Seeking advice on next steps in my astrophotography journey - Forums

Topic starter

New contributor

6 days ago

I’d really appreciate your views on the next steps on my Astrophotography journey.

Having been doing this amazing and absorbing hobby now for just under two years, I know that my journey has progressed from bafflement with how to use the equipment and take accurate subs, through the joy of a successful nights planning and acquisition, to the ongoing head banging frustration with post processing.

My base rig is;

AM3 Mount, Redcat 51 WIFD, ASI585 MC Pro, ASIAir Plus

Later I added a ZWO EAF and more recently a ZWO Manual filter drawer with the addition of an Optolong L-Enhance, to eliminate the neighbours security and a single street light, besides those, I’m in a UK Bortle 4 area.

Typically I’m getting 0.5” - 1” guiding, taking 3-4 hours worth of light frames per session, with usually a couple of sessions per target over multiple days. Every session ends with 20-30 Flats & the same number Bias frames.

Post processing started with a combination of APP for stacking and Affinity Photo 2 using James Ritson’s Astro macro’s, but I have very recently moved to PixInsight with the free scripts and processes available as well as Russell Cronan’s X suite, and acknowledge I am starting the post processing journey afresh from there, but am on the steep learning curve using Youtube and Max Dobres “Pixinsight Workflows” book as reference.

Where I’m starting to see my frustration is in the lack of detail and sharpness within the Nebula that I’m getting in my final images, when looking at what many others are achieving on the same targets. I’m thinking this could be down to 2 possible things in my view;

Firstly my rig is far more capable than I’m getting and my acquisition and post processing techniques are not fine tuned enough (but you guys are free to critique my small number of images which catalogue my journey) - or maybe it’s that and just much more time on a target is needed.
Or secondly, I have reached the limit of detail and sharpness of images my rig’s resolution will achieve and whilst further post processing practice, knowledge and time on target will help a bit, its fundamentally about the rig’s capability.

If I were to upgrade, which would definitely need “executive” spouse approval - I would look over time to swap to a Redcat 71WIFD with an AS2600MC Pro, so my question is this;

“Should I stick with the rig resolution I’ve got and improved acquisition techniques, time on target and post processing should result in improved detail and sharpness of images or should I look to progressively get a better rig whilst continuing my imaging and post processing journey”

Does anybody have any experience of their own journey from my current rig to one with a Redcat 71 & 2600MC Pro, and what difference did you see?

Thanks in advance.

andrea tasselli

Frequent contributor

6 days ago

Your issue n.1, apart from the processing which I think still needs significant improvements, is that you're wasting photons. 1.2"/px with such a tiny refractor is exceedingly wasteful in my book, even in B4 skies (I'm in B7 skies) and that is reflected in the outcome. Moving to a camera with larger pixels (and better dynamics) such as the IMX533 or IMX571 should give you a major boost in the SNR area leading to better quality and sharpness overall (all other things being equal). If you want to go up in image scale then consider coupling it with a 4" refractor or a 6" reflector.

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Jim Bishop

6 days ago

Note, I have been doing this for about as much time as you have. So take this with some measure of doubt. I am still learning too.

First, you should be able to get better guidance with your AM3. I have the same mount and I routinely get better guidance in my B7 front yard. See this link for information on tuning your guidance. Better guidance will help some (very marginal) amount. Your guidance isn’t bad at all, it just could be a little better.

Second, search astrobin for images using your equipment. Find something you really like and compare their capture time to theirs. There is a physical limit of what you can do with your equipment, but more time generally gives better definition. Narrower filters can help some too. But absolutely make sure your comparing apples to apples if you think something is demonstrating you can do better. There are a lot of variables and it takes time to understand how they impact what you’re doing.

Lastly, don’t be too hard on yourself. This is a hobby with a steep learning curve. Seek out a local group if you can. I find people in this hobby very willing to share and help you grow in it. Keep in mind, this is art as much as it is science. If it looks good and makes people say “WOW!” I wager it was a good process no matter what the science might say.

