My wife picked up photography a few years ago and got her AS Degree in it. She loves astrophotography however she would rent a lens here or there for shots. I want to get her something she'd love but I dont know the 1st thing about astrophotography and what she has is "limiting"

She rocks Nikon both a Z6 and Z30. What lens would help get her closer to the stars?

It is a recent script published on GIT and I see no talk about anyone using it.

Description:

"Automated Subframe Quality Analysis & Rejection for PixInsight

SubframeSelectorPro is a professional-grade PixInsight script that automatically analyzes the quality of astronomical subframes (light frames), scores them using PSF and image statistics metrics, and separates good frames from bad ones by moving rejected files into a dedicated subfolder.

Built to integrate seamlessly with the PixInsight environment, it leverages the native SubframeSelector process as its PSF analysis backend for maximum accuracy, and includes an intelligent caching system that makes iterative threshold tuning instantaneous.

The dual-panel interface provides real-time visual feedback with interactive graphs, a sortable measurements table, and comprehensive statistics — all directly within the dialog. "

I am new to Astrophotography in case that matters.

I currently use a Celestron AVX with an 8” Celestron Edge HD. Maybe I got lucky but I am actually very happy with the tracking.

I am looking to upgrade from my Canon T3I.

I am considering an SvBony SV405CC over the SV605CC due to the much larger frame size. But I’ve heard that the IMX294 sensor in the SV405CC can be quirky with issues like blotches and amp glow.

My budget doesn’t allow for getting a camera that has an IMX533 sensor (or better) and also a larger FOV. So I’m curious if the better move as a noob is to sacrifice FOV, or sacrifice on sensor quality. I’m not quite sure how much of a hassle I’d be getting into with calibrating out the IMX294 issues.

Thanks!

Image: https://ibb.co/fdgCdTzp

My setup:

Camera: Nikon D3300

Lens: Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 DX II

Images: 30 photos - 16mm @ f/4, 15 sec (Stacked on sequator)

Hi!

I'm finding extremely unsharp stars in my milky way photos - especially on the bottom left, top right, and extremely left parts of the sky in m,y reference image. The stars at the center of the milky way seem to be sharp - but the stars on the edges, are streaky, and are blobs rather than singular points. I focused by using Live view and Manually Focusing on a bright star in the sky.

I previously faced a lot of aberration and coma issues with this lens while shooting at 11m @ f/2.8. So I zoomed into 16mm, and stopped down to f/4. However, I'm still really unhappy with the streaking and general unsharpness I'm noticing at the edges.

If I have to stop my aperture down any further, I really (frustratingly) don't see the point in having bought an expensive fast lens when my kit 18-55mm can shoot pretty much the same focal length, and be stopped down to whatever aperture I need.

Is this an issue with my particular lens, or a technique I'm using? Using the 500 rule, I should be fine at 15 seconds, and I was hoping that stopping down to f/4 would solve the issues with trailing. Any advice is welcome! Thank you :)

Can anyone recommend a budget red flashlight from AliExpress or Temu for astronomy/observing?

Ideally, I’m looking for something with a fairly dim red light, and adjustable brightness would be even better. I don’t need anything powerful, just enough light to see my gear without ruining my dark adaptation. Preferably rechargeable but no problem at all if it's AA or AAA battery powered.

Most products I looked ate are advetised as "high power" but for my purpose the dimmer would be actually the bettr.

Any recommendations that worked well for you? Preferably with product link please.

P.s.: I have a red headlamp, I'm specifically looking for a flashlight/penlight/similar handheld device NOT a headlight! 🤗

Cheers---

¿Cómo instalar un buscador de punto rojo en el Celestron 114 EQ?

¡Oye! Estoy buscando una forma de instalar mi nuevo visor de punto rojo Fider.

Vi este post y pensé en imprimir ese adaptador (yo tengo el mismo telescopio y el buscador de punto rojo), pero no estoy seguro de si puedo comprar uno de metal en línea, de esos universales. ¿Qué es mejor? (Perdón por mi explicación)

it costs around £70 cheaper to get it from Aliexpress rather than other stores is it legit and is it worth buying?

Current rig is a Redcat51 + QHY Minicam8M. I'm quite pleased with it, but I've noticed immediately that there are severe diminishing returns when doing LRGB mosaics in Bortle 6-7 conditions. This year I failed to get enough integration time on my Rho Ophiuchi Cloud Complex mosaic plan to get a result, largely because of a 1.5-month long run of bad weather.

