Hello!
Welcome, after a long long time.. Over 5 years and 10 months of no posts..
I haven't been doing astrophotography over the years due to mental health reasons.. but I am now back, and better than ever! MUCH better in fact! I can't believe how many mistakes I've been making in the past!
Current situation:
I'm currently upgrading my gear, so my setup is quite cursed right now.. I recently bought an Orion Mini 50mm guide scope, a ZWO ASI462MM camera, and an OnStep upgrade kit for my EQ-5 mount. The last one, unforunately, has not arrived yet.. but I really wanted to try out the camera and guidescope! So last night I tried using the telescope by using the guidescope with the cam as basically an electronic finderscope, and then once on target - I moved the camera from the guidescope to the main scope.. which was kind of a problem, because of focusing and the telescope moving ever so slightly! The FOV of my telescope with that camera is super narrow, so hitting the target can be suuper difficult! Especially having only 1 axis motorized on your mount like I do.. Tried to hit Whirlpool, but unfortunately didn't manage to land the shot.. I did see it thru the guidescope though!
After some tinkering around though, and navigating with the help of https://nova.astrometry.net/ (amazing website!) I managed to hit the Ring Nebula!
And this time, I managed to hit it in the telescope as well! I attached my DSLR to the main scope to *really* get the guidescope aligned with the telescope, and while I still had to search around a bit after moving the camera, I GOT IT!
I did have a mishap though at first, the ZWO camera has a tiny ring to make getting focus each time in the guidescope a bit easier.. this ring however, made it so that I couldn't achieve focus in the main scope 😅
I did however manage to get it again, this time with the ring removed. Focus has been achieved!
I then checked out different camera settings, ended up taking exposures at 350 gain and 15 seconds each!
Final Results:
26 x 15 seconds [31m 30s total], gain 350
Scope and Mount: Skywatcher 150/1200, EQ-5 mount with 1 axis motor
Camera: ZWO ASI 462MM, + Baader Neodymium Moon & SkyGlow Filter
Crop on the Ring Nebula and the IC1296 Galaxy (top right)
Crop on the Ring Nebula
No color, because the camera is Mono, but I'm absolutely stoked with the results!
For context, I'm used to only being able to photograph this nebula like
this!
The focus could be a bit better, but I do have some ideas on improving it.. such as a Bahtinov Mask or making a DIY motorized focuser, as well as trying out Deep Sky Lucky Imaging and deconvolution in Siril (I've only used Deep Sky Stacker and regular photo editing tools for this one!).
I've actually later noticed that I managed to catch an extra little tiny galaxy! The "PGC 2813669"! Not much about it online though unfortunately 😅
Hope you enjoyed the return-of-the-blog post! Hoping to be posting a bunch thruout summer :)
Clear Skies! 🐸
Hello! 
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