ONIKKINEN

If you've got one of the newer Sony sensor cameras (533/571/others) you dont need to cool down nearly as much to get a relatively noise free image. 0 is already good and +5 is not terrible either.

The consecutive load of my AZEQ6 carrying an 8 inch newtonian, cooled astro camera, guide camera, mini-pc is somewhere around 25w when not slewing or the early parts of cooling the camera from my 13.6V power station. I dont have dew heaters so yours would be a bit higher, but the 40Ah battery would do the trick for you as long as its not very cold outside, or if you can keep the battery warm (like in the van). Disconnected "dumb" batteries lose voltage really fast under high load and you can expect the voltage to be no higher than 12v after some use. If temperatures drop below 0 it could get a bit more tricky. If temperatures drop below -10 i wouldn't bother at all with a disconnected battery. When slewing the same setup can reach around 100w which would be more than 7 amps of current at 13.6V.

If Meteoblue says that seeing is really bad, then it always is so in that way i find it to be very accurate. In the other end of the spectrum when it says that seeing is very good, this i find to be more variable and not always the case. But still its a very good guideline for general estimations of the nights seeing.

I used a nearby construction site a couple of times as it was at the time just a cleared dark field with some equipment and materials here and there. Soon after it was fenced and gated off with signs telling no entry for unauthorized personnel (also installed lights). It was somewhat obviously a place i shouldnt be in but its on them for not putting up the signs earlier. Someone must have been puzzled looking at some security cam footage of a desperate astronomer trying to find some darkness for his scope.

So far i have just stacked with align RGB option checked in AS!3 and the channels are aligned, but obviously that will not fix the blur within the different colour channels. I will be shooting with an OSC camera (the new 678MC once i have it) and didn't plan on doing IR. But maybe one day will dabble in IR since the camera has a decent QE at near IR. Indeed, its a dice roll whether Saturn shows anything interesting in an eyepiece/camera at its current altitude. It will take all the way to 2026 until Saturn will be at 30 degrees or more, so while i am patient, i would prefer to get a good image without waiting for 4 years first.

The easiest and most reliable kit for mobile astrophotography is one of these, or something equivalent from another brand: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Portable-Station-Generator-Adventure-Emergency/dp/B0B2DHTBPM/ref=sr_1_9?crid=1SUNU2DQLB5HC&keywords=jackery&qid=1659885029&sprefix=jackery%2Caps%2C108&sr=8-9&th=1 I have this one (doesnt seem to be sold in the UK): https://eu.ecoflow.com/products/river-portable-power-station?variant=37254607863972 . The 288wh model has so far never run out during a night, even down to -25 degrees. When i used my mini-pc off the AC inverter side it did almost drain out every night though, so i switched to just powering it with a USB-C cable. I would imagine your laptop is by far the weakest link in terms of power usage here, and one you might want to rethink if mobility and convenience is what you're after. If yours is a low power consumption model with power saving turned on, then maybe you can make do with just the battery it has for the night, but otherwise i could see that as an issue. Give the idea of using a mini-pc a thought? Running 240V AC inverters from a 12V battery is very inefficient and you could run into issues with dropping voltage as the night goes on, so i wouldn't do this. Its far more convenient to have everything run off the same power station with 12V DC. Power draw will greatly depend on how much you cool the camera, but if you cool 15 degrees below ambient it will probably be around 1-2A of current drawn. The EQ6 will draw at least 3A when slewing at full power with a reasonably sized scope, and more than 4A if its cold outside (and if you are not balanced well). You should aim for a total of at least 7A of consecutive current being drawn, but to be safe maybe aim for up to 10A. But if you really want to do the inverter off a battery and a second PSU to regulate, it would probably work just fine, but just unnecessarily complicated.

Thanks @gorann, i might need thinner tilters too as im at 56-57mm with a paracorr, Askar OAG and a ZWO tilter with nothing that can be removed at the moment.

Thank you, this site answered all the questions i had in mind. Also many questions that i didn't know i needed to ask, great read! Atmospheric dispersion is a lot stronger than i realized, and looks like i really do want to have one to get the best out of OSC imaging with any altitude of target really, as nothing in the ecliptic rises anywhere close to the zenith.

Saturn will be at 14 degrees for my latitude of 60N this year and i think that would definitely benefit from an ADC. I just dont know if an ADC will salvage that so not sure if i would want to spend on that right now. Jupiter will be at 30 degrees, so im not sure if an ADC is strictly necessary here as its not super low anymore. Mars will be at 54 degrees, so probably not that important. So, where do more experienced planetary imagers draw the line on whether an ADC is helpful, or even a must have accessory for the best possible images? Here is what Saturn looks like without an ADC at 14 degrees: Completely separated RGB and a boiling view. Only glimpses of the cassini division appear here and there so im not sure an ADC will significantly improve it, but could be wrong so looking for advice.