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Steve Davies

Topic starter

New contributor

6 days ago

Hi Andrea, firstly thanks for the feedback, very much appreciated & I do recognise I still have a long way to go on the processing side. I hadn’t thought about a move to the 533 or 571 sensor, I had heard much about the 533 but at the time of buying my rig the 585 seemed to be the new budget friendly OSC kid on the block. I will certainly investigate. The move to a much larger refractor would need an investment in new mount which would put my budget under serious strain! So for now I’ll focus on the processing and a possible move to another camera - thanks again.

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David Foust

6 days ago

If my interpretation of what you mean by sharpness is that you want to be able to resolve more detail in your images, then I think the metric you may want to consider is your pixel scale. Pixel scale is essentially how much of the sky your telescope can resolve per pixel on your camera. You can get a quick pixel scale calculation by entering your telescope and camera in the FOV calculator at the Atronomy.tools website.

With your current setup of the 585mc’s 2.9 micron pixels and the Redcat 51’s 250mm focal length, you're at about 2.4” per pixel.

Stepping up to the 2600mc with its larger 3.76 micron pixels and the Redcat 71’s 348mm focal length, you'll be at about 2.2” per pixel.

In short, I don't think you would notice much difference in the details between the two setups, when comparing the 585mc and Redcat 51 with a 2600mc and Redcat 71. If you used your 585mc with the redcat 71, you'd be at about 1.7” per pixel which may be more noticable. You will certainly notice the larger field of view with the 2600mc compared to the 585 though!

There are some other factors that impact your ability to capture detail. First and foremost, of course, are your local sky and seeing conditions. Greater light pollution and poor seeing will affect how much detail you can effectively resolve, regardless of the capability of your equipment.

However, getting the most out of your equipment and it's capabilities are within your control. For instance, you may see something called the Rayleigh Limit or Dawes Limit as a spec on a telescope. Astronomy.tools will show you the Dawes Limit for your scope. This is a metric that effectively indicates the maximum resolution you could achieve with the optics in the telescope itself. It's generally tied to the telescope’s aperture. Larger aperture means you can resolve more detail (at least up until the point where your environmental conditions may limit it, such as seeing and other factors). Additionally, guiding becomes more critical with better resolution setups. So as you pixel scale decreases, it means you will need consistently better guiding to achieve the resolution your optical system is capable of.

I'm sure someone else on here knows better than I do, but this is the gist of my understanding as I've explored this topic as well. Hope this helps!

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andrea tasselli

Frequent contributor

6 days ago

Steve Davies:
Hi Andrea, firstly thanks for the feedback, very much appreciated & I do recognise I still have a long way to go on the processing side. I hadn’t thought about a move to the 533 or 571 sensor, I had heard much about the 533 but at the time of buying my rig the 585 seemed to be the new budget friendly OSC kid on the block. I will certainly investigate. The move to a much larger refractor would need an investment in new mount which would put my budget under serious strain! So for now I’ll focus on the processing and a possible move to another camera - thanks again.

Hi Steve,

Even leaving everything as is you'd need to improve your baseline SNR so consider doubling your target's exposure for a start. If the wallet allows you can get an IMX533 based sensor for cheap these days so maybe this would be a potential next move which alone would improve your SNR by 70% for the same amount of time under the stars.

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Steve Davies

Topic starter

New contributor

6 days ago

Jim Bishop · Feb 5, 2026 at 03:33 PM
Note, I have been doing this for about as much time as you have. So take this with some measure of doubt. I am still learning too.
First, you should be able to get better guidance with your AM3. I have the same mount and I routinely get better guidance in my B7 front yard. See this link for information on tuning your guidance. Better guidance will help some (very marginal) amount. Your guidance isn’t bad at all, it just could be a little better.
Second, search astrobin for images using your equipment. Find something you really like and compare their capture time to theirs. There is a physical limit of what you can do with your equipment, but more time generally gives better definition. Narrower filters can help some too. But absolutely make sure your comparing apples to apples if you think something is demonstrating you can do better. There are a lot of variables and it takes time to understand how they impact what you’re doing.
Lastly, don’t be too hard on yourself. This is a hobby with a steep learning curve. Seek out a local group if you can. I find people in this hobby very willing to share and help you grow in it. Keep in mind, this is art as much as it is science. If it looks good and makes people say “WOW!” I wager it was a good process no matter what the science might say.

