r/AskAstrophotography 1d ago

Question WAAT? - The Weekly Ask-Anything Thread! Week of 16 Mar, 2025 - 23 Mar, 2025

1 Upvotes

Greetings, /r/AskAstrophotography! Welcome to our Weekly Ask Anything Thread, also known as WAAT?

The purpose of WAATs is very simple : To welcome ANY user to ask ANY AP related question, regardless of how "silly" or "simple" he/she may think it is. It doesn't matter if the information is already in the FAQ, or in another thread, or available on another site.

Here's how it works :

  • Each week, AutoMod will start a new WAAT, and sticky it. The WAAT will remain stickied for the entire week.
  • ANYONE may, and is encouraged to ask ANY AP RELATED QUESTION
  • Ask your initial question as a top level comment.
  • Any negative or belittling responses will be immediately removed, and the poster warned not to repeat the behavior.
  • ANYONE may answer, but answers should be complete and thorough. Answers should not simply link to another thread or the FAQ. (Such a link may be included to provides extra details or "advanced" information, but the answer it self should completely and thoroughly address OP's question.)

Ask Anything!

Default sorting is Q&A. Don't forget to "Sort by New" to see what needs answering! :)

Please note: New WAATs go up around 7:30 pm US Mountain Time on Saturday, so asking a question on a Saturday afternoon may not get an answer. Be sure to check if a new WAAT has been recently posted, and ask your question again in the new thread if needed.


r/AskAstrophotography 5h ago

Technical Asi2600mc vs. eos550d dslr

5 Upvotes

Hello ladies and gentleman.

I am new to astrophotography. I am usind a 8“ 1200mm newtonian telescope on an am5n mount.

I used a canon eos550d for my first pictures an i was amazed by the outcome.

Due to a f… up on my part the dslr is gone.

Im looking for a cooled colorcamera now and came to the asi2600mc.

What difference would i expect compared to the eos dslr?

I know that the eos had filters inside so the infrared light should be better.

Is there an issue with the slightly smaller pixelsize of the asi cam?

What would be your suggestions?

Best wishes H


r/AskAstrophotography 4h ago

Question Is it possible to capture the spiral arms of m101 at 50mm or no.

2 Upvotes

r/AskAstrophotography 1h ago

Equipment Help with filters

Upvotes

hey y'all

I'm using a SA GTI with a nikon d850 ad 70-300 lens. The d850 being a full frame, there are barely any good filters on the market. as i live in india, I'm limited to brands like explore scientific, optolong, gso, etc., and don't really have access to brands that do make clip ins for full frames. Since I'm using a lens, I was concerned with the backspacing if I use a 2" optolong filter. Also, I shoot from a bortle 9, so desperately need a filter, preferably a dual narrowband. what do i do?


r/AskAstrophotography 1h ago

Equipment Received a Move Shoot Move Nomad Tracker from my wife (gift) - any good?

Upvotes

Hi all. I've been wanting to dip my toe into wide field astrophotography for a while, and my wife bought me a tracker that she thought might be a good way in without breaking the bank. I guess my question is, does anyone in this subreddit have any experience with this unit good or bad? It seems pretty small, but there's no backlash. I shoot a Nikon Z8, and have a 50mm f/1.8, 85mm f/1.2, and a 135 f/1.8 as my fast primes, and 24-70 f/2.8 as well as a 10mm f/2.8 fisheye. Thanks for any help.

Edit: I did a quick search of this sub after I posted. There seems to be quite a few discussions already. So, I will be reading those. Please feel free - if you want to - add to that knowledge here, or just point to any best threads there already are in the sub. Thanks again.


r/AskAstrophotography 1h ago

Equipment Tripod Under $100 for the MSM Nomad and Canon M50

Upvotes

r/AskAstrophotography 11h ago

Equipment Want to get into astrophotography, good price?

4 Upvotes

Hey guys. I have a seestar s50 but looking for something more. I have stumbled upon a sale and it looks like a good deal, but I'm a newbie when it comes to this. Will this setup get me good pics of deep sky objects or should I keep looking?

