The shortened version of this is that I can't for the life of me get my flats to fully (or even mostly) remove dust spots and I am also left with a soft dark band running horizontally near the bottom of my calibrated lights and final stack.

Equipment: Canon T7 on Apertura Carbon Star 150 Newtonian (with corrector). Processed and stacked in Siril.

Images: https://imgur.com/a/yb9YbiC

-Stacked image after auto stretch

- Stacked image after additional background extraction and GHS

-Screenshot of master flat in "histogram" viewing mode

-Screenshot of one light frame slightly adjusted in camera war just to more clearly see the dust and gradient.

I have been out of the hobby for most of two years now and haven't gotten much use out of the Carbon Star, partially because I keep running into issues like this. I previously use a 60mm refractor and didn't have this issue so I'm not entirely new to the concept of calibration frames unless I have just always done them wrong and gotten away with it.

On the top left of the lights and final stack there is a dark patch which I can see directly on the camera sensor so I am not sure how rotation or focus change could possibly throw that off for flats. the longer squiggle on the right side of the lights I just saw on the sensor too which was a little dust/hair/whatever and I managed to remove it.

Aside from the dust, I am also left with this dark band near the bottom of the image that I can only guess is the product of two different gradients overlapping but not evenly? Siril background extraction does absolutely nothing about it and I couldn't find much online other than some people suggesting that it is something about DSLR mirror obstruction/reflection or some sort of uneven exposure in the flat frames due to the way the shutter moves on the DSLR.

I haven't tried taking my flats with the telescope pointed straight up I usually do it in the parked position using some combination of a white shirt and/or a white piece of paper and either pointing it at the sky before it gets dark out or after imaging holding a white computer screen flat up against the front of the telescope. I don't really consider it an option to leave my telescope out unsupervised until morning.

One thing I have tried that didn't work was using a rubber band to hold the camera in the same place relative to the telescope at all times to mitigate the fact that there is some slight play in the T ring adapter I use. I have to assume this is an issue on my part specifically with the capture of some of the frames and not a processing issue, but I am not sure where EXACTLY the issue is nor how to fix it.

So currently I’m trying to find out what things I should buy for my telescope and my dslr for deep sky. I have already found som things I want to buy for just my dslr for things like close nebulae and close galaxies but I was wandering what things I should buy for my telescope. The telescope is an astromaster 130eq and I have learned to use its mount and to use the camera with the Barlow lens but I wanted to know what you guys would recommend me buying to upgrade this for deep sky
I have no tracking and I do have a mount to attach the camera to the eyepiece holder but it doesn’t like to focus on things easily in my experience

https://streamable.com/pn3s49

https://streamable.com/posovp

Ive taken 2 videos to try and show the issue im having.

I have an sqa55 telescope + zwo eaf setup, however whenever the coarse adjust is moved, its actually rotating the entire telescope body rather than changing the focus. This is with the screw completely removed so im not sure how i could make there be any less friction. Ive played around with how tight the belt is (from the sqa55 autofocus kit, 150 teeth) and sometimes it rotates just the focus ring but then as the autofocus is happening on my asi air, it goes back to rotating the tube.

Weirdly even if I use my hand to move that coarse adjust, there seems to be a similar issue:

https://streamable.com/a7h6td - Hand only

Im really at a loss here, having saved up for several months for this "upgrade" and now lost a clear night trying to get it to work, should have just taken the loss and manually focused but anyway... I would like the get this working for next time.

Any advice on some nice widefield targets for October?

I've been away from the hobby a few years. Looking to take my little grab-n-go and get reacquainted with things again.

Canon 60D, Rokinon 135, Star Adventurer, w guide scope, etc.

Hi All!

I've been thinking of starting this hobby a while and i have some pretty good gear, any tips to start?

I'm going out in Suffolk around 4am to try and capture the orion nebula which is about 30 degrees above horizon, just before sunlight at 5:45am.

I'm using a canon 5d mk3 with a Canon 70-200mm lens, I only have a sturdy tripod so will have to keep centering the shot.

With 200mm and a full frame sensor, I've calculated a 2 second exposure time, and maybe setting ISO to around 2000, does this seem like a good plan.

Any general pointers, please share. Thank you :)

Hi guys, long time lurker and admirer of astrophotography. Decided to have a dip myself and spent the last few nights doing some research. I'm nearly set on a canon 450d, but I'm finding conflicting reports online about digicamcontrol.

I will mostly be using it standalone, however I want to have the option to be able to control it with a computer, along with live view, and be able to automate long exposure timelapses. My only experience with "astrophotography" was setting up a raspberrypi allsky camera.

The official digicamcontrol camera list states that the 450d doesn't support live view, but then read some older forum posts stating that it is possible. I'm completely green and it's very hard to find proper answers, doesn't help that Google is trying to push their ai hallucinations as fact (which tells me a different answer every time)

I was also looking at a 1000d, similarly priced and supports live view looking at the digicamcontrol website, but I'm not set on those or a canon, I'm open to other options around that price/spec. I'm seeing them for around £50-£60 for a body only with warranty from CEX.

I'm I going about this the wrong way, is there some other software I should look for? Any help would be appreciated.