Do let us know how the whole process goes once its sorted! Its a piece of electronics and mine too is bound to fail one day, so very interested to hear how it goes.

The UV/IR cut filter in the RisingCam advertises a cutoff of 650nm in the red end, so you would get absolutely no H-alpha in the image at all. That is a terrible thing for an astrocam, so you will need to get the AR filter version and then install an additional UV/IR cut filter somewhere in your imaging train. Now whether you need one with a newtonian is not as obvious as with a refractor (because with refractors you would get extreme chromatic aberration from the infrared, whereas mirrors reflect everything equally), but its a good idea to get one anyway because you may get some reflection issues from the Infrared wavelengths leading to halos around stars, and you will definitely get an extra reddish-pinkish hue to everything and find it difficult to colourbalance things to a realcolour end result (because you imaged beyond normal colours). In short, AR glass window and an extra UV/IR filter somewhere is the way to go.

1" Per pixel that you would get with that setup is probably a bit optimistic, but if you Bin x2 youll probably be close to what seeing will give you on most nights. But also depends on the MPCC really how well it performs on what kind of workable resolution you get out of it. If its a "soft" corrector like my previous TS- Maxfield 0.95x was you may need to Bin x3. I would say dont worry about it too much, its going to be great with your scope.

An unending sea of stars, what a beautiful shot!

I would probably go with the 200PDS on the EQ6 if deep sky astrophotography was the goal. I image with a 200mm newtonian and an AZ-EQ6 which is in the same kind of weight class as the EQ6 and i dont think i could get away with a 250 even if its in the payload range of the mount. Maybe if the scope was in an observatory shielded from wind it would be ok, but if not you will have plenty of scope to deal with in the 200PDS.

I think the 571 is not just a good fit, but possibly the best fit for just about any scope. Cant see how you would be disappointed with it!

No extra tricks needed to get it to show up. Im a bit underbarlowed so the exposure times are very fast and still produce a bright image with no trouble picking up Europa.

16 recordings processed the same way in AS!3 and RegiStax6 turned into a looping GIF in Photoshop: 8'' F/4.4 Newtonian at around F/13 with a RisingCam IMX571 OSC camera in 8-bit mode. Worked out surprisingly smooth, and its just about enough time to see that the different bands move at slightly different speeds compared to each other.

The outer halo of M31 and milky way is thought to be already colliding: https://earthsky.org/space/earths-night-sky-milky-way-andromeda-merge/ Andromeda's halo extends to at least 1.3 million light years, so more than half the distance between us. If that is also the case with our milky way which appears similar in size to M31, then we are basically already in a (very) slow-mo collision.

Anyone take the plunge for one of these yet? Googling around results in pretty much nothing for the 678MC.

Mars was a surprise, all 31 pixels of diameter of it! Represents what i saw through an eyepiece and Mars filter at 321x very accurately.

Took my eyes off the image for a few minutes and upon looking back noticed it was a tad unbalanced. Took another look and slightly rebalanced the colours out of the reddish hue it was in. Small difference but looks more natural now.

Thanks Neil, yes that one i am quite satisfied with. The PV 1/10 OOUK mirror must be doing something right when skies allow.

My best images of the 3 planets so far: Shot with 8'' F4.4 newtonian at around F13 and a Rising Cam IMX571 OSC camera in 8-bit mode, not quite critical sampling with 3.76 micron pixels. Could have used a bit more barlow for Jupiter and maybe Mars, but Saturn probably not so much since its quite soft. My current contraption is a 2.5x barlow with a dubiously long 1.25'' extension tube, which is probably not stable enough with the big cooled astrocam at the end. Should probably get a 3x one and maybe stick an ADC somewhere in there but quite happy of these 3 for now. Seeing was quite nice with Mars at 20 degrees, Jupiter at 25 and Saturn at 14 at the time of capture. The extra 11 degrees of altitude really shows between the image of Jupiter and Saturn here. Mars was stacked with the best 2% from 120k frames, Jupiter was best 10% from 12k and Saturn was best 10% from 23k frames.

The GRS was moving closer to the limb at 3AM my time, so would have been 1AM for you. It probably had just barely rotated away when you got the chance to look. Venus i have yet to see, but im not sure if its actually possible with a scope (at least decent views) from 60N. I have seen it naked eye just a couple of times, but its always licking the horizon at dawn.