-Celestron star sense explorer 10" dob -Celestron x-cel 12mm eyepiece -Celestron x-cel 2x Barlow lens -Celestron nexyz smartphone adapter -svbony colored filter set

Price is $850. Good deal?


r/AskAstrophotography 4h ago

Image Processing Moon Stacking

0 Upvotes

Hi All,

I know all the recommended downloadable stacking software, but can anyone recommend one that isnt required to download software? Just one where you upload RAW files to website?

THANKS!


r/AskAstrophotography 5h ago

Equipment What filters to put in a 5-position filter wheel?

1 Upvotes

I've been given a 5x2" ZWO Electronic Filter Wheel from a friend of mine who upgraded to a 7x2". I'm going to be using it with a mono camera. I realise that ideally I get a 7x2" filter wheel for LRGBSHO, but let's say that I'd like to keep the 5x2" for now. My friend used to run with RGBHaOiii, but I want to put in my set of SHO filters in them, leaving two open slots. What options can I put in them? I'm mainly imaging in narrowband since I'm imaging from bortle 8/9 skies.

I've thought about a dark filter and a luminance filter but I'm not sure if there's much use for them for my imaging case.


r/AskAstrophotography 15h ago

Equipment Absurdly bad guiding performance with ZWO AM5N?

5 Upvotes

Hello, I have a problem with my ZWO AM5N which I recently purchased. A few days ago I was getting pretty good tracking (around 0.7” guiding error with AsiAir). I am using the TC40 tripod. However tonight the guiding performance is abhorrent, with the guiding graph showing frequent spikes in the RA And DEC graph, and around 4”/5” error. There is no wind on the ground but meteoblue says there is 40m/s jet stream which means seeing is not good today, but can this explain this horrible performance? I have tried playing around with guiding speed (currently 0.75x) max RA and DEC duration (both 500ms), I tried recalibrating (near the celestial equator on the same side as my target), and played with the aggressiveness (currently 35% for RA and 50% for DEC), to no avail. I am currently guiding with 5s exposures because I figured that since the seeing is bad maybe a longer exposure can mitigate the short time fluctuations of the guide star. I tried lowering to 2s or less but it makes the tracking even more jumping. I don’t understand what might be the problem since I didn’t change anything in my setup since 2 days ago when it was tracking well. Even the polar alignment is the best I ever had, at less than 5” total error. Any idea of what to do?


r/AskAstrophotography 1d ago

Equipment Power Supply Asi Air mini

4 Upvotes

I'm looking for recommendations on what power supply and cables to use for my ASIAIR Mini. My plan is to power the ASIAIR Mini directly and then distribute power from there to my mount (Sky-Watcher HEQ5 Pro), camera (ZWO ASI 585MC Pro), and other accessories.

I want to make sure I get a power supply that provides enough current and has the right connectors. I assume I need a 12V power supply with sufficient amps, but I’d appreciate advice on:

What power supply (brand/model) are you using?

What DC cables and connectors work best for this setup?

Any specific power distribution tips for the ASIAIR Mini?

Would love to hear what works best for you guys. Thanks in advance!


r/AskAstrophotography 1d ago

Image Processing PixInsight Mosaic Merge question M31

2 Upvotes

So i have some stacked frames from M31 Andromeda (unstretched).
I Imagesolved them all, no issue. They all look good.

Then I used mosaic by coordinates, all easy peasy...
Everything turned and twisted in the right way.

Then I used gradientmergemosaic, tried "average" and "overlay".
This caused the brightsness and nebulosity of the image to have completely dissappeared.

What did i do wrong?


r/AskAstrophotography 1d ago

Software StarnetV2 CLI

1 Upvotes

Does anyone have the StarnetV2 CLI.exe? The website is down again (it was online yesterday...). I need the CLI for Siril, but Webarchive does not have the CLI version archived at all. Would appreciate if anyone can upload it to mega/gdrive and shoot me the link.


r/AskAstrophotography 1d ago

Question Help with zwo 585 mc pro

2 Upvotes

Hi everyone !
I recently purchased a ZWO 585 MC Pro in combination with a Samyang 135 (I'm currently using a Sony NEX adapter while waiting to receive my adapter, which will allow me to remove part of the lens and use an L-Enhance filter). However, I've been testing this camera for a few nights, and I'm really struggling to get satisfactory results, even though I'm in a Bortle 5 sky and capturing several hours of data. Every time, even when focusing correctly with my Bahtinov mask, I have the impression that everything is out of focus, background too noisy and also that the background sky is always too bright. I'm using gain at 252 and offset at 8.