Hi Jim, great feedback - thanks

I had been wondering whether my guiding was accurate enough, when I first started I was getting down to about 0.35”, then did the unthinkable & started to “mess about” with the numbers in the ASIAir (doh!). Time to revisit with you link I think.

I am seeing that perhaps a combination of more time on target & like for like comparisons maybe better for my sanity here, as you can see I sense this is one of those hobbies that drives people of a perfectionist nature to their wits ends.

Thanks again for your feedback.

Jim Bishop

6 days ago

Steve Davies · Feb 5, 2026, 03:56 PM
I am seeing that perhaps a combination of more time on target & like for like comparisons maybe better for my sanity here, as you can see I sense this is one of those hobbies that drives people of a perfectionist nature to their wits ends.
Thanks again for your feedback.

It absolutely is. You can ask my mates. I am constantly on them about how much is enough. There has to be a way to calculate the mathematical limit to what we are doing and compare that to where we are. This way, we could empirically tell when we have reached the point of diminishing returns. Turns out, the answer is always poor on more time and we will know when we get there. I find that maddening.

Tony Gondola

Frequent contributor

6 days ago

If you’re happy with the field of view there’s nothing wrong with your choice of the 585. But, you are under-sampling a lot or a little depending on the seeing so you are throwing away some detail right there, hard to avoid though at such a short focal length. The small pixels of the 585 are helping but you’re still leaving possible resolution on the table. On thing that might help is to apply 2x drizzling to your stacking/processing flow. There’s also a difference between perceived “resolution” and sharpness and actual resolution. If you are comparing images taken with a 8mp chip and a 26mp chip, the larger chip will always give the impression of a sharper, detailed and smoother image simply because you will enlarge it a lot less to fill your screen. To really compare you have crop the image from the larger camera down to the same pixel count as the smaller. If you do that you might find that the perceived resolution difference isn’t as much as you imagined.

All that said, the way to increase actual resolution is to increase aperture and and select a focal length and pixel size that’s not under-sampling. IMO, a bit of over-sampling is better then under, just keep in mind that it’s very seeing dependent.

These two calculators will help a lot in sorting all that out:

https://astronomy.tools/calculators/ccd_suitability

https://www.rc-astro.com/mtf-analyzer/

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Steve Davies

Topic starter

New contributor

6 days ago

David Foust · Feb 5, 2026 at 03:37 PM
If my interpretation of what you mean by sharpness is that you want to be able to resolve more detail in your images, then I think the metric you may want to consider is your pixel scale. Pixel scale is essentially how much of the sky your telescope can resolve per pixel on your camera. You can get a quick pixel scale calculation by entering your telescope and camera in the FOV calculator at the Atronomy.tools website.
With your current setup of the 585mc’s 2.9 micron pixels and the Redcat 51’s 250mm focal length, you're at about 2.4” per pixel.
Stepping up to the 2600mc with its larger 3.76 micron pixels and the Redcat 71’s 348mm focal length, you'll be at about 2.2” per pixel.
In short, I don't think you would notice much difference in the details between the two setups, when comparing the 585mc and Redcat 51 with a 2600mc and Redcat 71. If you used your 585mc with the redcat 71, you'd be at about 1.7” per pixel which may be more noticable. You will certainly notice the larger field of view with the 2600mc compared to the 585 though!
There are some other factors that impact your ability to capture detail. First and foremost, of course, are your local sky and seeing conditions. Greater light pollution and poor seeing will affect how much detail you can effectively resolve, regardless of the capability of your equipment.
However, getting the most out of your equipment and it's capabilities are within your control. For instance, you may see something called the Rayleigh Limit or Dawes Limit as a spec on a telescope. Astronomy.tools will show you the Dawes Limit for your scope. This is a metric that effectively indicates the maximum resolution you could achieve with the optics in the telescope itself. It's generally tied to the telescope’s aperture. Larger aperture means you can resolve more detail (at least up until the point where your environmental conditions may limit it, such as seeing and other factors). Additionally, guiding becomes more critical with better resolution setups. So as you pixel scale decreases, it means you will need consistently better guiding to achieve the resolution your optical system is capable of.
I'm sure someone else on here knows better than I do, but this is the gist of my understanding as I've explored this topic as well. Hope this helps!

