Thanks - I had heard of them but hadn’t twigged they were near Confolens - looks like they are residential though. Will bear in mind for future reference!
They used to do single day or night courses as well, often concentrating on a specific area or event. I haven’t seen any advertised for a year or two but it may be worth contacting Sue (who runs it) to see what’s coming up.
Thank you I’ll think about it - I only have 8 days in France this time so might have to schedule it for a future visit!
So - some progress has been made!
Last night I managed to get the GTI mount polar aligned (hello Polaris!) which was a big advance.
I used my Fuji X-H2 camera with the 50-140mm lens and 1.4x teleconverter rather than the telescope, so as to give myself a wider margin of error in pointing - I don’t think I have quite got polar alignment right yet as targets were not appearing bang in the middle of the frame but somewhat below centre.
And faint objects don’t show up on the camera’s rear LCD even with “preview exposure” turned off, which means I can’t tell if I am in the ballpark until I take a photo. I don’t want to hook up a laptop just yet but might try an external 7" monitor and see if that helps.
Anyway I had another go at Mr Bode and his Cigar friend (Messier 81 and 82) and got this (click to enlarge):
Complete rubbish in absolute terms of course, but for me a good start I think. This is cropped in a lot from the original as the camera lens isn’t a long enough focal length.
I’m quite impressed that you can actually see the spiral structure of Bode and a bit of the dust lanes in the Cigar Galaxy.
This was from thirteen 30-second exposures at ISO 1600, effective aperture 5.6 (with the teleconverter), stacked and processed in Siril and then tweaked a bit in Photoshop and Lightroom. No darks flats or bias frames as my tiny brain can’t cope with those yet.
Siril was a PITA as at first the scripts wouldn’t run, but I got enough of it working to make a TIFF file.
I also had a go at the Beehive cluster (M44) but a large tree got in the way of that one. 
Finally I shot the Hercules globular cluster (M13) but haven’t processed those images yet.
And as a zoological bonus, while I was shooting I heard a slurping noise behind me, swung my red torch around and there was a large badger taking a drink from our fishpond.
Probably the same mammalian barsteward who has been digging holes in our lawn…
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Would a barlow lense help at all?
That looks like a lot of fun !
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I’m not using the telescope for photography yet - these were taken with my Fuji camera and its telephoto lens alone.
The 50-140mm lens with its 1.4x teleconverter have an effective maximum focal length of 294mm in 35mm full-frame terms (140 x 1.4 x 1.5 APS-C crop factor).
When i get the Askar 71F going, it has a native focal length of 490mm, so with the Fuji camera’s 1.5 crop that should come out at 735mm.
But that will require more accurate polar alignment and finding, hence why I have used just the camera for the moment.
i did put the Askar on the mount (with the supplied visual eyepieces) the other night but couldn’t find anything as my polar alignment wasn’t sorted!
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it’s bloody confusing at the moment as so many things to adjust, but I will get there!
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That’s not really uncommon, even when you are accurately polar aligned. It seems to happen with my setup all the time. Don’t ask me why 
It’s no problem for me as Kstars corrects it.
One good way to tell if your not accurately polar aligned is to take a longish exposure. If your not aligned properly and the scope is tracking then you should get star trails rather than point stars. Your 30s exposures show slightly distorted stars, but no star trails so I think you’ve done a pretty good job.
Definitely a good start, especially with the camera/lens combo you used. The telescope should do better.
TBH, I would forget about those until you can get your mount + telescope taking something. They can be a bit strange. Also, don’t forget ‘dark flat’ frames 
. They are useful if using a DSLR camera.
So, did you convert to FITS format files ? They’re used extensively in astrophotography.
Didyou got a picture of the badger ? 
Not a honey badger I hope.
Thank you - actually I think the distortion is likely more to do with the Fuji teleconverter than the tracking! But yes it did work surprisingly well.
Longer exposures may show more inaccuracy of course.
Yes - Siril does that as standard, if you use the preprocessing scripts.
No - I was so startled by it I didn’t think to get my phone out of my pocket.
And no it was a regular European badger, stripy nose and all. 
Just a few more interesting resources that you may or may not have found.