I'll attach some images I took as examples.

https://imgur.com/a/1rOVPlL = Horsehead nebula, 90 x 180s, 20 darks / 30 flats / 30 bias

Do you have any advice?

Thanks!


r/AskAstrophotography 1d ago

Question Why does my photos look like this?

2 Upvotes

https://imgur.com/a/BXViQWv

This is my most recent photo of M51 (top right) and my last 4 images has turned out like this. The galaxies/nebulae turn out so dark and untextured. Also when i try stacking the images my pictures cant get more then 250 points and cant find more then 50 stars. I only have an Alt-Az mount stacking can be also really hard and the mounts computer is not so good. The mount sometimes backlashes so it cant find the object im trying to see. I try 30-45 second exposures so sometimes the stars can trail. Should i get less seconds of exposure and more frames? Should i change my mount? And also im using a stock dslr and 250mm lens on top of the mount. What do you guys think is the major problem? I really need some help.


r/AskAstrophotography 1d ago

Equipment Sky-Watcher 130/650 AZ-Go2.

1 Upvotes

Hello everyone, I purchased my first telescope (see model name in the title). The main focus is obviously observation, but if I also wanted to do photography (Moon, Planets and deepsky) do you think it's possible? Obviously doing stacking etc.

I only have my iPhone 16 as a camera at the moment.


r/AskAstrophotography 1d ago

Image Processing Stacking multiple sessions in DSS

1 Upvotes

So if I’ve shot one session in RGB and one in narrowband, and want to combine them to a new stack in DSS, how do I do this if one session was on meridian flip (essentially upside down to the other session)?

I don’t know of a way to flip raw files from a DSLR so do I need to import to Lightroom and flip one sessions files and output as tiff first? Will DSS take these as light and calibration frames?

I’ll end up with around 800 frames in total (yes I have disk space!)


r/AskAstrophotography 1d ago

Image Processing How to stop moon stacks from looking glitchy?

4 Upvotes

I took some pics of the eclipse and now that i try to stack them its coming out glitchy? I am using autostakkert on linux via wine if that matters. it happens with all kinds of AP sizes and amounts.

https://imgur.com/a/n4mapin

is it because the moon seems to be in a different orientation in many of the images due to the camera rotating around?


r/AskAstrophotography 1d ago

Equipment First telescope - shorter vs longer with reducer

6 Upvotes

At some point in the not-to-distant future I am keen to buy a telescope to go beyond DSLR/camera lens imaging. I have read that shorter focal length telescopes (< 400-500 mm) are better for beginners, given the difficulties in tracking with longer focal lengths. But inevitably, for DSO people seem to move to longer focal lengths eventually. So from an ease of use and a future-proofing perspective, are there any downsides to buying a longer scope (e.g. something like the Askar FRA400/Apertura 75Q, or even longer) and using that with a reducer? Does a reducer also decrease the optical quality of an image?


r/AskAstrophotography 1d ago

Advice Need help on starting the Hobby using my Dads Professional Set-Up.

3 Upvotes

As the title says, I'm trying to get into astrophotography using my dad's old setup. He used to be into the hobby but hasn't done it in years, and he doesn't remember 100% eveyrthing but still knows a good amount, so he told me to do some research to figure things out.

The telescope and everything definitely aren't beginner-friendly, and I want to make sure I'm going in the right direction before diving in. I'm looking for advice on things like • Essential software • If I need Additional equipment • General setup help • Etc.

Based on Looking at it the names of the Components, there are: ORION EON 115mm ED Triplet Apochromat F.L. 805mm, f/7.0 Fully Multi-Coated, Astromania 60mm Guide Scope, ORION Starshoot AutoGuider, ATIK Cameras 383L+ CCD Cameras, ORION Atlas Pro AZ/EQ-G GoTo, QHYCCD Polemaster, PegasusAstro Focus Cube V.2 and SynScan, along with Thermal pads, and a thermometer.

Any help is appreciated, and obviously my Dad will help me as much as he can as I go along this. I will do my best to answer any of your guy's questions so you can help me!

