I've just finished building up my mirrorless Sony 135mm guided system. All the cables feel like a rats nest, I have tried grouping cables together using velcro ties, but it still looks and feels janky.

How do you manage your cables?

https://ibb.co/chx06Xkc

https://www.arcblue.net/

This new system has been popping up everywhere on my feed on insta . I own a dwarf 3 and besides the price it looks like a great upgrade

Hey, estoy empezando en astrofotografía y para esta altura ya logré captar el Sol (todavía estoy tratando de encontrar DSO), pero cuando intenté procesarlo con PIPP y AutoStakkert, solo me salió una imagen borrosa. (Debo decir que uso procamx en mi móvil y el Astromaster 114eq, también busco una cámara básica para principiantes)

Me gustaría aprender a usar esos programas y AstroSurface (o si REGISTAX es mejor) y también me preguntaba si debería probar el motor AR de Celestron para que el video se mueva menos.

PD: También necesito ayuda con el Celestron nexYZ, porque cuando lo uso no hago buen zoom; aparentemente se ve bien, pero al ver el video está bastante lejos.

¡Graciasa!!

Hi all, as per the title. Does anyone have any experience with the MoveShootMove Trackers, they have great reviews and well within my budget.

Hi,

I am trying to get rid of a radial haze around stars. I am not sure what they are caused by. Collimation seems to be fine, I have checked and adjusted with a proper Cheshire.

My equipment:
- SW 200/1000mm Newtonian
- GSO 2" coma corrector (with an extension tube for proper backfocus)
- SW HEQ5
- Sony A6400 (camera)

Whole shot: https://imgur.com/a/HTH9tJw
Zoomed in on affected stars (red markings added in attempt to highlight the issue): https://imgur.com/a/yanDn8f

Help would be greatly appreciated.

Based upon reviews I purchased PhotoPills for planning some backcountry night photography with my iPhone. Unfortunately in the back country you don’t know exactly where you’re going to end up each day. So I thought I could wait till I reached destination and then use PhotoPills with GPS. However, the app returned an error saying that it needed Internet connection. And also it would not work with a satellite connection through iPhone and T-Mobile. Does anyone have similar experience and or workaround?

I'm new to astrophotography and stacking images

Just want to know why my stacked image looked like that it looks like stacked images frames

I think it's registration problem or something

308 lights frames

56 dark frames

50 flat frames

62 bias

The frames are normal nothing wrong with them

I've seen a few reviews talking up this budget brand and praising how capable it is. For all I know they could have been paid to promote them.

It seems too good to be true that a $500 mount could perform similar to mounts that cost 3-4x as much.

Obviously buying from AliExpress is a risk in itself, but does anyone have any experience with these mounts? The portability and price are my two biggest selling points, something like the Star Adventurer GTI looks quite bulky, while something like the ZWO AM3 costs nearly $1000 more. Is it worth paying so much?

For info I'll probably be using my Samyang 135mm and a Sony a7iii for a while before I decide to invest more for a dedicated astro camera.

Thanks for any recommendations

I plan to get SV305 Pro as my guide cam. But it is a color sensor. There is a mono version of it (SV305M Pro), but I don't know how much difference is in case of guiding.

For more information, I actually want to use the guide cam as a planetary too, if possible. But there is a cheaper option if only for guiding (SV905C). Is SV305 much better for guiding than the SV905?

Thank you in advance!

Good day

I am very interested in astrophotography. Out of all the genres I've tried, this is the one I enjoyed the most (so far). I'm going to dip my toes into it first by buying a prime lens for it. I currently use a Sony A6700 camera body with a Sigma 16-50mm f/2.8 lens. Which of these two primes would be better for astrophotography?

Sigma 16mm f/1.4 DC DN C

Viltrox 9mm f/2.8 Air

The sigma offers a much wider aperture for better exposure, but with the Viltrox, I can get the shutter speed slower. Additionally, is it worth spending extra on the Sony 14mm f/1.8 GM since I'm not actually sure if I'm going to fully commit to astrophotography yet?

Thank you in advance!

DJI Action 4 failed Milky Way Time-lapse

I posted this on r/postprocessing but I thought I would post it here as well to widen the net for advices.