The best planetarium software I’ve fund is stellarium
It’s free and has an iOS version. Don’t bother with the mobile app as it’s not very good. One nice feature is you can input details of your scope and camera and it will draw a rectangle directly on the view of the sky so you can see what your camera will capture.
To find things in the sky to take piccies of, and also to see what your camera will see and importantly when the object rises/sets and how near the moon it will be etc, there is a website called Telescopius.
I’ve never really used anything but FITS files until final image so didn’t realise the scripts did that.
Yes thank you I have Stellarium on my iPad. Will look at the Mac OS version.
My Fuji cameras save Fuji RAW (.RAF) files so they need to be made into FITS for Siril to tit about with.
What a wonderful photo!
Noob question: is it possible to see this through the telescope eye “lens”? Or can you only see this kind of detail with slow captures from a photograph?
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Thank you Fred!
Looking at galaxies and nebulae visually I think you generally only see a fuzzy patch - it does take a 'stack" of multiple photographs to accumulate enough light to capture all the detail, and then of course the photographic processing enhances the colour and contrast as well.
But there’s something about seeing an object “live” that makes up for that.
(There’s a lot of digital noise in my photo as I haven’t yet mastered the techniques needed to get rid of that!)
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I’d like to get hold of a preferably used 200mm reflector just to scratch the itch and see if I enjoy the experience. Skies should be reasonably dark.
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That could be a good start - the advice for beginners I’ve seen on YouTube and on astro forums is that a 6" or 8" Dobsonian telescope (a reflector on a simple and easily moved alt-azimuth base) is a good choice for beginners as it is not too expensive, is easy to set up and use, gathers a lot of light, and can be used to see a variety of subjects. What Dobsonians are not so good for is astrophotography, because they have a simple non-motorized mount.
What I’ve found in researching this subject before I bought the Askar is that your choice of scope very much depends on what kind of celestial object you want to observe, and how!
i.e. do you mainly want to just look at the sky or potentially take photos? For me since I am a professional photographer I knew that taking pictures would be a major interest, hence I began by buying a motorised tracking mount to make finding objects easier and to allow long exposures, starting with my normal cameras and lenses - but it quickly became apparent that a telescope would be needed to get a decent image size and clarity.
So I went for a 71mm refractor with ED glass and a built in field flattener as being a suitable astrophotography scope, though it still can be used visually. I am most interested in capturing deep sky objects such as galaxies and nebulae, so prioritised optical quality over telescope size and aperture.
Leaving photography aside, if you feel you would mainly look at the Moon and planets then the Schmidt-Cassegrain or Maksutov reflector types seem to be popular as they have a longer focal length so greater magnification for seeing planets and details on the Moon.
@hairbear may have more (and more accurate) advice to offer on this than me; I’m still finding my way, although I was very into astronomy as a kid (and built a reflector scope from a kit) I am years out of date on the technology and learning again from scratch!
I think I would like to have a look at what’s up there with a powerful device that I can sell on. A motorbike is on the wish list too and some expensive hifi components. Then there’s the solar project and so on…
Not sure I can take on another hobby!
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That and the fact they have alt-az movement. That means that even if you could track the object, it would rotate in the field of view over time. This isn’t an issue for visual observation.
Yes, the longer focal length is better for planetary and close up moon observation as Chris says this gives you a greater effective maximum magnification. The downside is that to see larger structures such as whole large galaxies and nebulae you would need to buy a ‘barlow’ which reduces the focal length, effectively widening the field of view. A newtonian reflector would be cheaper and give a smaller focal length, removing the need for a barlow lens, but would not give as good an image for smaller targets like planets.
Basically the choice is very wide and complex and you need to decide how much you want to invest and what sort of things you want to observe most first and take it from there.
Well yes I hear you on that - I too have indulged in a motorbike and hifi bits! And I used to be into scuba diving which also involved “buying lots of kit that I really really need”, not to mention plane tickets to warmer climes (although I did get some cheap diving done when I lived in Turks & Caicos).
Re the telescope an 8" (200mm) Dobsonian is €400-ish
So a second-hand one ought to be a fair bit less than that?
Does it really matter?
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