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As the post title suggests, these are the results from the first clear night I have had with the Evoguide 50ed with the Starizona EvoFF V2 field Flattener. I just did an hour's worth of data on Andromeda and Pleiades. I forgot to use my new light pollution filter with the Andromeda photos and it meant I had to refocus for the Pleiades which also meant my flats I took the next day could only be used with the Pleiades but I think it came out okay anyway. Andromeda - ISO 800, 40 x 90secs, 20 darks and bias frames, stacked in DSS, processed in GIMP. Pleiades - ISO 800, 40 x 90secs, 20 dark, flat and bias frames, Svbony UHC clip in filter, stacked in DSS, processed in GIMP. I don't think my Skyguider unguided at 242mm focal length can really manage 90 secs with my alignment anyway. I think in future I'll go back to 60 second photos, as I did get some oval shape stars in these. But I do think it shows how the Evoguide 50ed with the EvoFF field Flattener is a capable little budget setup.

After some trial and error I'm getting some very good guiding results with PHD2 now. 60mm guidescope and ASI290MM mini camera. The M42 image taken late March was 12 x 15 second exposures taken manually with my dslr / C8 and a stopwatch. Stacked in DSS and played with a bit in GIMP. On the night I couldn't get APT to register the camera - turned out to be the mini USB cable (although later trials point to the socket in the camera being a bit loose too). Bought an iOPTRON iPOLAR that arrived on Friday and had a play with that which has resulted in near perfect polar alignment. 2 star alignment and an additional 2 calibration stars on my Advanced GT mount means I'm getting very accurate GOTOs now and PHD2 (through the ST4 port on the ASI camera) seems to be guiding very well. Last night after more cable faffing I managed to get everything working together to the point where I felt confident enough to leave it running by itself for an hour and a half (45 minutes of 180 second exposures plus 3 minutes each exposure to save the file - I've since found out I shouldn't have noise reduction switched on in the camera - DOH!) so M51 is 15 x 180 second @ ISO 800 lights and 5 x 180 second darks. A little manipulation in GIMP and I think it's come out very well. Obviously still have a lot to learn and I'm going to have to start taking much longer exposures but I'm quite pleased with these 2 pictures. Graeme.

Hi All, Having had to move to an apartment where I could not use my CPC 1100, I decided that I have to see what I could do with my NexStar SLT 102 (alt-az achromatic 102mm f6.47 refractor). Setting up on my narrow balcony was challenging and the altitude bearing was so loose that it almost moved from the weight of the Canon 700D. I could not see M31 in the estimated 3.5 magnitude sky so I did a two star alignment and used the live-view to focus on a bright star. I then took a 15 second exposure after slewing to M31 which allowed me to see that I had it in the field of view. After a few more 15 second exposures and playing with the motion controls I managed to get it centered. The resulting picture is from 39 subs of 30 seconds at ISO 1600, 9 flats. The images were stacked and stretched with Siril and then I played with the curves on Gimp, cropped and scaled. Not too unhappy.

Hi, Have you noticed how advanced Gimp has been with the new version 2.10 ? Now it work perfekt to open Fits 32 bit floating point images and process them. I have tried this many times earlier but it never worked very good. Now it's like a dream to work with. I'm in the learning process how to use Gimp's capabilities. I have now got the opening process of three grey rgb images to work. It's of course not very complicated, but for me who never used Photoshop or something simular it was and I had hard to find a tutorial for the new version. I have now made a tutorial for this first step how to start with Gimp and open 32 bits separated color images: http://www.astrofriend.eu/astronomy/tutorials/tutorial-gimp-astrophotography/01-tutorial-gimp-astrophotography-introduction.html If you already working with Gimp, have you found something of special interest ? Lars

Does anyone have the GIMP 2.9.x 16-bit dev.portable for 32bit Windows version that used to be on the Darkrefraction site please ? (and a dropbox or similar cloud to sit it on download it from) and thanks to Louise for telling me about it.

Hi All I'm playing around with layers in GIMP as I had no idea how to use them two days ago, but am now fairly comfortable loading a couple of images, aligning them, adding a layer mask and using the paintbrush tool to allow one to come through to the other. The plan is to have a go with some long and some short images of Orion and combine the two final stacked images to get the nebula and the core. I need to work on getting the two stacked images' "brightness" levels more similar as the ones I am playing with are a bit different and when using the paintbrush tool to bring the rear image "out" the blend isn't very subtle. Am I working on the right principle here, or is there a better way to merge or blend in GIMP? I've tried using those controls, but they don't seem to change anything, so I suspect I need to so more work in that area. If anyone has any favourite tutorials that they use and are willing to share that would be great. Cheers!

Hi all, i just wanted to share a new Gimp 2.9 Beta for Mac. Its a bit work to google it (its not in the first three hits ) so i added a link. So far, i have not hit any bugs. The "big thing" is that you can work now with up to 64 bits loating point values for each colour value of a pixel. You can get it here https://www.dropbox.com/s/3xvttsjv00p0n8i/McGimp-2.9-cc.app.zip?dl=0 I have scanned the file with an up to date virus scanner- no hits. However, everything free comes with no guarantee

Hi all, I have found a prerelease binary version of the upcoming GIMP for Mac OS X. Given it some basic testing, and it works with 32bit FITS data like a treat! Also gave the file basic virus testing, but do crosscheck it again if you download it. You can get it here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/7huyb35612qlc13/Gimp-2.9.zip?dl=0 Be careful with prerelease software though. Do keep the originals safe and only work on copies of your data - just in case!