another_mikey
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Upload & Sell: On
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Thanks so much for the kind comments! Well, of course we were all beginning astrophotographers at one point, surely, and there are always those one can learn from, no matter how far you progress. I am certainly able to still learn plenty myself.
This was from a friend's house in Green Valley, AZ. The skies there are decent, but not the darkest to be found in the lower 48. Tucson is directly north, but this is in a part of town with nothing at all due east, and pretty decent skies for much of the southern exposure too. Because I have too many trees on my property here in CO, I have always had to image from elsewhere. I have gone on trips to parts of NM and AZ in the past, to some very dark sky areas. But then you are rolling the dice on the weather, and still can not spend as many hours on an object as you might like. So for me, this year, getting my gear set up in a semi-permanent way where I could then spend multiple nights getting multiple hours of data on objects has helped my results out probably as much or more than anything else. And just recently retiring also has meant lots more time to dig into the post processing side of things too, which has also paid dividends for me.
The full collection details are as follows:
Equipment:
ZWO ASI1600MM-C Camera @ -20C and
Gain:200 Offset:50
Software Bisque MyT Mount
Stellarvue SVQ100 Astrograph Refractor, 580mm @ f/5.8
Innovations Foresight ONAG
Software:
Pixinsight Commercial Version 1.8
Lightroom CC
Photoshop CC
Topaz DeNoise AI
Innovations Foresight SkyGuard
Software Bisque TheSkyX Professional
Light Frames:
Ha: 50 x 360 secs ( 5 hrs)
OIII: 51 x 360 secs (5 hrs 6 mins)
SII: 49 x 360 secs (4 hrs 54 mins)
Red: 30 x 30 secs (15 mins)
Green: 30 x 30 secs (15 mins)
Blue: 31 x 30 secs (15 mins 30 secs)
15 hrs 45 mins 30 secs total
Dark Frames:
10 x 60 secs, RGB (30 mins)
10 x 360 secs, Ha,OIII,SII (3 hrs)
Bias Frames
100
Flat Frames
20 each filter
You are likely a lot closer to results that you like as well or more than this than you might think. IMHO the most important things are:
1) Wanting to pursue the hobby with enough dedication to get images you love. I can tell you already have this one down.
2) A decent tracking mount. This is the most important piece of gear and trumps everything else. Trailed stars cancel out any other gains you might get from all the other gear and time you put into deep sky imaging. You certainly do not have to spend what I ended up spending to get a mount that will work well enough either, but having a higher end mount can really simplify things and let you work on getting more out of all the rest of your gear and processing. But astro frames with trailed stars are like terrestrial images that do not have your subject in focus as far as I am concerned.
3) Decent skies. Do not have to be super dark, but of course the darker the more efficiently you can collect your data typically.
Drop me a PM is you want to continue some discussions in a more private fashion - I love talking shop about this stuff, and I expect I could learn something from you too 
ML
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