Don you nailed it so well.
Excellent.
May be first you want to add on the number of TCs before getting to higher focal length. BTW avoid cheaper manufacturer's 800mm or so prime lenses as the chromatic aberrations and poor quality glass rather significantly destroys the picture quality. Stay with Nikon, doesn't mater if it is manual. If you are buying on ebay, I can send you alert mail when I see some good deals out there.

Sassan,

I agree on the optics front and would only go with an ED lens. I need to learn how to process properly before going in that direction :rolleyes: . Not one for buying sight unseen, so I am not an e-bay lens buyer, but thanks for your offer. Come the time I guess a trip to the BIG CITY ( London ) will be on the cards.

Currently suffering the new toys syndrome. CLOUDY NIGHTS :( . I did manage a few last night that I will try some sort of image merge on, to see if I get any improvement in IQ. RegiStax is not happy with my image size and 70mb Tiffs. I guess this program is more suited to webcams. Works OK with D100 Tiffs but then I got the X for its resolution. :)

Don

In my rummage around the net for info on Astro image processing, I found this tutorial that looks good.

http://www.starrywonders.com/tutorialpage1.html

Don

Another good one is http://www.astropix.com/ by Jerry Lodrigus

He also does a CDbook on Astrophotography with a DSLR which I have and strongly recommend although much of it is on the website.

Dave

2 good links.
Thanks.

Any good tutorial on an easy to follow stocking software?
Then any video oriented tutorial on polar alignment in an easy way that is understandable by a fully unfledged beginner?

BTW here, almost to the end of May and still cloudy nights constantly for past few weeks. I don't know about the April shower, May flower concept but need to add Anxiousness syndrome as sub or supra category to the new toys syndrome. CLOUDY NIGHTS... :(

i just cant believe the clarity of the shots. this is probably a really stupid question, but why cant we see anything like that in the u.k?

Cuz we have weather, not a climate :)

You really need cold still air to do astro stuff properly, which is why all the major obsys are on the top of mountains. Take a trip to La Palma and you'll be OK :)

Do you mean why can't we see the same with a telescope and our eyes? Well there are several reasons.

Firstly Lodrigus is very talented, works hard at his craft, and has some very high quality and expensive equipment. Many of these pictures were taken by exposing a sensor/emulsion to light for a long time. Hence a lot of the images are of things that we cannot see, as our eyes are not sensitive enough.

Secondly, the human eye cannot see colour when the light levels drop below a certain value. So even when we can see some of the objects he photographs, we see them as black and white.

You CAN see many of the nebulae and galaxies, given a reasonably dark sky. I have seen the Andromeda galaxy M31 (it looks like a fried egg), and it is easy to see in binoculars if you know where to look. I have seen the galaxies M81 and M82 with a telescope and they are not too hard to find given dark skies. And of course the Orion nebula is an easy one. But none of these will be anything like in the photos.

Unfortunately UK skies are often polluted with street lights. I used to visit my late mother in South Devon, and would sometimes drive to the countryside to enjoy magnificant pitch black skies that reached down to the sea. IMO one of the great wonders of the world is to witness a pitch black sky, especially if you have some binoculars and perhaps a small telescope.

Incidentally there are some UK photographers producing similar quality images. There is one in Hertfordshire or Bedfordshire. Sadly his name escapes me.

I think you are refering to Nik Szymanek. He is an ex member of my astronomy club and often comes to give us an excellent talk. He takes most of his photos from La Palma and other sites around the world.

Dave

The person I am thinking of some quite expensive American made refractors with triplet objectives, and lived somewhere in Herts/Beds. I am pretty sure he took pictures in the UK especially planets. He had a web site, but I cannot find it.