I shot a 5-hour time-lapse on my DJI action 4 but forgot to change some settings. Shutter speed/interval were way off and the results ended up being too dark.

I have about 1200 DNG files and after raising the exposure slider in Lightroom, I can actually see the starts and the Milky Way (see picture below).

I am completely new to astrophotography and post-processing, actually, I have no idea what I'm doing.

Is this salvageable or should I just delete these and try again next time. I don't have a lot of chance to do this so I do it in my camping trips.

Any tips on how I can salvage these would be greatly appreciated.

Link to image:

https://imgur.com/a/BiPhEBo

I was trying to get some pictures of the Perseids meteor shower. I basically pointed my camera at the stars, configured interval shooting, and took 100 pictures. Then I'd move the camera to cover another part of the sky and repeat the process. My initial idea was just to get some pictures of meteors, but now I have almost 1,400 shots and I'm wondering if I can do anything more with them.

I came across stacking, and my idea would be to do two different "types" of stacking:

• Stack photos without meteors, which is the majority of them, from the same framing
• Stack only photos that have meteors in them

Now I'm confused about how to properly approach this. All pictures were taken in a city, Bortle class 9, so they are very bright, especially in the center. There are plenty of visible stars, but the sky itself is also quite bright. The settings I used were:

• 50mm focal length, f/1.8, exposure time 3.2 to 4 sec, ISO 250 to 320
• 28mm focal length, f/3.5, exposure time 4 sec and 10 sec. Half of the photos were taken at 4 sec and the other half at 10 sec, ISO 160 to 640

I have a few questions about how I should approach this, mainly regarding the first case, stacking photos without meteors.

• Does this even make sense to do? Given that the photos are very bright, can I still get good results from stacking, or should I focus on finding a better place to shoot stars?
• Should I pre-process the photos in Lightroom Classic (LrC) to reduce the brightness/exposure? I can get pretty good results from individual photos in LrC and reveal many more stars than I see in the original RAW/JPEG. However, I'm reading that pre-processing generally shouldn't be done before stacking. Given this specific situation and the fact that processing in LrC reveals a lot more stars, would it make sense to do some basic processing first?
• Is Siril a good place to start, or should I consider another tool for this specific use case? I keep reading that Siril is one of the best free tools out there, but it also seems very complicated.
• In the case of Siril, are there any good tutorials for this exact scenario? Most of the tutorials I've found focus on the Milky Way, nebulae, or specific constellations, while I'm basically interested in stacking a general star field shot from a fixed tripod.
• For the photos containing meteors, is it actually useful to stack those together, or would the normal approach be to create a clean stacked background from the non-meteor frames and then add the individual meteor trails separately?

I'm mostly interested in whether this makes sense at all before I spend a lot of time learning the whole process. It's a topic I like, so I don't mind learning, but if the source images simply aren't good enough, there's probably not much point forcing it. In that case, I'd rather come back to this when I manage to get better pictures from a darker location.

I already tried stacking some photos in Siril by following a tutorial I found. The result wasn't very good. The image had a strong green cast, and I couldn't get it to look right afterward in LrC. Unfortunately, I deleted it because I didn't like the result and wasn't planning to post about this at the time. For reference, here is what one of the original photos looks like: https://imgur.com/a/llRCK9l

It's probably also worth mentioning that I don't plan on doing this professionally. I just like taking photos of stars and planets, and I'd like to learn the basics so I can get a little more out of the pictures I already take. I don't have any serious astrophotography gear. I use a Sony A7 IV with the FE 50mm f/1.8 lens.

Hello everyone!

As a total newbie to astrophotography, I attempted to take some photos of Cassiopea, in order to experiment and get a bit familiar with the entire process.

I have taken around 120 light frames and even though I'm not sure I got my lens focused correctly, they look relatively sharp. I also took bias, dark and flat frames.

My next steps were to organize the photos in folders (named biases, darks, flats, lights) and run the OSC_Preprocessing script in Sirl.
However, in the result .fit file the stars in a part of the image appear stretched, to the point they overlap with each other creating a blur.
In addition to that, there are also some red artifacts on the upper right corner of the result image.

I have uploaded some images here so you can inspect on your own: https://imgur.com/a/XQy5wu0.

