Astrophotography Beginner

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Alfie Ratty avatar

Hi, I’ve recently began my astrophotography journey by purchasing the following setup:

Askar71f

Sky Adventurer GTI

Altair Hypercam585C

Gemini EAF

MeLE Quieter 2Q

Svbony 220 filter

ASI120mm Mini camera

Svbony 30mm guide scope.

What else do you guys recommend and are there any great youtube channels to watch where I can learn and develop work flow.

Thanks!

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TiffsAndAstro avatar

I think you are asking a lot of your gti

I used a similar scope with a 533 and my GTi and got decent ish results.

Give it a go and see how you do. I would keep your subs to 120 sec max.

Some ok examples of what you can do, here, but beware you will have a smaller fov

your stars will have less blue halos though :)

📷 17811083354735622066364829527053.jpg📷 178110838100997058006154171972.jpg178110838100997058006154171972.jpg📷 1781108511294436264746439620815.jpg1781108511294436264746439620815.jpg

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Tony Gondola avatar

I would agree with keeping your exposures on the short side. I rarely go beyond 60 sec. with my 585. The mount will be the weak link in all this so keeping it short with some reasonable culling will help.

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Eric Gagné avatar

I agree with the above. I suggest you weigh your rig and see how it compares to the 11lbs limit of your mount.

Then try it and see what kind of guiding you can get. Take the time to balance things and get a near perfect polar alignment.

If PA is average your guiding will be too.

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alpheratz06 avatar

The three most important components for astrophotography are :

  • The mount

  • The mount

  • And the mount

The star adventurer, imha, is not fit for such optics.

TiffsAndAstro avatar

alpheratz06 · Jun 10, 2026, 06:41 PM

The three most important components for astrophotography are :

  • The mount

  • The mount

  • And the mount

The star adventurer, imha, is not fit for such optics.

It's definitely not the best mount, but with a similar payload mine did roughly 0.8 to 1.5 arc seconds with round stars. Had to throw away quite a few subs though :(

My pixel scale was about 2 arc seconds though, his will be maybe 1.2, so likely have to throw away many subs too :(

Still, we use what we have :)

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Robert Nicholson avatar

Hi Alfie,

You have enough equipment there to start collecting image data. I suggest the next area for you to focus on is getting Pixinsight and learning how to use it. The learning curve can be steep, but there are plenty of youtube videos out there to learn from. Some that I have found helpful include:

  • Introduction to Pixinsight - series of videos produced by the Pixinsight team

  • Adam Block’s videos

  • Peter Zelinka

  • AstroBackyard – Trevor Jones

  • Sky Story

There are lots of others, I am sure you will find your favorites. For youtube videos keep an eye on how recent the material is, processing tools and techniques are constantly changing.

Kind regards,

Bob

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