2 Scoops

You know that Polaris isn't exactly on the earth's axis of rotation, don't you . . .

Very sad news - I only found out this morning. I too live in Turkey (in the South West) and I and others were hoping that Alyn would come to the 3 day star party on Sandras mountain last year but sadly he didn't. If he had, I was going to invite him down to my place and shamelessly pick his brains about landscape astrophotography. A very sad loss to the astrophotography world, photography in general and lovers of his work.

The Manfrotto 293 Telephoto Lens Support may be suitable for you. I've got one and used it with a big heavy Sigma 100-400 lens on a Star adventurer. It's quite heavy but I couldn't balance the camera/lens without it.

I will do Marian but It won't be for around 10 days or so.

My cable arrived today, a couple of cables actually and a small cd for updating the hand controller. I won't be able to do anything for another week though as I am currently in the UK and the.mount is in Turkey where I live. I've been fettling the mount recently in anticipation of getting the cable. It has either been put together badly or a previous owner has been playing about. The RA axis worm gear bearings were overtightened and there was a lot of grease which had compacted and wasn't lubricating anything. That has all been replaced with new graphite grease and things are moving a lot better. Hopefully, the cable kit will allow for some decent guiding. Fingers crossed.

I have an EXOS 2 mount and right now I'm waiting for the postman to deliver me an EQMOD cable and I believe, update software for the hand controller so that I can guide. The cable is coming from Bresser.uk. I'd give you a link but it's a bit awkward right now as I'm on a train but Bresser.uk is easily found and you can get what is presumably the correct cable (to connect to a pc) from the website. I think it was £42. You should also be able to get the cable from Bresser.de

I had no real idea what I was doing when processing this, my first DSO and I still have no real idea but if I managed to get this far I did something! I kept notes so can play with it again, and will. Canon EOS 800D Sharpstar EDPHII with 0.8 reducer/flattner Star Adventurer mount 260 x 25 sec exposures . . . . . . and some luck.

I think the first 3 in that list are going to be tricky from Elgin around now, aren't they?

Love it! I was out as well; 5 frames with my Canon EOS 800D and StarTravel 120. 😃 Steep learning curve!

Thanks Scotty. Camera is a Canon EOS 800D with a Sigma 100 - 400 tele lens. I've stuck the camera onto my telescope (a SW Startravel 120) and taken some pictures but there was a lot of chromatic abberation that I couldn't get rid of. At the time I was waiting for the declination bracket for my star Adventurer to arrive - it now has, so I can be a bit more adventurous now. As for processing, I got this result with Photoshop CS2 which I have on my computer (but have no idea how it got there) I think it's pretty old. 😀 I had no idea what I was doing with Gimp but with a bit of YouTube advise managed to do something with PS. Going to try Siril next.

I'm an absolute beginner (although I know which end of the camera to point at the subject) so I thought I'd start on the moon a few days ago. Since then I've been playing about with various bits of free software and have come here to be told that I need more practice. 😀 Do your worst. I hope I am allowed to post this in this particular forum, being the moon an' all. I was hoping to try my hand at a couple of DSOs but we've had a lot cloudy skies recently and 3 days ago went into a full lockdown. The cloud disappeared for a few hours last night but humidity was high and the seeing was poor and without being able to go to a better site than my garden, I had a couple of beers instead.

Thanks Mick, that's very useful. 👍

Does Affinity Photo have a user manual for beginners?

I've just joined SGL and I look forward to picking up loads of information. I've been interested in astronomy since I was a kid and as I'm not a kid any more, I fancied taking my interest that little bit further and doing some astrophotography. I appreciate it's a steep learning curve that can perhaps be flattened a bit by throwing money at it but I don't have that much to throw around so it'll all be done on the cheap I guess. I live in South west Turkey and have reasonably dark skies without too much light pollution and some good dark sky areas are not too far away. I'd be dependent on using a friend's car though as I don't have one. What I do have is a boat (well 4, to be precise) and another hobby is making model boats. My biggest boat will allow me to get around the coast to some other dark sky areas, lug everything ashore and do some fishing while the intervalometer does its thing. I'll probably do a lot of thread reading on here and maybe ask some silly questions to cover some of the things that Youtubers and others leave out of their 'tutorials' because everybody knows and understands that little bit of basic info, don't they. 😉 I also hate TLAs so I may well be looking to have some of those explained. 😜 So thanks for being here and I'll see you around. 👍