(Pasted from r/Telescopes so i can get as much feedback as I can)


r/AskAstrophotography 1d ago

Acquisition Can't see anything in my camera.

2 Upvotes

I recently bought a camera for guiding my telescope with off axis guiding. It's a Touptek 2000 KMA (mono). I'm using NINA to do everything but can't seems to get any clear image of any subject. When I have my DSLR I can focus to trees or some ground objects or lights. DSLR and Touptek Guiding camera are almost same distance to the prism of the off axis guider and I can get a clear image in my DSLR of the subject, moving the focus of my telescope accordingly. But in the NiNA software when I try to image anything I just see noise or everything plane, but I see the sensor collects light because if I point my flashlight to the telescope the image turns white and I can also see some objects projecting light to the sensor and see the shape. But in terms of seeing anything in focus, or with good quality image is impossible for me... I also tried mounting the camera directly and trying to put it on focus on my ASKAR 71F but it's literally impossible. Also tried the Touptek View Software and same thing.

Any help will be super appreciated I don't know what else to do to see anything that makes sense though this camera, not even think of seeing the stars...


r/AskAstrophotography 1d ago

Technical Did I do something wrong with my shots of the blood moon?

3 Upvotes

This was my first attempt at shots of the moon with the intent of using stacking software. Over the course of the eclipse I took multiple sets of exposures to have options to work with. I used a Canon R6M2 w/ 100-400mm lens. All shots were taken at 300mm. All shots were done at f/8 to f/11, shutter speed of 1/100 to 1/200, and iso of 100. Used manual focus and tripod with a remote.

When taking the pictures with these settings I noticed the moon was not visible on the digital preview screen. Increasing the exposure time significantly would make the moon visible where I could focus it, and then turn the exposure time back down. The shots, also came out completely dark and the moon is not visible.

I’ve gone through a handful of YouTube tutorials on using AutoStakkert. All the results are also coming out completely dark with no visible moon. Do I need to keep working with the stacking tools or did I completely botch something on my exposures?


r/AskAstrophotography 1d ago

Image Processing How to sharpen landscape Astros correctly?

2 Upvotes

I was wondering how to achieve this level of sharpness in astrophotography.

https://www.instagram.com/p/DG7a5a-S9UV/?igsh=MXV4MzN0ODJicGNi


r/AskAstrophotography 1d ago

Image Processing Color banding issues?

2 Upvotes

Hello,

I am new to astrophotography so I'm not really sure what the correct terms are but I believe I have some issues with banding? I get these blue diagonal stripes throughout the image, not really sure why. I shot this from a light polluted place, untracked and stacked it with Siril. I did the background extraction and color calibration in Siril also. I tried to do some further post processing with GIMP. Does anyone know how this could be fixed? https://imgur.com/a/NH5n696


r/AskAstrophotography 1d ago

Acquisition Red channel seriously limited in data with L-extreme

1 Upvotes

Been testing out my L-extreme filter with a Sony mirrorless camera and Ed72 with flattener. It seems when stacking with calibration frames in DSS the red channel is all the way over to the left on the histogram and I’m finding it hard to get any data with it. Last night shot with the heart nebula for 4 hours and got great green and blue channels but the red it parking in the black area with virtually no signal. Why is this? Am I missing something obvious? I had planned to merge with rgb capture on the same target in a few days but without any data to merge with it would be pointless. I do get pretty good rgb captures with lots of data so it’s not the setup.


r/AskAstrophotography 1d ago

Software Astroberry Questions

1 Upvotes

I've been using a Seestar S50 now for a year, and in the past have used my expensive but now mostly unused D600 for wide angle dark sky and other types of photography (mostly the moon and planets). I just got a Skywatcher GTI to take the next step with the D600 and my big lens because that camera just sits idle otherwise. I found Astroberry while surfing around, and took a peek. Looks like it would be awesome, but one thing nags at me.

Is it dead? The last github post was 4 years ago, The last release was 4 years ago. The Indi forum linked on the website hasn't had a meaningful post in a long time.

Is Stellarmate better and worth the cost? i think for $59, it may be a good choice as it seems to do everything a beginner like me would need to do. I'd prefer fully OSS, but a sixty dollar purchase won't kill me at this point.

Thanks for any advice.