Cold but some clear nights 4K 

@@AstroSoundscape Thanks, Not using an OAG as I also have a sensational camera lens 200mm f2.8 with a Tele extender to 280 f4.0 and a 400mm 6.3 so made up a rig to mount on the HEQ5 pro and use the guide scope Saxon 170 with the 533 to find and centre images then change it over to guiding. That way I have the C8 for tight work and the camera G9M2 for wide stuff, also some very wide lenses for Milky Way etc that go on a smaller rig. The ASIair plus is reporting 1281mm with the 6.3 reducer so I guess my back focus is about as good as I can get as there seems to be a 4-6x factor when you change the back focus as well as it being in reverse. But still getting dodgy stars in the corners of the frame so might need re collimating or as you say using the Celestron reducer is the problem. I was hoping to use the 533 with the camera lenses but of course all the lenses are focus by wire with OIS and no power when connected to an Astro camera.

@@KJRitch Hi again, that was the wind and I was deleting the wrecked shots as they came through but the one on screen was ok most of the rest were no good. One advantage of 60 sec subs is if it is windy you still get a few keepers. I have been trying 180 sec subs and they are fine with no wind but too exposed if there is wind. Also with guiding without dithering I can sit well within 2” on the graph but with dithering it takes ages to settle and never quite gets in the groove. I might try every 2 or 3 at 180 sec and see how that goes. As far as affinity goes I like the colour preserving stretch but often the colours in the sky are too hard to remove. So mostly use the live stretch and take out the green cast with added red and blue do extra stretching then tone compression and contrast, back to live tone stretch contrast adjust to balance the colour then reduce background luminosity then star reduction and either enhance structure or enhance nebula structure and finish off with band pass sharpening (try one and if no good undo and try the next). I finish off exporting the tiff and clean it up in photos with luminosity colour curves enhance structure etc to taste. Don’t forget to delete the two adjustments made by default after the end stack before the first stretch. Another good macro after reduce background luminosity can be enhance DSO luminosity. I rarely now use the remove background filter. Good luck we are having a run of clear nights so got some good stuff last night and might get more tonight. Sent from my iPad On 6 Jul 2024, at 12:04 AM, RU-vid wrote:

I used my Fireworks data and found the Color Preserving Tone Stretch worked well but Live Tone Stretch didn't show any galaxy structure. I opened it up from the Layers list and How do you remove the green cast? What do you mean "added red and blue". Did you play around with the formulas in Live Tone Stretch, Live Procedural Texture dialog? Those formulas make no sense to me.

@@KJRitch Yes live tone stretch is just a start you need to tweak each individual adjustment to get a good result, the benefit is it is all non destructive and no need to flatten the layers and lock anything in. Just hit the disclosure triangle and it drops down several sections, just have a play around and see what they do. It appears the 2600 always has a green cast that I need to remove.