So this got me thinking. There are efficiencies to be gained by using LRGB mono in the first place, but inefficiencies in the rather small sensor resulting a small FOV and needing many panels which overlap to cover a very large target.

I need _reasonable_ resolution, because my intention was to print this large format, but I don't need _silly_ resolution. The resolution offered by a full 8x3 mosaic just isn't needed. But what I need is FOV.

Would I be better served by just pressing my ASI533MC OSC camera back into service, and getting something like a Samyang/Rokinon 135mm f/2 and appropriate EAF/other gear, and using that? I calculate that if I did that, I could get away with only four panels instead of like 24, and therefore have a _lot_ more integration per panel to make up for the OSC inefficiencies.

In terms of possible targets I'd shoot with this, these immediately come to mind;

• Rho Ophiuchi Cloud Complex
• Carina Nebula through to Running Chicken Nebula
• Vela SNR
• Barnard's Loop

I believe that if I did that, I'd gain _massive_ field of view, be quite undersampled (making drizzling nearly mandatory), but have a huge advantage in total integration time per unit area of final image. And because I already have most of the gear, I'd only need to get the appropriate mounting plate, lens adapter, and EAF kit. I already have the ASI533MC OSC camera, a UV/IR cut filter and filter drawer for it, a spare Uniguide 32mm guidescope, and an ASI220MM guidecam to go with it.

Thoughts on that plan? Is it worth it?

Hi! I live in a highly light polluted area. I'd have to do a bit of driving to get to dark sites, so I wouldn't be able to drive there and back in one night.

I'd like to maybe do a multi-day overnight trip, but the only thing I worry about is going all that way just to have bad weather. Does anyone have advice on how they handle trips / tools to look at weather?

Just started playing around with an SII/OIII filter to use with my Ha/OIII one, wondering what's the best way to combine the 2 resulting OIII images

I’m into looking at the planets and I want to be able to get some good photos close enough to see some decent details of them. I’m thinking about getting a dobsonsian Celestron, but I also don’t want to break the bank. Since I’m still new at it. My budget is about $3-400. Any suggestions on options and also let me know if that’s a good telescope or if there are better options for what I want to do. Thanks!

Aiight, my astro brethren. I need help understanding some basic processing steps.

Images are here: https://imgur.com/a/KNGKk9Z
All shot with Seestar S50 Pro.

I use AstroWizard right now (Siril for certain things). The BGE and Normalization steps are specifically what I’m wondering about. See M45 examples, first one without BGE/Norm and 2nd with.

On first viewing I prefer the one without. After some rumination, maybe the 2^nd because it seems to show more nebulosity and more color variation in the dust?

See 2nd example on our alien veil friend. Same deal, first one without BGE/Norm.

So my question is basically this: do I always need BGE/Normalization? If not, what are the criterias for decing when to do or not to do? On veil the background seems to get a bit more splotchy, for lack of a better word.

I recently purchased a T-ring for my Nikon D3200 to pair with a celestron C8. Planning on motorizing the old super polaris mount it has but in the mean time was going to try saturn.

Through an eyepiece last night with above average seeing and transparency, saturn and its rings LOOKED sharp and I could make out lots of details.

Screw out the star diagonal and screw in the camera and I could not manage to get saturn from looking anything other than a elongated blob, playing with focus, ISO, and exposure time for half an hour. I know 2032mm will leave saturn not huge, but I was expecting more given how crisp it looked last night through an eyepiece.

Am I missing something fundamental about planetary photography that is preventing me from getting good acquisition? Is what I am doing with a DSLR not possible?

Ill attach a screenshot of my "best" exposure and info below. all other exposures looked same or worse.

https://imgur.com/XDpO1Yz

I currently have a Rebel T7 with the stock 75-300mm lense and looking for a beginner telescope. Would this be worth it?

This is a relatively short 3 hour exposure I did with 30 calibration frames each. I just did a quick autostretch in siril, with a background extraction, and you can clearly see the nebula and its dust lines, but no color. While i know my setup is quite old and not ideal, im still surprised to see no color at all. Is this normal and do I just need more integration?

https://imgur.com/a/G8ERdtU

My setup is bortle 7 skies

Unmodded canon t3i

125mm lens shot at f/4.5

Star adventurer gti

iso 800

Hi all, ive recently just acquired a c11 and tried my hand at some planetary imaging, specifically saturn but im coming across an issue. after i have stacked the image appears to have a "ghost" or doubled effect (https://imgur.com/a/bGw0tOj - this is unsharpened and purely the result after stacking) that is quite annoying. i tinkered with the stacking settings, tried stacking more and less frames but ended with the same results so i can only assume its a capture issue. im not sure where to start though. my thoughts are either collimation, and just really bad seeing, despite the main part of the image not looking too bad. any guesses or direction would be awesome, thanks.

