ONIKKINEN

I'd say this is a possibility. My issues persisted even without the hand controller plugged in, so there is a chance the alignment model is stored somewhere on the mount head itself.

What does the raw recording look like? Check whether it has this banding or not to rule out capture and camera issues. If you captured as .SER you can download SER player to look at the recorded video. Whether you have banding or not, check these settings: If you do have actual horizontal banding, try enabling the Row Noise Correction option, and of course try to fix the issue for the next time as your camera really shouldn't have any issues with banding at all. If you dont have banding in the raw recording make sure this option is off, as it can actually create the bands if you have it enabled when there is no banding. @Elpsuggested the alignment points, which is also something you need to see to. Its not apparent from your screenshots whether you had them or not, but you do need them.

Sorry, dont know anything about EKOS/Indi, but something like this has happened to my EQM-35 and AZ-EQ6 when using NINA. So there is a chance this is a Skywatcher thing and not a software thing. For me the weird wrong way slewing happened randomly and wouldn't go away within the night it happened. I ruled out different things and was left with only one option, the mount itself being confused by sync commands from NINA creating a bogus pointing model of some sort. At the time i used the USB port on the hand controller as a way to connect the mount to the PC, and a temporary fix was to factory reset the mount through the handset. Most likely not helpful for your case, different mount and control setup and all but thought to mention that a very similar thing happened with my mounts.

Im getting a different number for the factor, here is how i calculated mine: For our scopes we get a multiplier of 1.47 times already, your Esprit 150 has an aperture area of 17671 square mm, my 200mm aperture newtonian with an obstruction of 70mm and mirror coatings of 97% (OOUK Hilux coatings) is an effective aperture area of 25937. I went ahead and checked 3 subs from all my nights, 1 from the beginning one from the middle and the end and got an average SQM of 20.73 for the UV/IR nights and 20.43 for all the nights. I think the UV/IR data is doing most of the work based on the weighting calculations from Siril's plot drawing fucntion so lets call it something like SQM 20.6 as the average. So with an SQM difference of 0.77 multiplied by the 2.5x per magnitude factor we get a 1.925x increase in required integration time. In the end we get my baseline of 25h * 1.47 * 1.925 = 70,74h. So you would have to image for 70,74 hours with your kit and sky to reach the SNR of my 25h image, in theory of course. Not sure how well practice would follow this theory but safe to say your conditions would require significantly more integration time than with mine. If you got some pristine moonless data i think it would not require nearly as much time since a 70% Moon probably adds somewhere between 0.5-1 magnitude to the sky if not more. Doable, since you get twice the data with 2 scopes at the same time.

An absurd number of galaxies, great image!

If you see only white and no detail you need to lower your exposure time. The Moon is very bright so youll use something like 5ms for capture.

This actually looks pretty good. If someone is picking up the hobby from scratch, then this thing covers your imaging camera, guiding, and control all in one and that price tag is not that bad either. That is if it really is 2000 USD (probably at least 3000€ here, yay taxes).

Yours is quite nice too, those fainter spiral arms are a pain to pull out of the noise and here they are readily available. I think we could calculate an "equivalent time" between our scope/sky combos to see how big a difference there should be in SNR. Purely in aperture my 200mm is around 50% larger in area (roughly considering the obstruction and reflection losses from mirrors) but our imaging scales are almost the same (mine is 0.76''). The skies mine was taken from were probably around SQM 20.7 on average for the 7 nights i spent, some nights better than 21 and a few closer to 20, and integration time needed to reach some chosen SNR increases by roughly 2.5x per magnitude of sky brightness increase. So if you want to crunch the numbers you'd only have to figure out your sky brightness using ASTAP's sky quality measurement tool and then plot in the numbers to see how many hours would you need to reach what i got in 25h.

Isn't there a downloadable plugin for solar system objects in new versions of NINA? Check the plugins tab, it will be there if it exists. Cant check for that myself as im using an older version of NINA, but i am 90% sure i saw a plugin like that when i last checked what was available.

Looks like a shadow, or shell of some kind within the PN. Bits blown off the star prior to becoming a PN maybe?

I think my magnitude record is in the 22 region, in my last year's 35h M81 image. Skies in the location i use are between 20.7 and 21.3 depending on whether we have snow or not so going much further than that might not be too realistic.

You can also take flats indoors by pointing the scope at an evenly lit wall or a tv showing a white screen (and a t-shirt). I did the latter a few years back and it worked ok.

Thank you! There is always this thought at the back of my mind "what if it were better/deeper still". So i have no trouble justifying the hours to try and chase that. I do think there is room for improvement, particularly in Ha because the Triband + OSC combo is very inefficient at capturing it (wide 30 ish nm pass and only 1/4th of the sensor). I reckon just a few hours of proper mono Ha will beat the current triband data. The luminance aspect i am not so sure about. Part of me is excited to see if new faint background galaxies emerge from the noise, or if more stellar detail can be resolved in the galaxy. If the image doesnt improve much, well thats a problem for future me.

Sure is a humbling hobby. There are countless objects in the image that are not in any catalogue, and this is a very popular imaging target so its strange to find so many of them. Many of those faint fuzzy spots are older than the Earth, all in just a single degree of field of view.