Hi David - thank you for your feedback - it’s greatly appreciated.

There are so many variables that people are highlighting from this post that it is worth considering all, and not just jumping to a “better rig” which I may be guilty of. The FOV calculations I had not considered, but guiding accuracy & time on target are certainly coming up - certainly your FOV calculations would point to a course of action that suggests a lower resolution and scope first rather than camera.

Thanks again.

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Steve Davies

Topic starter

New contributor

6 days ago

Tony Gondola · Feb 5, 2026 at 04:08 PM
If you’re happy with the field of view there’s nothing wrong with your choice of the 585. But, you are under-sampling a lot or a little depending on the seeing so you are throwing away some detail right there, hard to avoid though at such a short focal length. The small pixels of the 585 are helping but you’re still leaving possible resolution on the table. On thing that might help is to apply 2x drizzling to your stacking/processing flow. There’s also a difference between perceived “resolution” and sharpness and actual resolution. If you are comparing images taken with a 8mp chip and a 26mp chip, the larger chip will always give the impression of a sharper, detailed and smoother image simply because you will enlarge it a lot less to fill your screen. To really compare you have crop the image from the larger camera down to the same pixel count as the smaller. If you do that you might find that the perceived resolution difference isn’t as much as you imagined.
All that said, the way to increase actual resolution is to increase aperture and and select a focal length and pixel size that’s not under-sampling. IMO, a bit of over-sampling is better then under, just keep in mind that it’s very seeing dependent.
These two calculators will help a lot in sorting all that out:
https://astronomy.tools/calculators/ccd_suitability
https://www.rc-astro.com/mtf-analyzer/

Hi Tony - thanks for the feedback, another angle that I also need to consider to the ones that have also replied. I knew that seeing would have an impact on my guiding, but trying to get my head around your comments on seeing in relation to focal length - are you saying that seeing has a bigger like for like impact on shorter focal length scopes that longer ones?

Drizzling is something I have only just come across in PixInsight & saw a forum comment on it - so that’s another thing to really look into (I did apply this to my last few images)

Finally on the over-under sampling, one of the reasons I saw the R71 & 2600MC Pro as a “good” combo is that it looked to hit the sweet spot in astronomy.tools, from that perspective, but will also now consider that in the context of resolution per pixel where it is only slightly better than the R51 & 585 combo.

Thanks again.

David Foust

6 days ago

As others pointed out higher SNR can also bring out more detail, in so far as you can push the data a little bit more with processing. This is why imaging with a hyperstar or a RASA is so appealing… the fast focal ratio at f/2 gathers lots of photons in a short period of time, resulting in overall higher SNR…

Dr.. Robin Glover has a fantastic presentation about exposure times and SNR and so on. It’s very much worth the watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RH93UvP358

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Tony Gondola

Frequent contributor

6 days ago

Steve Davies · Feb 5, 2026, 04:25 PM
are you saying that seeing has a bigger like for like impact on shorter focal length scopes that longer ones?

No, just the opposite, the longer your focal length, the more seeing will effect you. The shorter your focal length, the less it will effect you. That’s part of the reason small wide field refractors like yours are so popular. Seeing has to be really bad to degrade the image at 250mm. With a larger aperture and longer focal length you have greater potential resolution at the cost of greater sensitivity to seeing.

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alpheratz06

6 days ago

Personally I would “pump up” the focal distance to 80/400 or so. Consider the maximum load of the M3 , add a CW for balancing.

Consider buying a second end refractor. I own 4 of them, I only buy the smallest one as new. There are many instruments idling on shelves for many reasons : giving them a second life is very positive.

I don’t know where you are living, but I’m pretty sure second end should work.

