Lyle Aldridge

Actually, those scopes aren't "for" full-frame cameras. If they were we wouldn't need field flatteners.  Mass-market telescopes aren't really made for any specific sensor size. Good quality scopes, ...

Physically rotating the RA axis (of your mount) is a quick way of confirming polar alignment. If alignment is correct, Polaris tracks on the circle when the axis rotates, no matter how the reticle ...

If you confine your capture to just one narrow band, chromatic aberration becomes irrelevant, and a quality achromat can equal the performance of an APO. Here is an example on Astrobin. If you ...

With video exposures of mere milliseconds, there's no need for guiding. Autostakkert easily handles the movement, if any, between exposures.

Nice work, Herbert! You're definitely getting the hang of it.

Could another cause of the tracking error be the 0.8 degrees of deviation from north alignment? That's 48 arc-min. The Benro's tracking method is a mystery to me, but to those of us who regularly ...

That mindset is certainly understandable. I'd guess that most of us learned it early, sometimes to the point where significant post-processing was regarded as a dishonest substitute for skill. But ...

Herbert, looking over this thread, it looks like you've been getting lots of good advice about equipment and capture technique. I strongly suspect, however, that what you need most is better ...

I'm not very familiar with your telescope of the specific flattener you have, but a field flattener mostly affects parts of the image that will probably be outside the field of view of the very ...

Some shopping tips: The Soligor brand appeared on lenses made by others, and the 350mm f/5.6 was made in different configurations by different makers over the years. The one I'm using has the best ...

I don't see your describing what's wrong with the tripod you already have. Whether you need better depends on what kind of imaging you intend to do. If you keep focal length, exposures, and the ...

Some many months ago, the Svbony SV305 lunar/planetary camera was on a flash sale at Amazon. Having seen a few images from the camera at cloudynights, I bit, but I didn't get a chance to use it on ...

Not only would there be worldwide news, but probably worldwide panic. That's how my grandparents recalled the 1910 appearance of Halley's during their teen years. No TV, radio or social media ...

Andy, thanks for that thorough response. I was wondering what individual exposures look like, and you even anticipated that next question.

You've raised the bar for minimalists with this one, Andy! I don't think I'd have believed that such an image could be had with any number of subs from just a 30mm f/4.5 optic and un-cooled camera. ...

What Jeff has described for you is widely known as the "Kochab clock" method. (Kochab is the common name for Beta Ursa Minor.) IMO, it's the easiest method for quick and reasonably good polar ...

Sharpcap does live stacking with dozens of cameras now supported. It's become a huge favorite with those who do electronically assisted astronomy (EAA ). The Unistellar product seems to be a ...

Thanks, David, for taking to time to explain in such detail.

Gee, David, you must be quite the perfectionist! If you're getting results that nice in a 9mp image at 1250mm, your alignment surely can't be off by much. Can you tell us how that image was ...