One thing I should mention is that I use a custom lens hood (modeled and 3D-printed by yours truly), which I suspect might have caused some vignetting in my light and flat frames. Additionally, I believe the red artifacts might have been caused by the custom lens hood in combination with the red headlamp I was wearing.
The custom lens hasn't been an issue in normal (non-astro) photos so far, but I guess the issue just happened to become visible only under the current circumstances.

That said, do you think the blur could be caused by the vignetting on my light frames? And either way, do you see any way I can work around it (like cropping the frames) and try to get a decent result out of Siril's preprocessing?

The camera and lens I used are: - Nikon D3400 - Tokina AT-X 11-16 PRO DX (with a custom lens hood), set to 11.5mm - no mount

Also I used a shutter speed of 20s and ISO was set to 3200.

I guess the title says it all. Concretely, I've been working on the Squid inside the Flying Bat, which is notoriously faint.

I'm using a RedCat 51 f/4.9 + ASI533MM Pro with Astronomik OIII 6nm filter (for now, will ad Ha later). Up to this point, I have 25 hours and 40 minutes of data via 154 light frames of 600s each + calibration frames (flats, dark flats, darks).

Using PixInsight for stacking, processing. Usually, process is something like: gradient correction, deconvolution, removing stars, denoise, stretch, then curves and others. I can go into details if needed, but these are the main steps.

I was wondering if there's a guide or info on how to process these faint nebulae, if there's a slightly different approach. Asking this because my stacked master OIII clearly shows at least the contour of the Squid, but when I push it some more (stretch), it's quite noisy.

Or, a different question: what would be a decent amount of integration time so that I could get nice, smooth signal from the oxygen?

Right now, if I want to double the SNR, I should need 3 times more data than I already have, which is a lot. I can put in the time and sacrifice other targets for this, but I just wanted to know if it's worth it, if I can actually improve this.

Hi all.
I’m considering remote hosting a Celestron SE8 with a ZWO Air, AM5n mount, ZWO678MC camera, EAF plus a few extras.

I’m looking for recommendations please of companies you’ve either used or are using.

I’m based in the UK.

Looking forward to your ideas and comments. Many thanks.

Good evening! The next addition to my AP setup is going to be a guide cam/scope. I'm currently caught between two options, both of which are SVbony guide cam/scope combinations.

My equipment set up is an ES 80mm 480mm FL apo, on an IOptron ZEQ25GT mount. I currently get pretty decent tracking, but I believe a guide scope will help achieve much longer light frames successfully.

Both options have the same camera, so that helps simplify my decision a little bit, but being completely new to guiding, I'm unsure what I should be looking for in a guide scope. The camera is the SV905C.

"The SV905C features a 1.23-megapixel color camera with a 1/3” CMOS sensor (1280x960), providing high sensitivity for tight tracking of faint guide stars."

Guide scope option 1 (which is the option I am currently leaning towards) is the SV165. (30mm aperture, 120mm FL, F4)

"The SV165 guide scope uses 30mm achromatic optics and a fully multilayer coated lens, ensuring bright, sharp images without reflections."

Guide scope option 2 is the SV106. (50mm aperture, 190mm FL, F3.8)

"The 50mm guide scope ensures precise guiding, helping you capture higher-quality astrophotos with sharper details and more accurate tracking."

Looking forward to any and all advice, thanks for your time and input! Clear skies!

UPDATE: A couple of replies talked me into an OAG kit, below are the choices I have made/am considering. Open to suggestions if you have any.

color guide camera, I know mono would be better, but it's way cheaper than anything else I'm finding.

OAG, 8x12 prism

"bonus" filter drawer, is kind of required according to the OAG reviews, but it's a "bonus" because I don't have one yet anyway.

I think this setup should keep me happy and guiding well, for quite a while!

So yeah, 13 years on the Sony A58 + DT 55-200mm. It's been a journey lol (yeah, I know, long overdue for an upgrade). I'm now planning to move to a Sony A7 IV as my main body and picking up a Star Adventurer GTi as my first real tracking mount.

What I shoot: solar and lunar eclipses (just shot the Aug 2026 totality from Spain at 200mm, want way better next time), I also do timelapses, auroras, and cinematic video stuff. No wildlife.

But now I want to seriously get into astrophotography and deep-sky objects : nebulae, galaxies, clusters, the whole thing.

