Don: You get great results from that 50mm.. One thing to be said for the Canon DSLR's is they really have excellent noise reduction and shooting 3200 is not too bad.... I generally try to use 800.... The dark frame does remove a substantial amount of noise... Hot pixels are another issue that happens with to many timed exposures one after the other as the CCD or Cmos Sensors do heat up.... We need to get you more magnification... The images you get are fantastic and with more mag I think what you will be producing with stacking will be mind bending.... I would consider getting Stevie the Orion ED80 with the CG5 mount.... It has motorized tracking and so it will do a wonderful job for both of you.... As long as you can decide how to split up the use
.... I was thinking about your birding scope but it would be very difficult to focus with the aperture limit and you really need to have a mechanized tracking solution to get the 30 second and above timed exposures... Now none of this holds true for widefiled shooting as in the Milky Way, but to get the deep space Nebula you really do need it to get consistent images for stacking to build it up to its potential.... I will go through Registax work flow and write it down so that I can post it.... It has been a while since I have been actively shooting Astro stuff so I went through a number of previously shot M42 frames today and stacked them with Registax.To get back into the groove... Once you get the flow and logic of the layout it is a nice simple program to use... I will go through it again in the morning and write up the procedure and post it tomorrow... I would give the 200 a go with 15 second exposures with a cool down in between every 2nd shot. With the results you got with the 50mm on Orion, It would be interesting to see just how much more image size the 200 will give you..... Don: You make me wish I had a Nikon
,,,,, When I see your images.... Noise reduction goes to Canon but oh how nice the rich images of the Nikon are.....Take care Don.....Stevie..... Get after your Dad.... We need to get the both of you that scope......Alex
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I know they are soft, I know they are out of focus, I know they lack contrast, I know my sensor needs to be cleaned, I know they are noisey, I know I should crop a little off the left side, I know I should find another hobby, but other than that how do you like them??
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Gear: Yes