Dedicated Camera Learning Curve

[Anthonyexmouth]

Im struggling to get to grips with capture and processing with my 294mc pro. The Canon i used to use was easy as it wasnt that sensitive so my mount was the limiting factor in exposure time. Now I think i might be over cooking the subs as any kinda initial stretch is blowing everything up. Granted my processing skills are rubbish.

Can anyone a little more skilled take a look at these 2 images from the other night. just over 3 hours on each of the Wizard and Andromeda both 50x 240sec subs with darks and flats.

should i be running shorter subs or is it just down to my lack of processing skills? 

focus is a little off and i think my spacing is off too. just trying to adjust my focuser tension  on my ED80, its slipping a bit and hopefully popping on a ZWO EAF soon to help with focus. 

M31.tifWizard.tif

[vlaiv]

Not sure what you are finding to be an issue with this?

Subs are certainly not over cooked, and stack looks just fine with regards to this (and pretty much everything else). There are some issues with the image, but nothing to do with camera or data - there is quite a bit of aberrations, like you said probably issues with focusing and spacing, maybe a bit of tilt - nothing that can't be sorted out. There is some scatter, and again this is not down to camera or the data - probably transparency issues, a bit more moisture in the air that creates scatter and glow around bright stars (at least with M31 that I examined).

Here is quick & dirty stretch on M31 without any soft of additional processing:

 

 

[Anthonyexmouth]

Thanks, good to know its just my processing thats the problem. my focuser was slipping so stripped it down to clean and adjust and found a previos owner had lost one of the little rubber washers and replaced it with one similar but not quite right. that might be my problem but with a little fiddling have made it hold for now. I hate the retainer screw on the SW focuser, shifts focus when tightened so hopefully a motor focuser will stop that. Im gonna slip in one of the spacers that came with the camera and see how that shifts the image. I think its just slightly too short at the moment. 

The M51 image was taken after 1AM, was an after thought after the Wizard and as the sky was so clear i set it off and went to bed. 

Thanks for doing that. 

[alacant]

Hi

It's a bit out of focus -that's just sw focusers- but the image processes OK. This is StarTools left to it's own devices.

HTH