Yooper posted:

I was basically where you are a bit over a year ago. Hooking up the laptop to the camera opened up ease of focusing and plate solving so I didn't spend a whole night imaging nothing. After solving one glaring issue I'd suddenly discover another one. Ditching the telephoto lens for a prime lens was next, then mount etc. etc.

This was from last night, no calibration frames of any sort (you can see the hot pixels) as my house is a mess of drywall poo poo. Roughly 3 hours of exposure, 30s exposures.



It's the Bubble Nebula, which is really too small for my scope, but it still looks cool with that cluster and nebulosity.

simble posted:

No filters for the 2600 yet. Here's another taken with my 294MC.

North America and Pelican Nebulas. 36x3m subs, taken through an Optolong L-enhance filter. Would've been more subs, but I guess my laptop rebooted for an unexplained reason around midnight.

I was messing with my scope and I think I took my flattener out of spec so the stars are a bit stretched in the corner, but

I also tried to make the switch from SGP (which recently went to a subscription licensing model) over to NINA and I think NINA has come a loooong way. I'd say at this point it is pretty much at feature parity with SGP. It worked great.

simble posted:

First light with the new camera and filters.

This is just 1 night so just 110 minutes of Ha, 90 minutes OIII and 100 minutes of SII. No LRGB data, but I will probably get some tonight and try blending the NB nebula with LRGB stars. Should be pretty easy.

The new advanced sequencer in NINA is really good. If you're using NINA and aren't on the nightlies for 1.11 yet, you should be. The polar alignment plugin plus ASTAP for plate solving is also super good. The first time I plate solved with ASTAP after using platesolve2 for so long, I thought it was broken because it was so fast. A nearby solve takes less than a second and a 180 degree blind solve takes maybe 5 seconds. It rules.

Rip Testes posted:

First bit of imaging for me in quite some time. Would love to do some of this awesome deep sky work in this thread if I ever obtain the gear.

simble posted:

simble posted:

This rules! I don't want to share some of my earliest attempts at anything so good for you. I am curious what your setup is.

Yooper posted:

Canon has a 50mm lens that's F1.8, it's known as the "nifty fifty" and does really good widefield stuff. The aperture is much faster than the 18-55 kit lens and it's like $125.

pumped up for school posted:

Speaking of flame nebula:

I know I'll never get photos like the others in this thread, and I know this target is overdone, but I am pretty happy how this turned out.



I've been practicing my travel setup: no tracker, no guiding. Just a Fuji xt2, Samyang 135, cheap-ish Amazon tripod. Max 1s exposures.

This is 400 1s exposures from last night in my backyard. 100 dark, flat, and bias frames. This was my first time trying Siril, and my first time using photoshop in 20 years. I overdid my reduction of star bloat, for sure. And surely other issues. But going from never taking manual shots a couple of months ago to this, I am pretty excited.

simble posted:

I'm going to assume that you're talking astrophotography here. What are you using for acquisition? Both NINA ($Free) and Sharpcap ($10 or $15/year, I think) have pretty good polar alignment features. They'll use whatever camera you have. It doesn't have to be a guide camera, and in fact, you could definitely make the argument that using your main imaging camera is more accurate. Both will work with a manual mount and a go to mount.

simble posted:

Can the polemaster be used without a computer? I genuinely don't know and glancing at the docs it looks like no. If it can, then that would be good enough. If you need a computer anyway, then try one of the apps first. I think you'll find them needs suiting.

For Canon stuff with ASCOM, you'll want this ASCOM driver: https://github.com/FearL0rd/ASCOM.DSLR

Which mount are you using? It sounds like its a goto if you're aligning it with a 2/3 star alignment. With NINA and ASTAP (plate solver) you could ditch your alignment completely by doing a blind plate solve and syncing your mount after a polar alignment. If at that point you wanted to just unplug the computer and use the wifi with a shutter control, you could do that at that point as everything will be aligned and pointing correctly. Or, if you want you can delve into using NINA to do your captures for you. If you do use NINA, use the latest beta version.

Internet Explorer posted:

Finally had some clear skies and some time to do some astrophotography and I ended up calling it quits in frustration. I feel like it's always something different that I'm having trouble with and I'm just not good enough at it yet. And it feels like it's impossible to actually practice.

Frustrating.

Yooper posted:

Raikyn posted:

I don't really know what I'm doing yet, but I took a couple of nebula shots tonight, just single shots
Canon 5dmk4 on a eq6-r mount

Raikyn posted:

I added a couple more hours to the vela supernova remnant that I had taken earlier. I think the sky was slightly darker this time round as well which helped.
So put it all together
79x180sec ASI294MC + canon 100mm macro lens set to f5 + antlia alp-t filter

Phanatic posted:

Looking into replacing my mount.

Are there any equatorial goto mounts that just plain expect that you're going to be hooking them up to a computer? Like, I don't need a hand controller at all, and the ones I'm seeing have you either connect your PC to the mount itself over an RJ-45, or connect the hand controller to that port and let you connect your PC to a USB port on the hand controller. Are there any that just put a friggin' USB port on the mount and let you connect with a bog-standard USB cable without having to dick around with the hand controller or with usb to serial drivers?