Markarian's Chain, wide FOV, short session with dSLR at 1.85"/pixel

[MalVeauX]

Heya,

I had enough of a decent sky last night to get a little time on Markarian's chain. My FOV counts around 34 galaxies in the cluster making up the Virgo cluster. I used APT for acquisition and its plate solving routine calling in AllSkyPlateSolver which put me on the subject with ease (I targeted M84 and then slewed for FOV from there). Plate solving has made this a much easier task. I was struggling with guiding last night. I had everything balanced and happy, but I was using a smaller scope. I was using a 50mm F3.8 guidescope with my IMX174 for guiding and it was not happy all night. I dithered each frame, so it was even less happy with that trying to recover. I think the combination of my old tiny guidescope and this sensor (grossly undersampling) and scale and PHD2 settings were awful compared to what I'm used to doing with a longer bigger guidescope setup. It had me thinking of getting another larger guidescope, or finally considering adding an OAG to my kit... not sure where to go with that for now. I don't know how I used to survive on that 50mm guidescope, I really don't like it, I much prefer a longer focal length with more aperture for sure. Would it be odd to have two F6~7 80mm's stacked, one imaging, one guiding? I'm done the 80mm F5 guiding and liked it, but maybe I'll go even longer? Or, just go OAG and stop all this...

Wide FOV:

Cropped FOV:

50 something galaxies noted in the cluster with plate solving:

Lights 40 x 180s @ F6 & ISO 800

Flats x 21

Bias x 41

Dithering every frame, aggressively (PHD2 scale 3, APT value 5)

Bortle 4 Sky

Canon T4i (unmodified) APS-C

ED80 + 0.8x FR (80mm F6) APO

50mm F3.8 Guidescope + IMX174

Orion Sirius + EQMod

Astrophotography Tool (APT) + AllSkyPlateSolver

PHD2

Very best,