Thanks all for the compliments! One of the best things about going for longer integrations i would say. The background just tends to spawn interesting objects out of thin air. For example here is a quasar with a redshift of 4.170: Unassuming little speck, however that speck has spent more than 12 billion years on its way here.

Actually its 7 nights in a year since the first 2 nights were in 2023 🙃. Of course its not all the nights that i had in the 2023-2024 season, just the ones where M101 was nicely positioned (17 nights in total since august 2023). My plan is to get a monochrome camera for galaxy season 2025, and yep i would be shooting actual Ha and luminance for this one to make the best possible image i could reasonably make. I think there is a chance that the project will go on in 2026 if next year's weather is equally bad since i would like to get a similar amount of luminance to the current RGB stack (so another 20+ hours...), but whats another year when the project already celebrated its first birthday.

766 x 120s, around 50/50 split between UV/IR cut and an Antlia Triband RGB filter. Taken with an 8'' newtonian, TeleVue Paracorr, and a RisingCam IMX571 OSC camera. Resampled to 75% of original resolution, so roughly 1'' per pixel. The UV/IR cut filter data is all pretty good from better than average seeing nights and little or no Moonlight. The Triband data not so much, with some real uphill battle nights and 10+m/s winds and/or Moonlight. I think the UV/IR data is doing most of the heavy lifting here so not that big a deal. Imaged over 7 nights in total, 2 of which were in April 2023, 2 in February 2024, and 3 in March 2024. Haven't gotten a chance to image in April of this year mostly due to weather, and its looking like that is not going to change as the Moon is rising and the season closes in around 2 weeks so this will likely be the season closer for me. This year was significantly more windy than the 3 past years i have imaged, i think this might have been a 40+ hour image had the conditions been better but still shouldn't complain, its not like 25h is a short image. Calibration and stacking in Siril, processing in PI and Photoshop. I used a 2 stack method for this one, with the first stack containing all the data and the second stack containing only the Antlia Triband data. The Triband only stack was used as an H-alpha enhancing layer in Photoshop which is a subtle but noticeable boost to the bright emission regions. Feedback welcome -Oskari

I've no heaters, the primary is so far down the tube it really doesnt get dew. The secondary is kept dry by a dew shield and flocking applied to the back of the mirror (so it doesnt radiate heat away as much). I think the fan also helps with dew prevention since there is constant airflow over both mirrors and dew is less likely to stick.

I'd go with the 8" newt, but then again as a newtonian user myself i am biased. Something to keep in mind is that you need to install a fan on the primary mirror to keep the scope acclimated throughout the night. Temperatures can easily drop 10 degrees at night here in winter, which is too much for just passive cooling to do the trick. Its not an expensive thing to set up but one more thing to fix (just a computer case fan + some DIY for mounting and power). I am planning on getting rid of my Paracorr because it has some field curvature over an APS-C sized chip, but i think it would be very good for your 533 cameras. Let me know if you are interested in that if you do decide to go for the newt.

Bortle 3 is excellent, so no point in a light pollution filter unless your camera is astromodified in which case you'd need an extra UV/IR cut filter. If the camera is stock, you're all set for some great images and no filter is necessary.

Even with the 130PDS you still face the issue of having no guiding, and you'd want to get to that as soon as possible. I think setting up autoguiding is a sound strategy for now. Its not wasted money even if you do find the mount to struggle with the payload, because you can just use the guiding kit for a possible future mount upgrade. An overloaded but guided mount is still better than an overloaded and unguided mount so there will still be an improvement. For your mount a smaller scope might be the best play, but if the budget can handle a scope or guiding, then go with the guiding for now as guiding is necessary with any scope and mount (within reason, unguided mounts that do well start at like 5k).

I am using the ASI 220MM with my Askar OAG and an 8'' newtonian at 1018mm focal length. The camera is very sensitive and i always have several guide stars in the field of view no matter where the scope is pointing at, i think it would also work nicely for your larger scope.

Is your power tank this one? I was never able to use it with an EQM-35 for the same reasons you are having trouble now. It just cuts off randomly when slewing at full power. At a reduced slew rate it could succeed, but even then not always. I think they put a far too strict battery management system in this thing that cuts off the instant more than 3A is drawn from it, even if for a split second when the slew starts. I think a battery/power station that is rated much higher, like 5A or 10A is necessary for reliable operation. I now have an Ecoflow River 300 which has 2x 3A 13.6v DC sockets and a single 10A 13.6v DC socket, which works well (but of course is much more expensive - no free lunch with batteries).

Not too bad actually, would have believed it to be far more expensive and time consuming. Great to hear that these things have proper support after warranty, would prefer to keep my unit running for many years more.

You can do this measurement at any time, you just get a different result. If you want to know what is the darkest possible sky for your location then obviously choose a night without the Moon and a target towards the zenith. Do note that you get different readings from different parts of the sky, but this is normal. Its also why its kind of pointless to declare a site "bortle 6" if one part of the sky is 7 and another is 5. Exposure time is not so important, just a single subexposure that shows a good amount of stars (a minute or two).