[bluescope]

Originally Posted by Tandum

I edited my post to newt, I didn't realise they made such a big one till I looked it up.

RE the FOV difference, I don't really understand this but the really crap images I have from my DSI camera are way narrower than this canon. I just thought the sensor was smaller and didn't see as much. I'll hit up my brother in law the optician for info on the weekend

I got 5 hours worth of M20 here -> http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/s...ad.php?t=33082 but it didn't impress me at all. The gradient was really hard to remove, see the red haze to the lower left. I now have a CLS filter installed and I do have a BCF filter coming from honkers for the camera with a view to getting a HA component to these images.

I am guiding 17.5Kgs on that HEQ5pro. I have an eq6 on order

No worries about the newt reference Robin. The chip in the SBIG is considerably smaller than a canon 1600x1200, same size pixels though ... you can find details here :
http://sbig.com/sbwhtmls/online.htm

Another thing that helps with the SBIG is the cooling .... up to 30 degrees below ambient with fan and a bit more with water, although I haven't used water yet, I may next summer.

I bought GradientXTerminator to deal with sky gradients US$49.95 from Russel Croman's site :
http://www.rc-astro.com/resources/GradientXTerminator/
I just looked at your M20 images I don't know what's going on with your colours there ... the red area may be amp noise. DSLR's have the signals amplified whereas astro ccd's don't .... but I'm no expert mate !

You should find the EQ6 handles your gear better. My scope weighs in at 14.6kg plus probably another 1.7kg for camera and mpcc, electric focuser etc. They are a very sturdy mount .... enjoy.