After hours of learning and frustration (I am sure we have all been there) I finally managed to acquire my first ever subs on Saturday night. Equipment list below. Tracking was not perfect and I know I can do much better in that department. Focus could also be better however seeing conditions were not exceptionally good which did not help.
Image has been very quickly processes in GIMP. I have no idea what I am doing with processing (that is the next thing to learn LOL). Also intend to get Adobe Creative Cloud so not wanting to invest time in learning too much in GIMP.
Not a perfect result but happy for a first attempt.
24 x 180 second subs. Calibrated with Flats, Dark Flats and Darks. Taken from my backyard (Outer Adelaide Suburbs, Bortle 5).
Explore Scientific ED80
ZWO 183MC Pro
Optolong L-Enhance
NEQ6 Pro (belt modded)
50mm Guidescope
ZWO 290mm Guide Camera
Nice work Nick.
Spend a little money and get StarTools that with Gimp will take you a long way.
Re tracking while you try to get polar sorted and things just dont seem to work...adjust exposure time down until round stars..before I got Pole master polar it was a little hit and miss because it was always a fresh set up so I would just select an exposure that didn't show how poor polar was aligned and then just get heaps..I was stacking 500 old 30 second subs today and it works but takes a long time to stack.
Please keep posting your results but it looks as if you are really on your way...
Alex
Top effort Nick . M20 was also my first half successful attempt of getting an image with colour . The 80mm scope is an excellent scope to learn with .I would recommend purchasing a Bahtinov mask to help you with focus (Orion pinpoint) , if you don't already have one. Polar alignment can be a mission at first I can remember the joys when I had round stars at 60sec than a week later 180 sec . Then I purchased a zwo asi air now takes me around five minutes to do polar alignment now.