Be careful, ask questions, ask for pictures, ask for instrument history and possible mishaps. Call vendors and make your own opinion, and moreover, try to see the stuff before buying it, at least when you actually buy it.

Clear skies

Steve Davies

Topic starter

New contributor

6 days ago

Tony Gondola · Feb 5, 2026 at 04:39 PM
Steve Davies · Feb 5, 2026, 04:25 PM
are you saying that seeing has a bigger like for like impact on shorter focal length scopes that longer ones?
No, just the opposite, the longer your focal length, the more seeing will effect you. The shorter your focal length, the less it will effect you. That’s part of the reason small wide field refractors like yours are so popular. Seeing has to be really bad to degrade the image at 250mm. With a larger aperture and longer focal length you have greater potential resolution at the cost of greater sensitivity to seeing.

Thanks for clarifying Tony

Steve Davies

Topic starter

New contributor

6 days ago

David Foust · Feb 5, 2026 at 04:35 PM
As others pointed out higher SNR can also bring out more detail, in so far as you can push the data a little bit more with processing. This is why imaging with a hyperstar or a RASA is so appealing… the fast focal ratio at f/2 gathers lots of photons in a short period of time, resulting in overall higher SNR…
Dr.. Robin Glover has a fantastic presentation about exposure times and SNR and so on. It’s very much worth the watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RH93UvP358

Thanks David - I’ll look at the link - this has been a really humbling post from my perspective - in that if I reinforce the basics - more time on target, improved guidance, look at my existing camera/scope fov & under/over sampling combination & focus on improving my post processing - then I won’t suffer from being sucked into the “its all about the rig” argument - thanks again.

Steve Davies

Topic starter

New contributor

6 days ago

alpheratz06 · Feb 5, 2026 at 04:42 PM
Personally I would “pump up” the focal distance to 80/400 or so. Consider the maximum load of the M3 , add a CW for balancing.
Consider buying a second end refractor. I own 4 of them, I only buy the smallest one as new. There are many instruments idling on shelves for many reasons : giving them a second life is very positive.
I don’t know where you are living, but I’m pretty sure second end should work.
Be careful, ask questions, ask for pictures, ask for instrument history and possible mishaps. Call vendors and make your own opinion, and moreover, try to see the stuff before buying it, at least when you actually buy it.
Clear skies

Thanks for the feedback - I can already see the journey that I believe I need to go through, which is more/better basics of acquisition & processing and then start the upgrade path from which your advice is sound & useful - thanks again.

alpheratz06

6 days ago

Typo : I wrote “second end” while thinking “second hand”. Sorry for that .

Alessio Pariani

5 days ago

Steve Davies · Feb 5, 2026, 03:56 PM
Jim Bishop · Feb 5, 2026 at 03:33 PM
[…]
First, you should be able to get better guidance with your AM3. I have the same mount and I routinely get better guidance in my B7 front yard. See this link for information on tuning your guidance. Better guidance will help some (very marginal) amount. Your guidance isn’t bad at all, it just could be a little better.
[…]
[…]
I had been wondering whether my guiding was accurate enough, when I first started I was getting down to about 0.35”, then did the unthinkable & started to “mess about” with the numbers in the ASIAir (doh!). Time to revisit with you link I think.
[…]

The point is: does he need to struggle with this? The easy answer is NO. The sophisticated answer is: since his rig sampling capacity is 2,4”/pixel, any guide mean value <2,4” is good, no matter if it’s 2,3” or 1” or 0,05”. Every detail, tiny star or tight H-alpha filament will still be gathered by the same pixel an there is no point in exceeding in guide precision.

Well, probably if your mean value is 2,3” it means that you also have higher values that may smudge things, but he is 0,95-1”, so I wouldn’t care

To have a sensible improvement in sharpness of details, the only way is to reduce your sampling capacity, but as someone already said, the RedCat 71 will move from 2,4” to 2,2”/pixel which is not that much… at least look for something around 500mm of FL to halve the sampling ratio, but remember how this will affect your FOV (double the focal length and you will frame a quarter of the sky! Are you ready to mosaic? It’s not that hard in postproduction, but requires 4x time!). I’m missing shooting with my 200mm: details @580mm are wonderful, but I need 3×2 mosaic to cover the same area!

