No south views what to do

[bendiddley]

I don't normally need an excuse, but since you ask my good photos are on my Flickr page, see the link in my signature.

I agree with the advice above, buy second hand if you can.  That way you get to use the kit for as long as you want and then sell it for to close to what you paid for it.  I bought my 200P and EQ5 for £300, planning to sell it when I upgraded. Two years later I still haven't found the need to upgrade, but I have bought a couple of additional scopes. 

Thanks porky. They look great, were those images guided and what mount are you using for them?

[bendiddley]

I've never drift aligned (although I really should on my permanent mount) and have achieved reasonable images (for me anyway)

https://www.flickr.com/photos/auspom/

Wow, great pics, what set-up are you using? This is encouraging stuff, I am starting to feel less worried about this drift aligning malarky.

[Tinker1947]

Split diffraction spikes say you're a bit out of focus there.

Olly

Could well be Olly (i got a mask now), i was just please to get some sort of tracking working, and having to put the mount out every time it was never going to get 100% alignment 

[PorkyB]

Thanks porky. They look great, were those images guided and what mount are you using for them?

No guiding, no goto.  All pics taken with my EQ5 (with RA motor and polarscope).  Most through my 200P but some of the more recent ones with 130PDS or 70ED. 

[bendiddley]

No guiding, no goto.  All pics taken with my EQ5 (with RA motor and polarscope).  Most through my 200P but some of the more recent ones with 130PDS or 70ED. 

So how do you get on with the EQ5, do you have to chuck loads of subs away or do you find its pretty good? Someone else said they had trouble with backlash and recommended the HEQ5 instead. I don't think I can afford the HEQ5 at the moment and was hoping the EQ5 would be good enough for now for my initial set-up ie. the 130pds and dslr.

[PorkyB]

The EQ5 copes with a 130PDS, no problem.  It handles the 200P well enough, but not if it's breezy as the 200P is a bit of a sail.

I generally chuck out 20-25% of my subs.  I usually take 25 subs, so I end up using around 20. After registering them in DSS I uncheck any where the score is less than half of the best sub's score.  Sometimes this is one in three, sometimes I don't have to reject any.

Backlash is easily manageable, just wait a couple of minutes after finally lining up your target before starting to image.  The problem is much less if you remember to drive the mount forward in RA onto your target using the motor, but I always take a sub to check the framing, focus and exposure, so it doesn't matter of this one has a bit of trailing.

I am very careful with polar alignment. I use the dials on the mount to help get this right.  Astrobaby's guide was a big help in getting this set up.

Obviously, if I had unlimited funds, and if I was built like an Olympic weight lifter, then I would have an NEQ6, but for the foreseeable future the EQ5 will be fine.

[Thalestris24]

Hi

Very impressive for unguided and no goto!

Louise

[wxsatuser]

Cheers guys. Blue straggler I see you use a guider, do you get away with not drift aligning then? I thought you needed to if you were guiding as well because of the longer exposures, also you say 1 - 5 mins, is that a typical amount then for suburban skies, so even if I was to drift align or start guiding that's all I would get regardless? Tinker, thanks, I was thinking of second hand to start with and then a second hand heq5, but I appreciate Fogagens point about the eq5, I have heard mixed views about it, however I thought that because my kit would be under 5kg, it wouldn't be a problem, didn't know about the dec backlash thing though, that's a bit off putting, useful hearing about that though. The view of the south I get if I am to keep polaris in view is about 65-70˚, below that is my house/neighbours house, big tree etc. Ollypen rice, can you enlighten me on an alternative to drift alignment? Also anyone got any pics of stuff taken that wasn't drift aligned?

Exposures......there are different points of view on that but the brighter the sky the shorter the exposure.

Short against long does'nt matter so much as we can stack the shorter ones.

You can get good images from 1>5mins exposures, they won't be as good as you see from a site like Olly's,

but you should get reasonable images.

I can on average get nice 5minute exposures using iso 1600 on my Canon 60Da.

In the end I suppose it all depends on what you want out of your images.

I have tried various methods of drifting.

I can get fairly close to the meridian and can see east, so thats not a problem for me.

My original method was DARV, just using several images taken with the dslr.

Tried Alignmaster but that made it no better than DARV.

If I have to check alignment now, its drifting with PHD.

PHD is really simple and results are so quick.

I would'nt worry to much, know how to use the polarscope well and you will be ok.

[wxsatuser]

Here is a typical 5minute sub of the North American and Pelican Nebs.

No real processing, no noise reduction, just some stretching in PS.

I have moderate LP and can now see the Milky Way since our strreetlights went from sodium to flourescent.

Canon 60Da EF 200mm f2.8 L .......iso 1600 @ f4.5....Astronomik CLS CCD Clip filter.

[wxsatuser]

and this is what a RAW 5min sub looks like with the channels aligned.

[carastro]

I've been imaging for about 5 years now and I've never been able to complete drift alignment because I can't see enough stars due to house or trees being in the way.    

There is a good bit of software out now called Alignmaster which will do the job well and you can pick which stars to use.  However prior to using this I just did a manual polar alignment and never did drift alignment (as above).

But I do need to guide.

Carole 

[ollypenrice]

There is an alternative to throwing away entirely your slightly trailed subs.

1) Make a stack with all but the very worst subs and stretch it. It will show trailed stars but wait...

2) Make a 'best subs' stack and stretch that to exactly the same extent. Use the Colour Sampler eyedropper to confirm that the backgrounds are the same and tweak them if they're not.

3) Copy and paste the best stack onto the trailed stack.

4) Use the colour select tool to pick up all the faint backgroundand low level nebulosity (but absolutely not the stars or anything with sharp detail.)

5) Feather this selection by 1 or 2.

6) Set the eraser to a low opacity and run it once over the selection on the top layer to allow a bit of the background of the trailed stack through for noise reduction. How much you let through is a matter of tial and error. Flatten.

If you are not guiding and losing a lot of subs then at least this lets you use them for low signal noise reduction.

Olly