Do you think, the ZWO OAG can work with a ASI120MM Mini on my ASKAR 103 with 700mm??

Good video. Would be interesting to run the MM for the Luminance layer and then the MC for the color info, and merge them together in PI to see how it compares to a true RGB combined picture.

Imagine having enough money/equipment to be in a position where you need to choose what to use for what. My only choice is my homemade refractor and my Pentax K5, pointing at whatever exists in the light saturated sky in my area.

@darkrangersinc for a NAS drive I highly recommend Synology NAS. Specifically the DS923+ for astrophotography. You can set it up in RAID format whereby if one drive fails you literally just replace it with a spare and in a few minutes you’re back up and running with minimum interruption. And you can set it up as your own personal cloud storage with access to your files anywhere in the world. No subscription and technically unlimited storage space

Great Video, wow $600 a month, that is a lot, wish I could afford something like that….i get the reasons behind remote imaging for sure…👍🏻

Holy Crap, for that monthly price i think a good diyer can build a new observatory in the back yard every few months 😅

I'm new to the hobby, less than one year. Own a C8 SCT with Starizona focal reducer, Celestron OAG with ASI174mm mini guide camera, ZWO filter drawer and ASI071MC Pro main camera. I image in 1442mm and 2032mm. I've been researching an AVX mount replacement for a couple of months as my guiding is inconsistent. I have an ASIAir and a Mele miniPC with NINA. My SCT and image train are roughly 19 lbs. I could see getting a ZWO 5 position 2" filter wheel in the future so I'm looking at a future 21lbs.. I'm retired and travel full time in the US in a motorhome so I have to set up every night I want to image so portability and set up ease is important but guiding performance is most important. Typically, I set up in the campsite near my motorhome and have to carry everything from inside but sometimes I'll load up the Jeep to go to a better site nearby. I found the data sheets for their different mounts. The GM8 is 40lbs for astro and the GM811 is 55lbs. I think the GM8 would be sufficient for me. I doubt I'm going to purchase a refractor for wider field targets, I would purchase a Hyperstar and add a guide scope so my weight would be consistently around 19 to 21 lbs. Do you think the longer saddle option is worthwhile? How did you transport the GM811 head on this trip? I would have to figure out how to store a GM8 head if I went with the Losamandy route. Other vendors offerings include cases. Right now all my equipment, the AVX mount, tripod and OTA are stored in padded cases. Is it possible to adapt a Losmandy mount to fit on an AVX tripod. Can their pier be adapted? The AM5 with the PE200 peir is able to use the AVX mount. With the intro on the AM5N I'm wondering if that mount is suitable for longer focal length scopes like my C8 as its PE is less than 10" now. Thanks.

If you use BlurXteminator, drizzling also vastly improves that app's effectiveness. It may help BXT even if you're not oversampled, but I'm a bit hazy on where the point is beyond which drizzling is no longer effective for that.

Synology NAS is a great option. I have 9 8TB drives inside it with RAID 5 so I have about 50 TB of storage capacity

Great advice Ryan 👏👏

Great video. A video suggestion. Can make a video on processing form the beginning to the end using free software to get a decent image not great but decent. I think people who are starting dont expect a great image but expect good enough for them to grow in the hobby.

I just signed on as a Patreon 👍

I guess you meant Microsoft OneDrive?

Nice 🙂

You may consider Russ Croman's MTF analyzer vs CCD Suitability. I prefer it because you know where seeing/diffraction limits are plus the options for 2x/3x drizzle results.

Thank you!

Thank you Ryan for lots of good tips and advice. Really helpfull. I specifically liked the part on filters, moon and bortle skies AND the reference to look at Astrobin and narrow down what people are posting, The latter is a smart and quick reference guide as to what is pending of targets. Well done 🙂

super helpful - I really like this format. Did you talk to Brian at AP?

Great video sir, love your channel, very informative.

Outstanding! Clear and concise info . Keep em coming .

Appreciate the Q&A session and I think it is a good format to continue. Not to take this too far off topic, but when in the workflow process for drizzled images do you downsample the image back to its original size?

Interesting.

Join our growing Community for additional help and support including 1 on 1 time if needed! www.patreon.com/DarkRangersInc? Support the channel and a company that supports astrophotography for all gear related purchases Agena Astro has the best prices and fastest (free) shipping times ! agenaastro.com/?rfsn=7545037.59bc8b

Really enjoyed this episode Ryan, this makes a lot of sense and is a great approach to planning. Cheers Simon

I am so glad you have these tutorials I was beginning to freak out for moving from the ASIAIR platform to NINA. I am sending my scope to a remote hosting site, and I was starting to have panic attacks.

