frankvstar1

I found out that my polar alignment is off by a small amount between times I put my scope on and off my mount inside my observatory even though the mount is on a permanent pier. Maybe it is due to expansion and contraction of the pier from temp changes. I am in South Carolina and it get to 100% then down to 72% or lower at nigh at this time. Makes sense to me that this might be the cause of a small change in polar alignment, so I check each time to make sure. I have also attached a pic of my mount in my homemade observatory where I used a 12.35 ft old satellite dish as a dome, it works great and cost me less than $500 to make and its larger than one I could have bought from SkyShed or others. It has a concrete floor with carpeting now and later I might put up nicer inside walls.

I am using an Evostar 72 and I tried Sequator to get my stacked image. It was the first time I could clearly see the spiral bands and I was thrilled even though it no wheres as nice as your photo/ but it keeps me interested. BY the way your final image looks great to me, I would be happy beyond belief !!!!!!!!!!!

I have the same HEQ5Pro mount and when polar aligned really good I can get a 4 to 5 minute with my Pentax KX and 200 mm lens fairly easily. I still going through the insane amount of garbage you have to go thru using a 8in Meade SCT on this mount, and I did finally have to get a small guide camera so I could use sharp cap to polar align well as the polar scope retical was out of whack real bad with my mount. Don't give up, as soon as you get your first quality photo that you like it makes it all worth while. After years I just got a picture of the Andromeda galaxy that I was happy with and I am struggling to repeat it. I have used a small Evostar refractor to get this pic. I am not good using photo enhancements yet such as Photo Shop to really pick put the dark space background and star colors, that's going to cost the price of a used Televue eyepiece and I am not ready for that. BUt the mount seemed to track well unguided for 2 minutes easy and this was about 7 frames, not many at all.Andromeda test 2 sequator enhanced.psdAndromeda test 2 sequator enhanced.psdAndromeda test 2 sequator enhanced.psdAndromeda test 2 sequator enhanced.psdAndromeda test 2 sequator enhanced.psd