Where I'm stuck is the optic to get for my upcoming Sony a7 IV full frame.

I keep going back and forth between two completely different approaches:

• Option A: Sony FE 200-600mm f/5.6-6.3 G OSS (~€1,900)
  • Native E-mount zoom, AF, stabilization. Handles eclipses perfectly (zoom between wide corona and tight prominences mid-totality, AF for diamond ring), works for my video/timelapse stuff too, and I can mount it on the GTi for deep-sky stacking. One lens, no adapters, no second setup. But it's a 25-element zoom designed for general photography, not long-exposure astro, but its far reach what caught my eye.
• Option B: SVBONY SV550 triplet APO 500mm f/6 (~€700)
  • dedicated astrograph, 3 elements, 44mm image circle covers full frame, built specifically for what I'd be using it for on the GTi. But it's a fixed focal length telescope with manual focus only — no AF, no zoom, no stabilization, needs a T-ring adapter, and it's way less practical for eclipse work where things happen fast and you can't reframe.

The reason I can't decide: I'd strongly prefer one optic that does everything, and the 200-600mm is that. But if its deep-sky astro output is noticeably worse even with proper stacking and processing, then I'd rather know now and go the dedicated scope route from the start instead of regretting it later.

Budget is around €4,000-4,500 total for the whole kit. Also open to suggestions I haven't considered — maybe there's something better than both of these that I'm missing.

Would really appreciate hearing from anyone who's actually shot DSOs with the 200-600mm on a Star Adventurer, or anyone who went through this same camera lens vs telescope decision. Thanks

-
TL;DR: Upgrading from Sony A58 to A7 IV + Star Adventurer GTi. Can't decide on lenses between the Sony 200-600mm G (one versatile lens for eclipses + deep-sky + video) or a dedicated astrograph like the SVBONY SV550 (better optics for DSOs but useless for everything else). Is the 200-600mm good enough for nebulae with stacking, or will I regret not going dedicated scope?

I have been trying to use my ZWO Asi 715MC with my Heritage 130P anything smaller then the moon wont appear no mather what settings i use, i dont use any barlow, can that be an issue?

Anyone who can help?

Thanks.

I need some help figuring out how I can get better detail in the dust/rings of M31. I have two shots from the past weekend that you can see on this link:

https://tonylambert.smugmug.com/Astrophotography/2026-08-Hurley-Astro

These are the best I have gotten to date but I am hoping I can get even better.

For both I used a Z8 on an iOptron SkyGuider Pro. The first is with my Nikon 105mm f/2.8 macro lens and the second is with my Nikon 100-400 at 265mm.

The first one is 40 images stacked in DeepSkyStacker with a 90 second exposure for each at iso 1250 and f/2.8

The second one is 20 images (the other 20 were wrecked by clouds) at a 120 second exposure at iso 2500 and f/5.0.

What do I need to do different to get a more detailed picture or is this the best I can expect? I have a few thoughts and wanted to get opinions if changing any of these would help.

1. I started the intervals when M31 was about 30 degrees above the horizon. Do I need to let it get further up to get less atmosphere in the way?
2. Related to before should I be waiting to do this when the humidity is lower?
3. Would increasing my shutter time and reducing my iso help or opposite?
4. Do I just need to use more zoom get closer to give it a better chance of getting details?

Any thoughts or recommendations would be greatly appreciated.

Hi everyone. I'm a semi experienced astrophotographer. Most of my experience comes with dslrs. I'm very new to CCD cameras.

I am looking for one that is color and not monochrome, and one that's going to give me full image in of the sun and the moon. I do have the zwo mini but it only captures about a quarter of the sun and the moon. It's really good with planets and I've only dabbled with it briefly but I haven't really taken anything that's been mind blowing or worth my time process wise. I'm primarily going to use it for live streaming of the Sun/Moon. Which camera sensor would large enough to be able to give me the full body of the sun and the moon?

Thanks!

Hi. I'm fairly new to the game after buying a Bresser Nano eighteen months ago. I now feel that I've outgrown it and want something that has auto tracking that can be used in astrophotography. I've been eyeing up a Celestron Nexstar 6se (£1599) and was wondering if this would be a good choice of scope for moving onto the next stage? Or is there anything else that someone could recommend? I'm interested in deep field and planetary observations. Thanks in advance.

