Enigma_RL

Hi there, For a number of reasons, including the very few clear nights a year I have, I am heavily considering putting my telescope at a remote hosting facility somewhere in the south of Europe. Is there anyone around here who has experience with this? Things to keep in mind and consider? Any remote hosting facilities to recommend? Would love to hear about your experience or advice! Thanks in advance and best regards!

I always thought it would be my very first nebula to photograph (recently got my first telescope as well), but surprisingly I didn’t look at it yet. Probably because Orion rises relatively late and is relatively short in the sky for me (quite some obstructions from my backyard). But I’m sure I’ll get to it soon if these damn clouds ever disappear

Thanks! What do you mean by QA/QC problems? And yeah I did get a the model with iGuider but I’m not sure how that would compare to a guidescope and PHD2? I almost can’t assume guiding will be as good or even better with an integrated guiding system but I could of course be wrong here. Do you happen to know how it holds up?

It's been a while since I've posted here but when all the clouds cleared last Monday I didn't know how fast to go outside and start imaging again. After 3 hours of guiding issues I finally managed to get a somewhat decent calibration to start guiding but even though I had quite a lot of errors there was some decent data left to use. I think the guiding issues really boil down to my low end EQ5 mount and I will soon be replacing it with an iOptron CEM70. That being said this is only my second image ever taken in astrophotography so still trying to get the hang of things but overall I am really pleased with the end result. It has a total exposure time of 3,6 hours of which 2 are in Hydrogen Alpha and 1,6 is in Oxygen III. I know I went a bit hard on the noise reduction and I didn't filter out all the bad subs but man it is satisfying to finally be able to enjoy images like this. For anyone curious, it is shot with a William Optics GT81 IV on a ZWO ASI2600mm-Pro and a 0.8x reducer. It is stacked in Astro Pixel Processor and processed in PixInsight. Enjoy!

Which issue exactly are you running into? Also am I reading correctly that you are trying to take an image through an eyepiece?

I’ll try that once I’m able to shoot some more data in blue

After actually spending some time with processing. I feel like I killed too much detail and went too aggressive on some processes, but definitely not unhappy with the result so far

Thanks for the feedback, will keep it in mind when I reprocess the image

I really appreciate this, thank you! ☺️

Thanks man! The rush this successful session gave me is enough to keep struggling The rush in processing was because I couldn’t wait to get my first color image. I’ll definitely have an improved version in a couple of weeks!

Yeah I already have a lot of points that bother me, including blowing up stars, including some lower quality frames in my stack, saturation and brightness of the stars, sole light pollution and rushed noise reduction. I was just too eager to poop out a color image haha. Next cloudy weeks I have something to work on. Also my blue’s were super bad and I could only take 9 before it disappeared behind my house, so will definitely add more data later. But yeah thanks, appreciate the feedback!

I actually started looking for a telescope with an eyepiece, but I stumbled upon a video of someone taking amazing pictures (I used to be into photography) and compared what a camera could see vs an eyepiece I was pretty much sold (and broke lol). Once I save up some more I’m considering buying a tabletop for on the side so I can watch while imaging. Nothing beats the feeling of seeing it with you own eyes 😁

And I would also like to thank every one on this forum who has helped me out with troubleshooting and dumb questions. It is much appreciated!

So after a teasing couple of months, struggling with my setup and endless cloudy nights, I finally managed to get my entire rig to work last Sunday. After 4 hours of fixing issues I had just over 3 hours of imaging left to capture the Andromeda Galaxy (M31) before it disappeared behind my house, and man, I just couldn't slap that smile of my face watching the "live view". This evening I managed to get a small amount of time to process the data, but even though it is rushed and probably not as good as it could have been, I am extremely happy with the result. It's shot on a ASI2600MM-Pro camera through LRGB filters, with a William Optics GT81 IV. Feedback is more than welcome!

Breathtaking picture! Really impressive