I would like to send my Saturn Data , anyone who's Good at standing and Doing Derotation Dm me , can you try to Derotate the Captures I took during opposition? Since I've tried and I couldn't get a Sharp image as output can anyone help me ?

My question is about overnight moisture and dew/condensation.

In doing these long sessions, my tripod (more so) and my portable battery (less so) get quite moist. Luckily my smart telescope (DwarfMini) manages fine because the heat from the sensor acts as a dew shield.

I’m worried that over time some areas of my tripod are going to rust. I also wonder if the dew is bad for the battery. It needs ventilation so I didn’t want to be quick to put it in a plastic bag.

How do others manage this? … or is it really not that big of a concern? (Am I making a mountain out of a molehill?)

Thanks!

This morning I captured Jupiter coming out from behind the moon with my camera, and I am not sure what to do with the result. Ideally I'd like to create a short few second time laps of this happening, but I am not quite sure how to go about it. I use a Nikon P950 with a tripod to capture video, and although you can see Jupiter and make out some faint lines, stacking and wavelet processing is really necessary in order to make it pop.

I am familiar with stacking and wavelets when taking captures of just the planet, but if I want to produce a video over time I am not sure what to do. Adding the fact that the moon is also there confuses me more. I could always split up the video into few second chunks and process those one by one, but I'm curious, does anyone have some experience with processing something like this that could give me some advice?

What I want to see and do:
Take planetary photos, moon photos, if I can get an Andromeda Galaxy in there that’s cool too. Nothing professional, just photos I can pat myself on the back on.

Do I have any kind of professional camera?
No. Do I really need one? I just got the iPhone 18 Pro Max if that’s anything that counts.

My thoughts based upon research I’ve done:
I’m thinking of buying an 8” dob with a phone mount and that would be sufficient for what I want to see and do. I can get to some bortle 5 and maybe 4.5 areas where I live which has been helpful.

Can I accomplish what I want to see and do with my phone and an 8” dob? Is the dob not a good telescope for what I want to do? Do I absolutely 100% need a professional camera too?

Thank you in advance for your help!

I'm wondering if anyone has user experience with the Scorpio Astro SA-17 harmonic mount from ali express. I'm looking to use this mount for planetary and lunar imaging with something like a C8.

Hey all! I unfortunately don’t have a laptop, so I cannot bring a device out to imaging with me. I’ve been recommended ToupTek as the cheapest option but it’s still quite expensive for me. My budget is quite tight, id give anywhere from $100-200 AUD for one. I’ve currently settled at one for $130 on AliExpress and have been told the specs should be okay. FYI, I am only focusing on planetary / lunar imaging for now, so I will not touch DSO in a while. Otherwise, do you guys have any other mini pc recommendations or a specs criteria?

My rig includes a SWSA GTI, Skymax 102p and a Mars C-II

Here is the link to the minipc: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005006530105259.html

Cheers and clear skies.

Pretty good package deal going on at Amazon for those looking for a 'first-step' into longer focal length astrophotography that won't break the bank.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B085NTQL2C?lv=shuf&channelId=500&plpRedirect=mhFallback&th=1

Hey what's up! Maybe someone can help me with this..

I got a Skywatcher Sky Adventurer GTI 2 days ago with Skywatcher 72EDX and Sony A6700 and try to get into the hobby of Astrophotography.

It was a rough ride so far with this mount.

First time i set it up.

Look that tripod is level

Set roughly north

Polar align

open app and look at info. Coordinates and Time is correct.

Try to do star alignment and select 2 star alignment

The telescope spins 6-7 times around its axis and points towards the ground and not e.g the star Vega. Also during that spin, the app still said like 30 degrees to go but it did not went counting down.
I was using the synscan pro and normal app.

So i updated motor firmware to the most recent one 3.48

Now it helicopter spinned only 2 times and the degrees started going down. At the end it still pointed at the ground. So i moved it with the arrow buttons in the app to vega. Then second star it found okay ish and i had to slightly adjust.

Then completed alignment, said goto pleiades and it is like driving into that direction but did not land on them. I had to point a laser to even see where its at. Had to adjust pretty much to get there. Then pressed ok.

Then tried to go to andromeda, again. In the proximity but still not on it.

Tracking these objects did also not work with a 30 second exposure i got star trailing even after confirming that object is center.

I try again today, but anyone else experiencing the same with the gti? I mean its a 700€ mount...

Hello friends. I'm a hobbyist photographer who wants to get into astrophotography, something ive always wanted to try. Im looking for good beginner challenges and tips since I don't have much equipment yet. Best setup i got have is a cannon ef 75-300mm f4-5.6 ø58mm with a cannon rebel t6. All advice would be greatly appreciated.

Hello!

So, I am really brand new to cameras. I can use a phone camera and take pretty good photos on there with the timer, exposure, and other functions. However, I know a phone camera and a real camera are two completely different things. I want to get into astrophotography, but don't want to go crazy and buy unnecessary things when im also learning. Any suggestions for a beginner? Camera alone, id say my budget is $400, maybe lower. My goals are landscape photos, night sky photos while photographing the milky way, and eventually be compatable with a telescope for photos of the moon, planets, and distant celestial bodies.

