Ouroboros

@tooth_dr is that with PixInsight? @TheMan that's a petty good image for Bortle Class 8/9. The colours are nice. Did you have to struggle to get the colour balance right against the colour cast provided by so much light pollution? That's been my problem when imaging under such conditions. I agree with the earlier comment that flats would help this image. Though of course it's recommended to take the flats at the time, you might just for the exercise try taking some flats even now and applying them. You might be lucky and it helps if dust bunnies haven't moved. Assuming you've disassembled your set up you'll have to put things back as close as possible to where they were when you took the data, including having the camera at focus. I've done this on occassion and been pleasantly surprised how well it works.

Personally I find the second is a better image. There appears to be more detail. To my taste there is too much red in the galaxy and the stars. But then I prefer under saturated colour in deep sky images. It's all very subjective.

That's a really nice image. I like the wider field views you get of M31 with a camera lens. I bet you've learnt a lot taking and processing that image.

I'm sorry to read of Keiron and his wife's passing. I only met Keiron on one occassion when I decided to take a detour off the M5 to visit the shop during one of my many journeys back and fourth between Cornwall and home. I spent a pleasant hour or so chatting with him and looking at the various scopes he had on display in the shop and about Astronomy in general. I will miss the newsletters too.

What a place to live. I am truly envious. Good luck with the pond. Ponds are a a constant source of interest. They're also a source of hard work. Unlike other parts of the garden they often need things doing to them. We made one about 18 years or so. We went for the wild life pond. There was a partially excavated hole in the ground already, so it didn't take much digging out. We laid old carpet down first, then a butyl sheet on top, then a six inch or so layer of poor soil, and rocks and stones around the outside. Added water and some plants and stood back and waited for wildlife to arrive. And boy, did it! Within a few days there were things like pond skaters. Newts, pond snails, dragon fly larvae, the occassional frog all arrived on their own with no help from us whatsoever within months. Remarkable.

Great idea. I'd love to know what ratio is 'good enough' too. Mine is 1:4.6 I get guiding of 1" RMS or better as long a s there's no wind. That seems to be just about acceptable for my set up on most frames. I did once try testing the guiding by putting the guide camera into the main scope just to see what was the best I could get. That improved guiding by about a factor of 2. So I could gain a bit by using a longer guide scope. Trouble is I'm using a Lodestar X2 guide scope, which has 8um pixels in a 9x50 finder scope. Just a note on the software interface. On iPad I can't see all of the calculated numbers like resolution. So for example I can see the resolution is 2 point something but not what the two digits are after the decimal point. Heres a pic.

OK. So the same size sensor as mine. You'll get a slightly larger image size than I get with my 450D attached to my Evostar ED80 which has a focal length of 600mm. So the full moon will look something like the lunar eclipse image I took below. M31 is about 3 times the apparent diameter of the moon and will be nicely framed if you place it on the diagonal of the frame. That should give you an idea of the image size you'll get.

Maybe you've said but what sort of DSLR have you got?

One way to think about it I suppose is that a telescope is really a modified microscope for looking at distant objects. An eyepiece is really a microscope. The purpose of the primary lens or mirror is to collect as much light as possible from the distant object and to focus and project an image of it at (or near) the focal plane for close inspection by the eyepiece (microscope). The size of the image formed by the primary lens or mirror is proportional to its focal length. The longer the focal length, the larger the image. With my Canon 450D DSLR attached to my 1000mm Newtonian telescope the full moon almost fills the short side of a full image. The same camera attached to 700mm telescope would provide an image in which the full moon was 0.7 times smaller. Just over half the size in other words. Of course the actual size of the full moon on the OP's DSLR will depend on the size of the sensor. But in approximate terms, even if it's a full frame DSLR, I would expect the OP's telescope to give an image of the moon about half (or slightly more) the size of the full image.

Yep. You got it!

This discussion always focuses on OSC versus Mono. But is this the only, let alone the right question/comparison? Many of us use DSLRs because of convenience, ease of use, reliability, cost and because they provide surprisingly rewarding results in the time available to us, especially considering astrophotography is not what they're designed for. However, DSLRs fall down because of noise. A cooled OSC performs better in this regard. So the question might be: should the DSLR user move up to an OSC as a better way to do the sort of astrophotography they are already doing?

Is it a camera problem? The camera driver maybe? Have you tried testing the camera with another application like SharpCap?

I see. Maybe you could let the person who wrote Gradientxtermintor know. He might have an answer and if he doesn't I'm sure he will want to find one since he's selling this software.

That's a point. Though it struck me from Peter's post that he didn't know how to install the plugin rather than having problems with it. Hence my earlier link to the instructions in the xterminator website.

The Gradientxterminator website has instructions for installing the plugin. http://www.rc-astro.com/resources/install_plugin.html I don't use GX personally but Doug German has produced some free videos on how to use Photoshop for astrophotography including how to apply Gradientxtermintor. They're available on his website http://www.budgetastro.net/photoshop-basics.html

I've wondered whether one of those little diddy wifi security cameras that works with an iPlayer or android device might do the job. In fact does someone make an electronic polar scope that works in that way?

Even so it will be more convenient. Also some kind of waterproof cover might be worth considering, even if you only leave the mount in place over a run of nights that look like they might be clear. You could also leave the scope covered to take flats etc next morning if you're into imaging.

Is the idea to carry out the scope and attach it each time you use it? Or are you planing some kind of removable shelter so you can leave the scope set up?

Thanks, Bobmoss, for your excellent account. It was full of excellent tips for those of us who quite like the idea of doing something like this but are bit hesitant because we don't feel we've got the skills and know how. I liked the fact you didn't mind telling us bits you found a bit daunting. It encouraged me to think even I might have a go.