Your mount can support up to 13kg, so you are allowed to look at 100mm/4” refractors without problems, you just need to balance it really well. I’m using a CEM25 (max 12kg) with a 13kg rig since 2018 (and it was 2nd hand!) with guiding values always <1”.

Actually, looking at your photos, what I see isn’t a lacking of sharpness in details (maybe BlurX is saving you, but the result is the only thing that matters). All your images suffer of a too high contrast that clips too much shadows. The only different image is the Horse Head nebula which has the exact opposite problem. This may be due to the 12bit camera that gives you too little range of processing, but I’ve never had one…

What you can do is share your files to see what other can achieve with the same data and decide by yourself in which direction you want to move.

Here is forecasted another 5-6 days of rain, so I’m available 😉

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Clayton Haynes

New contributor

5 days ago

Disclaimer: I’m pretty new to all this too.

I’ve browsed the other comments and I came away with a few things I’d like to share.

Firstly, size isn’t everything. Well, objective diameter is, but you know what they say, “It’s not how big it is. It’s how you use it”. I think you’ll get far more satisfaction out of making the best images you can from the gear you have instead of going after bigger gear. Keep in mind that you’ll still have the same capture and processing techniques, except with a bigger scope. I would say that will just make matters worse. From a quality perspective there’s nothing wrong with the choices you’ve made for scope and camera. One thing is obvious though, and others have mentioned it. You are undersampled. But with the limited pixel size choices we have with the cameras on the market today just about everyone is undersampled with smaller scopes. Including me, with my 533MC Pro. What I do about that is to dither my subframes and apply a 2x drizzle to the image. That goes a very long way to addressing the undersampling, and it gives you a bigger image to play with, and takes the 8-bit look out of your stars.

The second thing, after browsing your images, is black point. You are making the background too dark, and along with that losing data and “realness” from your images. Try being less aggressive in that regard. The stars will look less like dots in a void, and you’ll come away with a sense that you’re observing a real night sky.

Thing number three is tracking, since many have talked about it. With your setup you really don’t need to worry about it. You’re tracking good enough to make basically no difference to your images. Going after a larger scope will impact this negatively. Another reason not to do that. On a good night my tracking is around 0.5”, and on a bad one it gets close to 1”. One of my scopes is a 412mm, and my images aren’t suffering at all. The numbers you’re getting will be even less visible with your Redcat. So don’t let it get out of hand but don’t worry about it either.

And lastly, make use of RC Astro’s AI tools, but don’t overuse them. BlurXterminator is particularly good at “sharpening” your image without introducing artifacts that aren’t real.

Oh, and one last thing. Integration time. Do lots of it!

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Alessio Pariani

5 days ago

Clayton Haynes · Feb 6, 2026, 09:39 AM
Disclaimer: I’m pretty new to all this too.

Maybe yes, but wiser than many! 👍️

Clayton Haynes

New contributor

5 days ago

Maybe yes, but wiser than many! 👍️

I learn something new with every image I make, and at the rate I’m going I’ll be lucky to learn 1% of what there is to know about this hobby in a lifetime. It’s extraordinary how much there is to it.

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Michael Cory

5 days ago

Adding the EAF had to be one of the best things you did towards improving your subs.

Since you are starting to use PixInsight may I suggest you look at some of AdamBlock’s YouTube videos as well (you mentioned a few other excellent resources in one of your comments).

You will be comfortable with PixInsight in no time. Personally I enjoy the image processing the most.

Spending more time on target will result in sharper images, but getting subs on nights with good seeing is especially important.

I think the RedCat 51 is an excellent refractor… So I say stick with it for a while!

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Dean Ostergaard

5 days ago

Steve,

I spent some time looking through your AstroBin gallery, and you should feel really good about the results you’re getting. Your stars are well controlled, your framing is excellent for the Redcat 51, and your images are clean and balanced. Nothing there suggests any fundamental problems with your mount, guiding, or acquisition — you’re clearly doing a lot right.

