDS for that extra 150mm of reach, and slower (but still nice and fast) optics of F/5. If theres anything else I need to think about, let me know Also let me know if you would recommend any other scopes Cheers Grant

Oh nice! Everyday is a school day. 🤓😃 Whilst I'm back here that stellarium suggestion also reminded me of https://telescopius.com/ Another good website for FOVs

Thank you 😁

Should of framed this one up better, in retrospective I don't know why I didnt frame up the flaming star with it. I was expecting just to centre crop the tadpoles into it, but then when I saw how well it picked up part of the flaming star I wanted to include that aswell.. poor planning! Taking under the full moon of last weekend, but I pointed it as far away from the full moon as possible. Using the L-Enhance filter to help resist the moonglow. A bit lackluster for 9 hours I think, let me know what you think. 140 Exposures x 240 seconds 40 flats and bias. ZS61 With the 600d and L enhance on the HEQ5 Guided and dithered every 3 frames. Stacked and processed in Siril, a bit of defringing and noise reduction in StarTools. Thanks for looking & Hit me with some constructive criticism 😁 Grant

Fantastic image! Is that the variable nebula (Not sure of the name) in the top right of the image? Edit: Just read sorry, you said in the post it is hubbles variable nebula 😁 Very nice!

Haha, I guess thats why my L-enhance isn't totally resistant to moon glow🥶. Although seems to be a lot better than nothing, Image from the weekend to come soon when I can be bothered to process and keep reprocessing until happy 😅. Investing in mono at some point in the year I think, seems to be the way to go to get the most out of our lack of clear nights in the UK. 🤓

Very nice images! And yes, the time we get all 3 nights clear on a weekend.. its a full moon! Still, clear nights can't be wasted can they