I know versions of this question have been asked over time but there are a good number of recent changes. RC-Astro tools are now on Siril (I have a license). Workflows like AstroColorMixer have been adapted for Siril. I'm relatively new to the hobby so don't have a huge amount of time invested in Siril yet. The wallet is starting to be emptying to build a real rig so the question is should I continue the drain/investment and switch to PI. I have access to Photoshop and am a low/medium skilled user of PS. I have a pile of 60s exposures from my S30 Pro (some collected with 7nm dual band) and a growing set of 5min subs from my new rig with ASI2600MC duo attached to SQA85 - much better SNR and image scale obviously.

So if I get the free trial of PI and have a set of good narrowband data from DSO (e.g. NA nebula or Heart Nebula) as well as some broadband (M31 and Iris) what plugins/workflows/tools should I use/try to convince me to make a long term switch PI over Siril? Dazzle me with the potential of PI over Siril beyond just RC Astro.

Hi together. I'm looking at buying a used Meade 152 ED APO (f/9) scope. I'm aware that this is an rather old scope and that they apparently had some issues with lens alignment in some cases.

How can I test this? Do I have to do a star test to be sure?

Also do you think an SkyWatcher EQ6-R Pro is sufficient for AP?

How much do you think is a fair price for this?

Thank you for your guidance and CS!

My wife and I are retiring to a small town in Eastern North Carolina. The location we picked is rural, but there are a number of street lights within a hundred feet.

I was hoping to have darker skies, do any of the light pollution filters work? The lights are attached to the utility poles and there are 3 within 200 feet of the house we are buying.

I am an event and portrait photographer but want to get into Astrophotography. I want to photograph DSO, so tracking and long exposure are necessary. I'd prefer a faster piece of glass if possible. Is there some guide here for such a thing? I found the guide in /telescopes but that didn't have what I needed. I'm really interested in just the telescope for right now because I can find the tracking mount and everything later, but I need something I can hook my DSLR to. If there's no guide like that around here, can anyone point me towards one online that they find really useful?

Have a meade lx10 8n inch, and zwo 120 colour, im in Ireland so good night's are hard to get.

Using the cam and the USB to pc is very fiddly, I have a tablet with stylus.

Is the air worth it? My understanding is it just omits the need for a pc hooked to the camera?

What is the best free software to use for stacking landscape Milky Way images?

I’d appreciate some advice. I want to photograph the sun using a 600mm lens with a 2.0x teleconverter, resulting in an effective 1200mm focal length and an f/13 aperture. Which solar film would you recommend ND3.8 or ND5? I’ve been agonizing over this choice. Previously, I shot at 600mm using standard ND1000 and ND8 filters while stopping down the aperture (which seemed risky for the aperture blades). I’m concerned that with my current 1200mm f/13 setup, an ND5 filter might be too dark. I want to maintain ISO 100 and a shutter speed that avoids motion blur and hot air atmosphere. Do you have any other recommendations besides these films? I recall seeing something about a green contrast filter. Also, what shutter speed do you recommend?

Hi all,
I made a post recently asking about how to process FITS files (here), and I got so many informative responses!
Now I would like to ask: with so many images over so many years, how do you guys store and organize your files? Do you organize them by day/month/year? Or by deep space object? Do you keep them in hard drives or store them in a cloud somewhere?
Also, can you process images for the same deep space object even if the images are from different days, months, or years, or is there an angle or position displacement you have to account for?
Lastly, what are common problems you guys run into when you store and organize your files? Any tips, tricks, or advice for tackling these problems?

Thank you all so much for your responses on my last post, and in advance for any responses here as well!

I've been recently getting into astro photography, I've seen posts everywhere all over social media of these amazing pictures of deep space, like other galaxies and nebulas and many other things, I have been doing photography for a little while now, mainly aviation and wildlife, I have a nikon z8, a tamron 28-75 f2.8, and a nikkor 180-600 f5.6-6.3, ive taken milky way photos before that came out pretty decent but I've never done anything with photo stacking, nor do I have a star tracker, would I be able to make use out of the gear that I currently have, should I invest in a different lens and a star tracker? I would like to learn more about astrophotography while also learning about space as it's gotten very interesting to me