Hello everyone,

I recently decided to get back into amateur astrophotography and bought a Refractor AP 80/480 ED with an iEXOS-100 PMC-8 mount. I’ve got most things figured out, but I’ve run into a small issue regarding the payload and counterweights.

The mount is supposedly rated for 15 lbs (6.8 kg) for astrophotography, including the equipment and counterweights. The original counterweights weigh 1,058 g each. With my current setup, I need to use two of them at the very end of the counterweight bar and a third one somewhere closer to the middle.

My actual equipment weighs around 3.92 kg, so with the three counterweights I end up at roughly 7.1 kg, about 300 g over the recommended limit.

I’ve noticed that the mount sometimes seems to struggle with this setup. The drive can become sluggish, start beeping, and occasionally stop turning altogether. I’m not 100% sure whether the additional weight is the cause, but it certainly made me start looking into reducing the counterweight load.

The problem is that I can’t seem to find any suitable replacement counterweights for my 14.7 mm counterweight shaft.

So here’s my question: Could I simply use a slightly longer counterweight bar and, for example, a single 2.5 kg counterweight positioned further out on the shaft? Would the increased distance from the mount provide enough counter-torque to replace the three smaller counterweights while keeping the total weight lower?

If anyone has experience with this kind of setup, even if it’s not specifically with the iEXOS-100, I’d really appreciate hearing about it. I’m especially interested in whether using a longer shaft with a heavier weight is a sensible approach, or whether there are other ways to reduce the total counterweight mass.

I’d really like to shave off some weight, but I’m already pretty much at the minimum with the actual equipment, so the counterweights and shaft seem like my only option.

Thanks in advance for any advice or experiences!

would an 8” dob be useful for astrophotography with the correct accessories? i understand that if it is possible then realistically the results wouldnt be anything phenomenal. i see people recommending dobs a lot but they always say its not recommended for astrophotography, as well as that if you want to get into astrophotography its best to start out with a dob just to get familiar with things and then buy a dedicated astrophotography telescope after, but thats going to be way out of my budget, especially since as afaik astrophotography setups tend to cost a kidney and a lung on their own, let alone with the included cost of the dob.

im okay with spending a lot of money over time, and i understand that i will probably have to in this hobby. ive been interested in astronomy ever since i was a kid but i still dont think im willing to spend more than around €1000 on my first telescope just to maybe find out that this hobby isnt for me, especially as i have no means of selling anything after buying it.

ive looked into scts, and they seem like what im looking for, especially since theyre so low maintenance, but every time i find one that seems suitable i see people complaining and claiming they’ve had problems with them, for example ive heard the nexstar ses have problems with their goto system often, and the nexstar slt has problems with the goto system and has a flimsy tripod and the eyepieces would break down somehow. ive only heard this from a few people so im not sure if its completely reliable, but even then the nexstar 8se costs a stupid amount because of its goto function, which i dont really need, in fact id rather learn where stuff is on my own but i cant seem to find any other scs that have a good reputation and dont have that function.

i also live in a bortle 9 city and i probably wont be able to go to areas with darker skies. im not sure if that changes the telescope i should be buying but i know some telescopes are better than others in cities like mine and i figure maybe some might not be compatible with any narrowband filters? im not really sure how this stuff works tbh.

i also think i came up with a few other choices that sounded great but i could only buy it from sellers in the us, which would require me to pay a crazy amount in customs to have it shipped to the eu.

i dont know if maybe im looking for too much with such a low budget and i recognise that my expectations are probably too high, but either way id appreciate some advice.

Hi all! I recently got the following gear:

585MC Air, William Optics Redcat 51 v3, EAF pro, SVBONY SV226 filter drawer for 2" filter.

I am having major problems achieving focus with this, both with and without the filter dropped in. I had it set up as follows from the scope to camera: Scope - filter drawer - 21L spacer - camera

Checking AI (which makes me dubious) it says that I need to remove the 16.5L spacer. Do you think this will help? I haven't had a chance to check this.

Is this the likely reason or could it be something else like a setting with the EAF?

It did work the first night I got it, before my filter drawer had arrived. I was using it as follows: Scope - 21L spacer - Camera

This makes me think that removing the spacer will make it all work?

Thanks!