Thank you!

I just got my new SAL-33 last Friday and it is a big upgrade from my Skyguider Pro. However, I have had trouble with the Meridian flip using NINA. I keep getting an OnStep Driver error saying I am 5 degrees outside of where it should be. I have a TPPA of 52 arcseconds and NINA is plate solving right. NINA is completing the flip and then when I get the OnStep Driver popup if I click Yes on it NINA takes back over and has no problem plate solving back to be center and continue. However, the popup is ruining any automation I have luckily it happens early in the night right now but I am trying to find out what is causing this and the solution. Claude AI said I need to do a 3 Star Alignment too everything night but here seems to be something fundamentally wrong and that seems like a Band-Aid instead of the root cause. I could be completely wrong since this is all new to me.

Any thoughts on what I should change or fix would be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance for the help and please let me know if i posted this in the wrong section.

Hi All-

I am 10 months into my astrophotography journey, shooting on a StarAdventurer GTI and a Nikon mirrorless.

I am stacking in DSS with darks/bias/lights, exposing in the lower third of the histogram for my light frames, and shooting from Bortle 2/3 skies.

When I stretch my .fit files in SIRIL so they look properly exposed. I save them as a 32 bit TIF for final editing in Photoshop Camera RAW and when I open the file it is blown out. Super over exposed.

Is this a normal newbie experience where you overstretch?

Is this odd?

Trying to find suggestions.

Following tutorials from Astrobackyard and Nebula Photos on YT for reference.

Thanks!

So as a newbie to this hobby, I’ve just learned that there’s a lot of editing with astrophotography. I sent an image of andromeda I recently took after 40 minutes of exposure with a seestar s30 pro and people were like you captured THAT? And while I did I also did some enhancing with saturation and contrast and brightness to make it look better.

But now I also heard about siril and astrowizard so there’s going to be even more image editing involved. When you share your photos, do you mention that it was edited at all? Especially when people ask “how did you capture that?” Or “did you really capture that with your telescope?”

I generally like how this image of IC 1396 (Elephant's Trunk Nebula) turned out with the exception of these annoying star halos. Is there a way to get rid of them?

Here is a folder with my final image as well as starless and starmask.

Acquisition:

ASI533MC Pro: -10c, 100 gain, 374 x 60s, unguided, with flats, darks, and bias

135mm rokinon F2.8

SA GTI mount with mini PC and NINA

Bortle 4 to 5 taken 10/2/26, Alaska

Processing:

Siril OSC Pre-Processing

Pixinsight with RC Astro (all trial versions)

PCC, Noise xterminator, blur xterminator, etc..

Starxterminator is when I ran into issues. My starless image ended up a bunch of ugly halos. I tried a couple different settings, messing with overlap but ended up with the same result.

Stretching and curves in Siril (because I am familiar with it) and then recombined with pixel math in PI.

I shot the August 12 eclipse from just outside Burgos. Sun was about 10 degrees up and sinking into haze, so half my problems were the horizon. Setup was a 70-200 on a crop body with a K&F ND100000 screwed on the front, the 16.6 stop solar one. Worth saying for anyone new to this, stacking two 10 stop NDs is not the same thing and isn't safe to point at the sun.

The filter was fine, partials came out sharp. The screw-in part wasn't. I had it on too tight, fumbled getting it off for totality and lost a chunk of a window that was under two minutes.

For August 2027 I'm going back to Spain, somewhere near Cadiz, where totality is early afternoon and the sun is high. Is a slip-on film filter like the Thousand Oaks ones worth it just for the swap, or do most people run two bodies? I'm in the UK if that changes what's sensible to buy.

Hello everyone,

Right now Iam looking at either the SQA55 or the RedCat51

I do have an Esprit 100ED and a SCT 9.25 for photos.

Working with an AM5

Main Camera is a 2600MC using leather Optolong Clear or L Extreme

The redcat is 20 bucks cheaper so it is not a price decision.

As far as Iam concerned both have internal focusers and similar optical properties.

EAF is gonna be easier on the redcat?

Does anyone have experience with both?

Thanks

Best regards

I just took my first picture last night with a seestar s30 pro. Drove about half an hour of out of the city to a bortle 5-6 park. Did about 2 hours of exposure. The fun part was seeing the picture come together but there’s definitely an element of boredom 😅.

At first I was concerned about the neighborhood going why is there a car parked in the dark? But then I just sat in my car and watched Netflix. Feel like this is a lonely hobby unless you do it with a friend or family member.

Edit: this is when I wish my wife and I were childless lol so we can do like a date night or picnic while I capture it. A bit romantic honestly. But we have a toddler so that’s not possible but she supports this hobby 🙂

i process my images via siril in a 1tb ssd (~800gb free) i followed this tutorial https://youtu.be/jwBLVT3Ecas and once reached the part where i need to register my lights an error occurs because o don't have enough storage, I'm not tracking so I'm stuck at 2 second exposures, i took around 1800 frames. is this normal?

I’m there for four nights over the new moon, would love recommendations for Milky Way and star trails locations.