hha1

Beautiful what you can get from a Bortle 4 backyard with a 3 hour exposure.

This is not a fast number cruncher, but designed for  multitasking. If you do get it, launch 6 DeepSky Stackers or Sequator with 100 images each and give us a report. You get what you pay for.

I agree, that you can't tell anything with two pixels looking at a bright star. With the roughest alignment your pole axis pointing may be one degree off  the NP. This means you get 0.26 ...

You have the  AF-P version, which is not the kit lens which comes with the D3400. I have two copies of the AF-S version which came with my D3200 and D3300 APC format cameras from 6 years ago.  ...

Wonderful picture, from a dark site? I took almost the same picture on 2020/08/06 from my red zone backyard, but with a lot simpler gear (Nikon Z6 iso400, Nikkor 105 mm f/2.5 at f/4, 6x30 sec on a ...

The gain from your Win7 to my Win10 system  is actually surprisingly little, not worth spending $$$ on an upgrade or a new computer. Either way, a stack of 260 will allow for a decent coffee break.

Alen: Your response "writing to the HD" gave me the clues. In my original post I had  Sequator reading from the images from a folder on my 32GB SHD card.  In the normal accumulation mode  only the ...

I am running 64 bit Win10 Pro with 16GB of RAM  and 7th gen Intel, with the 24 Mpixel images created by the Nikon Z6.  The code may not be fully upward compatible with Win10 pro. I tried it with ...

Sequator (1.5.2) is a very powerful image registration (stacking) software. It has a "best shot" option, which does some kind of edited mean for each pixel. Sequator works well in "best shot" mode ...

Or not. We may be heading into a Mauder minimum. The last one was between 1650 and 1700, associate with a little ice age....

The stacking software is the key. I use Sequator, which is very efficient. From  a sequence of shots it selects the middle as reference, then works forward, then returns to the reference and works ...

W5JCK: I looked at your trail image.  There is a worm error, a pole axis misalignment error and a startup or flexing error. Looks like wind was not a problem. The spec of the Star adventurer is 28" ...

Nice for a first try. I would have raised the camera just a few degrees to get Polaris better included. hha

I have the same problem, that I can't see Polaris with the unaided eye from my backyard, and I have the Skytracker with the pole finder scope. First I make sure  my tripod is level. Then I set the ...

Good catch. Something to do from a light-polluted backyard.  Don't tell the press, else there will be a panic.

I agree with you that 400/focal length is optimistic, 100/focal length is more realistic with a 24 Mp DSLR. but this is for a beginner getting started. Sooner or later he will see the problem, and ...

OK. I don't see your problem. If your pole axis alignment is off by one degree, then you get 15*sin(1)=0.25 arcses/sec of trails. With a 180 mm lens  and 4 micron pixels in your camera ( D7200 and ...

For MW wide angle shots you don't need a tracking device, you need a good tripod. Use the rule of 400. With a 21 mm lens on a fullframe DSL or mirrorless, the exposure can be as long as 400/21=20 ...

I shoot mostly constellations with typically 100 shots at 30 seconds each with 85mm, 105mm and 180mm lenses stopped down to f/4 with a Nikon L6. For these focal length the Skytracker works very ...

If you are just starting, start at 150mm, In you backyard you are likely to reach the 50% of full scale of your camera (histogram) at f/4, 30 seconds  and iso800. You don't need to guide, but you ...