I also agree with the feedback you’ve received about processing, especially around black point and contrast. It looks like there may still be faint structure in your data that could be preserved with slightly gentler shadow handling. As you continue gaining experience with PixInsight, I think you’ll be able to extract more from the data you’re already capturing.

That said, there is also a real optical limitation to keep in mind. The Redcat 51 is an excellent widefield scope, but at 250 mm focal length and 51 mm aperture, it simply won’t resolve the same fine filamentary detail as longer focal length, larger aperture systems. Moving to a Redcat 71 would help somewhat, but it’s still a relatively modest increase in resolving power — not a dramatic jump.

One helpful exercise is to compare your results specifically to other Redcat 51 images on AstroBin. When you compare like-for-like equipment, you may find your results are already very much in line with what that class of scope can achieve.

You’re in a great position — continued processing refinement and integration time will help, and if your long-term goal is finer structural detail, that’s where a more substantial increase in aperture and focal length eventually makes the biggest difference.

Clear and Dark skies!

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Steve Davies

Topic starter

New contributor

5 days ago

Clayton Haynes · Feb 6, 2026 at 09:39 AM
Disclaimer: I’m pretty new to all this too.

I’ve browsed the other comments and I came away with a few things I’d like to share.

Firstly, size isn’t everything. Well, objective diameter is, but you know what they say, “It’s not how big it is. It’s how you use it”. I think you’ll get far more satisfaction out of making the best images you can from the gear you have instead of going after bigger gear. Keep in mind that you’ll still have the same capture and processing techniques, except with a bigger scope. I would say that will just make matters worse. From a quality perspective there’s nothing wrong with the choices you’ve made for scope and camera. One thing is obvious though, and others have mentioned it. You are undersampled. But with the limited pixel size choices we have with the cameras on the market today just about everyone is undersampled with smaller scopes. Including me, with my 533MC Pro. What I do about that is to dither my subframes and apply a 2x drizzle to the image. That goes a very long way to addressing the undersampling, and it gives you a bigger image to play with, and takes the 8-bit look out of your stars.

The second thing, after browsing your images, is black point. You are making the background too dark, and along with that losing data and “realness” from your images. Try being less aggressive in that regard. The stars will look less like dots in a void, and you’ll come away with a sense that you’re observing a real night sky.

Thing number three is tracking, since many have talked about it. With your setup you really don’t need to worry about it. You’re tracking good enough to make basically no difference to your images. Going after a larger scope will impact this negatively. Another reason not to do that. On a good night my tracking is around 0.5”, and on a bad one it gets close to 1”. One of my scopes is a 412mm, and my images aren’t suffering at all. The numbers you’re getting will be even less visible with your Redcat. So don’t let it get out of hand but don’t worry about it either.

And lastly, make use of RC Astro’s AI tools, but don’t overuse them. BlurXterminator is particularly good at “sharpening” your image without introducing artifacts that aren’t real.

Oh, and one last thing. Integration time. Do lots of it!

Hi Clayton, really great feedback - thank you really appreciate it.

I’m glad I’ve started this topic as it’s really given me confidence that I’m actually going in the right direction, albeit I’ve probably been a bit too ambitious without necessarily putting in the grunt work, particularly on the processing side, but I have to say I am enjoying the PixInsight journey more than when I started with APP & Affinity.

On your specific points, from the replies to my post, I’m now more than comfortable that I have a decent rig, and my results will only get better with more time on target and more time on the processing side. On your point about the black point, this is great advice in terms of loosing data, I think much of this is about becoming familiar with both the terminology of post processing (what scripts & processes do what to my image) and also what good looks like from other more experienced users with a similar rig on Astrobin’s gallery.

As for guiding, I suspected my numbers were “good enough” for my set-up, but I think not only does that not account for the occasional “jump” in the guide figures, but I also need to get the guiding down through a complete understanding of the ASI Air’s control numbers, such that I can get them down for when I do eventually upgrade my rig when it will be imperative to do so.

Once again thanks for your feedback. Steve