What single thing has made the biggest difference to your astrophotographs? - Forums

Topic starter

Apr 28, 2022

I use an 8" newt on a mount that just about copes with it.

I just wondered what single thing made the biggest difference to the quality of your images?

For me, so far:

* Coma corrector sorted out star shape
* Guiding camera both helped with star shape and let me take much longer exposures
* ASCOM and APT/Stellarium made it a doddle to select targets and control all my equipment from one location
* SharpCap for polar alignment
* PixInsight … need I say more
* Moving to a mono camera with filter wheel and getting into narrowband meant a lot more interesting targets
* Doing the belt drive upgrade on the mount tightened it all up
* Adding an autofocuser so that was one less thing to worry about
* Using an OAG with helical focuser rather than a separate guide scope halved my guiding errors

BUT: where now to improve further?

I've stuck with the original OTA and mount and tried to make the most of them and I just wonder what I have missed?

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Steven

Apr 28, 2022

Money

Bruce Donzanti

Apr 28, 2022

N.I.N.A.

Tom Boyd

Apr 28, 2022

Money

Bwahhhhh. As my mother use to say, "Money can't buy you everything, but there are damn few problems it doesn't help to have some."

Frank Lothar Unger

Apr 28, 2022

Dithering……..

CS Frank

Pablo Petit

Apr 28, 2022

I don't know which one to put first but definitly those two :

- Going from DeepSkyStacker/Photoshop to Pixinsight
- From DSLR or uncooled Mono to cooled mono

Jan Porter

Apr 28, 2022

Celestron OAG on my 9.25…gamechanger.

Jan

Boyan Stiliyanov

Apr 28, 2022

I see most people are focused on gear, and if you're an advanced APer it might be important to you.
For some beginners gear might not be all that crucial for making a better image.
Sometimes spending 500$ on a OTA isn't that much better if you live in bortle 8.
Maybe 500$ could be used for a few nights in remote dark place.

This could apply to everything. Maybe you're very shy and have anxiety going outside, so
working on your social skills could change your whole Astrophotography future.

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David Moore

Apr 28, 2022 · Edited: Apr 28, 2022

Apart from some of what's been stated already. Controlling my laptop outside from my workstation upstairs. It has made the whole experience more enjoyable and I am much more willing to image through the night checking progress in the study instead of going outside.

Stjepan Prugovečki

Apr 28, 2022 · Edited: Apr 28, 2022

For me:
- Narrowband filters as I am in Bortle 5 or worse most of the time

kuechlew

Apr 28, 2022

Since you asked for a single thing:

Traveling with a friend to a Bortle 3-4 area in the vicinity of my home town in order to watch the Perseid meteor shower. It got me think about getting started with astro photography at all.

Afterwards as a consequence of the experience: Seriously scouting for safe and accessible Bortle 5 zones in the outskirts of my home town.

In a welcome coincidence my retirement gave me the chance to spend my nights gazing at stars in awe and get started with AP. It literally changed my life …

Clear skies
Wolfgang

Robert Winslow

Apr 28, 2022

Cold hard cash, and a wife that as allowed this. Seriously, guiding.

James

Apr 28, 2022

Autofocus.

Getting autofocus on my beginner rig was the final piece I needed to allow my rig to run all night unattended.

Running all night.. on every clear night means more integration time.

Eddie Bagwell

Apr 28, 2022

Here are my top 3 in order of Best Game Changer:

1 Plate Solving ( I literally cried with joy the first time I used this)
2 PixInsight
3 Electronic Auto Focuser

Erlend Langsrud

Apr 28, 2022

The biggest single step was to modify my dslr.

Or more generally speeking: use cameras which are sensitive to Ha.

Leon C Salcedo

Apr 28, 2022

Narrowband filter

Bray Falls

Apr 28, 2022

Time under dark skies free of light pollution with good seeing!

Matthew Proulx

Apr 29, 2022

Moving from bortle 5 to 2.

Doug Gray

Apr 29, 2022

Automation

Now automation isn't actually one thing, it's a lot of little things. Each little thing I could find to automate saved a little time and let me capture more data with less effort. When I first started out, I would lug my equipment outside and spend 15-20 minutes getting setup, capture an hour or two of data, then 5-10 minutes getting it all back inside and transfering the data to my laptop. Now I spend 1 minute removing a cover and hitting the power button, 5-10 minutes configuring a plan for the night, and then 5 minutes in the morning to put the cover back and sync data to the laptop. As a result, I've gone from agonizing about throwing out even a few frames of mediocre data when stacking, to having a backlog of almost 300h of data to process and being able to select only the best 50-75% of frames to stack for each project.

Various things that have helped automation the most so far:
* ASIAIR - The software on the magic red box just keeps getting better. Plan mode was a game changer. It unlocked targets that I would have had to wake up at 3am to capture.
* ZWO EAF - Autofocus is a prerequisite for making full use of plan mode. Especially when using a mono camera.
* Telegizmo 365 telescope cover - Being able to leave the scope setup outside (almost) all year saves a few minutes of polar alignment each night.
* Python scripts running in a Jupyter notebook - I used to spend lots of time copying files one folder at a time and manually estimating how many hours I had for each project. Now I run a script which finds which files are new, copies them to my laptop, and generates a report summarizing the time with each filter on each target.

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Steve Spring

Apr 29, 2022

I second automation as a single item which is impossible to separate into its component parts. Put together they create a repeatable process.

On top of that, increasing my subs from 120sec to 300sec has made a leap for me. I'm not saying that all skies or targets will permit it. However, the SNR just makes processing so much more enjoyable and also reduces processing time.

Not necessarily for everyone but I was getting too hooked up on optimum exposure time and keeping them short.

I tried it and loved it

Steve Spring

Apr 29, 2022 · Edited: Apr 29, 2022

David Nozadze

Apr 29, 2022

I am planning to make my next big investment into high-end filters. Astrodon, or Chroma. As far as I can see in other astrophotographers' works, these are absolutely must-have to achieve truly good image quality.

The next thing is to have a scope with 10" or wider aperture some day. But for that I will need to buy a bigger house under darker skies first

Mossyback

Apr 29, 2022

Purchasing TheSkyFusion and running my observatory remotely from the house. I no longer freeze my butt off in the winter and don’t have to make blood donations to mosquitoes in the summer.

Hank

Scott Badger

Apr 29, 2022

A better mount.

Celestron CGEM to an Ioptron CEM70. The Celestron is a good observing mount, but due to the backlash in particular, not so much for AP. Ironically, it worked pretty well without guiding where the BL wasn't a factor…. The Ioptron CEM70 is probably best in class and one of the first of a new wave (hopefully) of mounts designed with AP in mind; onboard power and USB ports, minicomputer dock etc.

Cheers,
Scott

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dnnsrttn

Apr 29, 2022

Moving from a DSLR to a cooled ap-dedicated camera. DSLR still in use sometimes, but mostly on widefield/ milkyway.