It took me taking to their social media telling people to buy gear else where before they even offered via social media messenger to finally fix the camera by that time almost a year passed so I sold my 2600 and went to QHY who is total opposite of ZWO.. Sounds like typical zwo.. I am shocked people still buy their stuff after hearing the horror stories.. the dice roll is not worth it

My number 1 reason not to do astrophotography: I hate Mr. Murphy and he hangs out every night I do astrophotography.

Great job. Now make a book on the targets ! Lol. I’ll buy it.

Outstanding! Clear and concise explanation of filters and when/what use at given conditions and times . Now I just need to put together a detailed check list for all that info Ryan .

Excellent job!! Lot's to think about. I'll probably watch this again two or three times. Lots to challenge myself with. Thanks so much!

Coming back to this video...is the Quad band going to be suitable for dark nebulae from a bortle 7-8? Dark nebulae are my favorite thing right now

This is amazing content -thanks Ryan - love this info. Super helpful to the entire community!

One of the best target selection tools out there is Gary Imm's Deep Sky Compendium which can be found on his Astrobin page. The downloadable spreadsheets can be sorted by transit dates, target size and coordinates, and a series or other selection scripts. Gary also links each target to his Astrobin image for a quick look at the appearance. Highly useful!!

What a great talk and set of advice Ryan, thanks for putting this together.

Good advice. I still use a star catalogue and a planisphere as well. On the planisphere I use typex to mark all the local obstructions just to give an idea of when targets will actually be visible from my backyard. I do use Stellarium as well and astro tools field of view calculator. At 53°N, The Cygnus / Cepheus area is really good right now but you can image that area for at least a couple of hours most months of the year. Because it never really gets dark between mid May to mid July, I tend to stick to narrow band filters during that time and go after the brighter nebulae, the Cygnus loop being an obvious one, either as a single wide field target or zoomed in on the different bits. M27 is another bright target which I think is a good one for beginners.

You never disappoint sir, thank you. I’m eager now because after two years I just got my EQ6r pro tracking under 1.00 sigh..🙄

Nicely done. Bravo!

Thanks. Now if we can get some decent weather perhaps I can collect some data. It's been pretty bad for months in the northeast.

That was very helpful, thanks! When you get your dark sky remote setup, I think what might be interesting is to pick something interesting from the Arp Peculiar Galaxies and in addition to broadband, try some long integration times with an uncommon filter and maybe you'll discover something.

Hi, I am very new to "star tracker" astro photography but I bought the Nomad in February this year. We had the worst weather possible for several months (here in the UK) but recently I got some fairly good shots with an 8mm Samyang on my Fuji X-T5. (I like manual focus lenses for astro work) but last night, just for fun I used my 100-400 @400mm on the Andromeda galaxy ISO 4000, 25 seconds at f8! with absolutely no star trail (more luck than judgement) but I really needed a darker sky to make it stand out more as the moon was just a bit too bright, but it can be done.

Join our growing Community for additional help and support including 1 on 1 time if needed! www.patreon.com/DarkRangersInc? Support the channel and a company that supports astrophotography for all gear related purchases Agena Astro has the best prices and fastest (free) shipping times ! agenaastro.com/?rfsn=7545037.59bc8b

This has been eye opening and something I had hoped wouldn’t be the case. I have about $2500 in zwo parts in my cart that I want to purchase but am reconsidering now and will research alternatives instead. Shame on them.

Comet processing APP with out star trailing be nice

So this or the Stellarvue SVX102T with their reducer/flattener?

Nice reviews but your audio is only coming out of the right channel. I thought it was my airpods and went through the entire process of resetting them. Then I checked another youtube channel and realized it's your recording.

I just got a Mach2GTO mount. The scope will be pretty much in my shed observatory all the time. What's the best pier for that mount? There's the AP Eagle but wanted to make sure I'm making the right decision. The Eagle seems to be advertised as being portable but I don't really need it to be portable.

Great review. The 140 is too big for my mini shed observatory so I was thinking about something smaller like the SVX 102T. Is the glass in the 102 just as good? I do imaging and would probably get mine with the Nightcrawler.

Started watching you a few weeks ago , just found you and like your content. I do OSC I do not think I will ever go to mono, its hard enough trying to get good sky with OSC. Anyway I may have to try these filter looks like they do a good job. The only thing I dont want to do is pixel math , NO IDEA how to use it , seems like a lot of work. I am sure there is a way to do it without the math..... Thanks for the videos

How about a feature for parents who are not into astro, how to get a basic kit together for a kid who wants to take astrophotos. With a couple of options in terms of price. Is the SeeStar the way to go? That sort of stuff.

How can we use our existing astrophotography gear to utilise it for spectroscopy