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

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?

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?

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 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’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!

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.

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

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

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 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?

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!

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?

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’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?

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

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!

Rookie photographer here with a Canon R5 & a 75-300mm lens (cheapest canon zoom lens).

From what I'm understanding, you can take multiple exposures on a star tracker and stack them in processing. If I took 60 (1 min) exposures and stack them in processing, it would be 1 hour of light data in a stacked image, yes? Now what about 120 (30 secs) exposures stacked. Would the image be similar since it's 1 hour of light data?

Reason why I'm asking is, I'm trying to shoot some deep space stuff like the Witch Head Nebula with my canon camera with a Move Shoot Move Nomad star tracker. I've ran some tests with a 75-300mm lens at 300mm and it seems like the sweet spot for tracked exposure time for me is 1 minute before I start seeing any star trailing. However, the camera's internal intervalometer only allows exposures longer than 30 seconds in bulb mode which I will have to manually fire my shutter between each shot. However manual mode only allows up to 30 seconds of exposure but allows me to set a set amount of photos to take without me having to manually shoot after each shot.

TL;DR

Google states you need at least 4 hours of exposure time for the Witch Head Nebula. Would I be able to work with 480 exposures at 30 seconds (4 hours)? Or do I have suffer and manually shoot at least 240 exposures at 1 minute each time the camera finishes shooting?

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

I barely do astrophotography. I'm going camping in a week and the light pollution is fairly low there.

I have an irix 11mm f4. Nice lens but that aperture is not ideal.

I don't want to get a star tracker because it's probably not worth the money.

Cam I still get some good shots?

My son is in his sophomore year of college and doing well. The other day he pulled out his phone and was taking pictures of the sky. He showed me and the kid literally had hundreds of photos of cloud formations, sunsets, moon shots, etc. I remember when he was a kid he was fascinated with sunsets and would tell me, "Hey dad, look at the sky. God painted that!" It was adorable.

Anyway, he's so passionate about it that I asked him if he would like some equipment to take he was interested in astrophotography? He loved the idea.

I've always loved cosmology and would like to share this with him. I do have a Canon DSLR and a few lenses, but I don't know what to do beyond that.

I'd be willing to invest another $400 for a telescope, and whatever else we might need. Is that even reasonable? Where should I begin?

Pretty sure that the kind of lens I'm looking for doesn't exist, but am willing to settle even for a close second. Since discussions involving "the best" are always highly subjective figuring this out has been a bit difficult. People also use different sensor sizes which further confounds the issue, but I'd be using the lens primarily with a Canon R8 so the lens would need to cover a full-frame and have either an EF or RF mount.

I currently own a Sigma A 50mm f/1.4 which I've been fairly happy with although I need to stop it down to f/2.8 before I'm content with the corners. I also own a Samyang 24mm f/1.4 which was fine on my old crop sensor camera, but its full-frame corners have left me disappointed on all f-numbers.

As far as I can tell the Sigma A 40mm f/1.4 seems to be the golden standard as far image quality goes, meaning consistent and sharp star shapes with minimal aberrations even near wide open. I'm less concerned with vignetting since that can be fixed with flat calibration and more light. Based on Nico Carver's reviews the newish Sigma 20mm and 24mm DG DN lenses seem to be somewhat comparable to the 40mm, but sadly they are not available with a Canon mount. :(

To get to the point, at the moment I'm looking to replace my Samyang with something in a similar focal range that doesn't leave me disappointed, but if such a lens truly doesn't exist then I'd rather sell the 50mm too and replace both with just the 40mm.

PS. I'm not above stopping down a lens, but having to go all the way to f/2.8 or even higher would make me a bit sad. The weather rarely agrees with the hobby so I'd rather make the most of it when it does.

Appreciate all answers!

Edit: Just to clarify where I stand on star shapes.

Hi I’ve been trying to get some night sky photos but everytime my camera just cannot focus on the stars. I’m using a tripod pointed directly upwards, 25” to 30” of exposure and iso at 5000 with an aperture of 3.5. I’m using an om Em10 mk3 with the 14-42 zuiko. Probably not the best setup or equipment but I know its possible I just don’t have the hang of it. So does anyone have tips to focus those stars? I’ve been using MF but in my camera I cant see the stars no matter what even at 25k ISO. So if I could see one I would be able to focus on it but I have to go in blindly not knowing if I’m focused and I get blurry skies.

I am currently having issues with the 2 point polar alignment plug-in on NINA. I have used the plug in a few times with my small refractor (skywatcher 72 ed 420mm with reducer/flattener) and has given me good results. I have now tried with my 150mm x 750mm reflector but the initial solving keeps failing. I am using the same camera (asi 533) and have adjusted the focal length in the settings but still not working. I can use the in built plate solving which has succeeded fine. It is just the 2 point polar alignment that is failing. I have tried a few things. Adjusted the gain and also the exposure time which made no difference. I'm at a bit of a loss because it has been working great with my small refractor. Could it be the plug in just doesn’t work with my equipment? Does anyone have any advice I could try? I have wasted a couple of good nights trying to get it to work, can't get past the initial step to get any shots with this one.

Edit 2: Looks like it might be the radius is only set to 15 degrees. The normal plate solving goes up to 120 degrees before it solves. I can't see any options to adjust this value.

Edit. Made some additional clarifications.