Waxing Moon.
We were both staring up at it last night.

This time I remembered to turn on the intervalometer.

Welcome to the Human Race, Brian!

Downright purty!

Beautiful!

So, I'm not the only one being baffled by my guiding issues?

NINA told me my DEC axis driver in ASCOM was bad. Popped a warning window in red, and everything.

Trouble is, nobody has ever heard of a DEC axis driver in ASCOM. Not even Bob Denny over at Cloudy Nights. (The resident ASCOM Guru from Mesa, AZ.)

So, for the last 2 nights I've been fooling with guiding issues and finding no cures.

Seems to be a mystery afoot.
Mines a bit like swatting flies with a baseball bat. So far, no dead flies.

Beautiful capture Brian!
I haven't even tried for it. I have too many obstructions that direction.

Thank You for bringing it to us!

When my Mom, Dad, and Baby Sister came to visit us in Wyoming, we were on the last bit of two storms that dropped 2' and 3' of snow in the same week. Really muddy!
Dad said, "I'd forgotten about Mud Season."
Dad grew up in Alton, Illonois; on a farm. So he remember the Spring Mud Season.
One of the most memorable parts of 7 years in Wyoming was the cold for me. First freeze was in Mid-September, often a cold snap in November of sub-zero, and deep sub-zero in January. Snow could be up to 9 months of the year. When it got up to zero I called it T-Shirt weather.
My blood got so thick that one time I cut my finger pretty bad. The blood didn't flow, it oozed.
They told me, "The snow never melts in Wyoming. It just wears out from blowin back and forth."

God Bless you hearty souls who can live that far North and enjoy it.

Not surprised James.
Most think us odd-balls doing AP are out of this world.

I would assume you want a filter to mount in the camera body. Maybe if you could get a snap in filter to use as an example you could find a substitute that would fit.
But then comes the part of finding somewhere to get the filter to fit the snap in frame.

Something I did for my 80mm telescope was to get a mounted solar filter that I then mounted into a piece of 4" PVC. The flared end of the piece of pipe. (Thin walled drainage type.)
A big plus was this filter that fit over the 80mm telescopes dew shield happens to fit inside my Tamron 150-600 telephoto lens. So a dual use adaptation of the solar filter. (Badder film filter)
So if you are using any sort of lenses, maybe you can make an external adapter to get your filter to work?

Great work there, Brian!

Hot stuff!

Beautiful Brian!
Loved the Time Lapse!

For those of us who have never seen a live Aurora this is pretty fantastic.
So not a bust for us. Thanks!

Here are the following nights LRGB files. (2024-03-26)
Handled the same way as the Mono B&W files.

Downloadable if anyone would like to play or get up close.

Bodes and Cigar LRGB stacked

(Download)

Bodes and Cigar LRGB cropped

(Download)

Bodes and Cigar LRGB Stacked, cropped, and Lomo effect. Final

(Download)

Have a good trip, Safe Travels!

Well Bloke, We all started somewhere.
My beginnings were all Picturds by todays output.
I like your Moon result. Nice!

I could almost never hit focus for years and years. And my stars were blobs. Those picturds were so bad, the disks they were on died.

So be brave, post what you can. And enjoy your SeeStar!

And really bright!

You got a glass ceiling plane?
Moon Roof? Convertable?

The 130 is all I'm using now. The ED80T CF is setup for the Grandkids to do visual with now.
No, no reducer. In fact, Brian did some processing for me and concurred no flattener was needed for the 130.
So what you see is what I get. All I do is stack, crop, and very little else. Pure Space.
I used to use a color camera, an Atik Infinity a friend loaned me, then sold to me. It was an instant success from the first night.
But I wanted to venture into Mono, so got my ASI 1600MM Pro kit. I'm using the filters it came with, plus added a blacked out filter to shoot Darks and Bias frames in every sequence. The D&B are the last in the sequences I shoot.
B&W, to me, brings out the natural image. Although I do use filters to pop the details, HA7nm, SII and OIII.
On some I will do a second night with L,R,G,B. But all and any get stacked in Mono.

I still refer to myself as a processing minimalist. I don't sharpen either. It doesn't appeal to me.
I like to "get it right in the camera." Although, since going into NINA, and getting all the ducks in a row, I'm nearly at a point of a few clicks and go to bed.
I wake to a parked telescope and a SSD with last nights images stored in fits file format.
I dither every 5 images, Autofocus by Tempurature and HDR readings or filter changes. No more shivering under the stars unless it is necessary, like last night.
Last night things were getting wonky. So I did a quick start over and Polar Alignment, and a Star alignment. Then everything was running true again.
Since it had wasted a couple of hours of dark, I just grabbed onto a star between Bodes Galaxy and the Cigar Galaxy and ran with it. Transparency wasn't the best with our stupid weather being what it is.

Here's what I got. 1. As it stacked. 2. Cropped the stacked. 3. After Brightness and Contrast auto, Lightness and Dark auto, and Lomo Effect. (Lomo is something in my Photoshop Elements 12 Editor program I bought over 10 years ago. It ain't fancy, but it's nice and simple.)

All 3 are downloadable if you want to play with them. Done in Narrowband only.
I think the Lomo Effect injected some very slight coloration to the final image.

If I was to go back to color, I doubt much would change. I like doing as little as possible.
So there you have it, about as natural as I can bring it.

To me, downloading each image let's you really see the Picture.

Feel free to download and try your own post processing, But they are jpg's, per file size requirements.

Right out of the file. Stacked image

(Download)

Cropped. To remove any artifacts or gar-bage`.

(Download)

After Brightness & Contrast, Lighten Darken, and Lomo Effect. Final image. No other post processing.

(Download)

The weather will be what the weather will be.

Solar filters can be used for much more than just eclipses.

You can put me down as an Optimistic Pessimist.
Shoot no matter what the atmosphere gives you where you are.

Make Shinola out of it.

Hi Bloke!
Glad to see you got a SeeStar!
I'm betting those and others like them will be most of the Internet going forward.
For one thing, Super Resolution is falling to the wayside as services are paring down file sizes one can post.
And as a rule, pictures have to be uploaded as tiff or jpg formats.

Love your Moon Image! Looks great!

Yes, the general Youtube video's can be confusing for the very reason the posters are using varying versions. so ours look somewhat, to a lot, different.
For that, you have to use "Interpretive Viewing" and adapt the old to your new versions. But they did their video with what they had at the time.

Here's a Youtuber I like and have learned a lot from. Cuiv the Lazy Geek

He also has his version of Siril, a free processing software, he presents.

I hope you find some helpfull things in those.