Everything on one rooftop. No permanent pier — the mount goes up and comes down every session because we get wind and I don't trust leaving anything unattended overnight. Polar alignment takes about eight minutes with SharpCap's routine; I've done it enough that it's no longer annoying.
Current
Mount
Sky-Watcher EQ5 Pro
Motorized EQ5 with SynScan hand controller. Not a heavy-lifter — rated 9.5kg payload, I keep it under 5kg. Belt-modded the RA axis in late 2023 using a printed adapter; periodic error dropped from ±8″ to ±3.5″. Drives fine with EQASCOM over USB. Guide corrections via PHD2 to EQASCOM direct.
Primary optic
Samyang 135mm f/2 ED
Photography lens adapted with a Baader helical focuser to hold collimation. Coma at f/2 is genuinely minimal — visible only in the extreme corners on the ASI294 sensor, acceptable for most compositions. At f/2.8 it's essentially gone. I rarely stop down past f/2.8; the loss in signal isn't worth the marginal sharpness improvement from a suburban site.
Imaging camera
ZWO ASI294MC Pro
Color OSC, 4/3" sensor, 4144×2822 at 4.63μm pixels. Native 14-bit ADC. I run it at -15°C, which keeps thermal noise negligible for subs up to 3 minutes. At unity gain (120) the read noise is around 3.5e⁻, which is fine. I've experimented with the high-gain mode (300) for short subs under heavy LP; the read noise drops to 1.2e⁻ but the dynamic range suffers noticeably on bright stars.
Filter
Optolong L-eXtreme 2"
Dual-narrowband: H-alpha (7nm) and OIII (6.5nm). Cuts LP effectively from a Bortle 7 sky. The tradeoff is that it's useless on reflection nebulae and anything that doesn't emit in those two lines. Stars come out with a green tinge that Siril's colour calibration handles automatically. For purely broadband targets I use no filter and rely on gradient extraction.
Guide camera
ZWO ASI120MM Mini + 30mm guide scope
Generic 30mm f/4 guide scope mounted via ADM rings on the Samyang adapter. The ASI120MM Mini is overkill as a guide camera but I had it from an earlier planetary phase. Guide RMS typically 0.6–0.9″ in good seeing, occasionally spikes to 1.5″ when the wind picks up. Anything above 1.2″ RMS and I abort the session.
Software
| Tool | Used for |
|---|---|
| Siril | Stacking, background extraction, colour calibration, star reduction. Free, open-source, does everything I need for routine processing. Script-driven so sessions are reproducible. |
| PixInsight | Final stretching (Generalised Hyperbolic Stretch), noise reduction (BlurXTerminator, NoiseXTerminator when I'm being thorough). Expensive and the UI is hostile, but the results are better than anything else I've tried for the final 20% of a processing run. |
| PHD2 | Autoguiding. Open-source, well-maintained. I use the built-in drift alignment assistant for rough polar alignment before SharpCap's fine routine. |
| SharpCap Pro | Polar alignment via plate-solving. Accurate to well under 1 arcmin in a single pass. Worth the annual subscription just for this. |
| ASTAP | Plate solving. Fast, local, no internet required. I've configured it as PHD2's solver and use it in Siril's preprocessing scripts for astrometric registration. |
| Stellarium | Session planning — checking target altitude, estimating LP gradient direction, avoiding the neighbour's light. |
| KStars/INDI | Occasional remote sessions from inside. Most of the time I just go outside. |
Retired
The first camera was a modified Canon EOS 600D — had the LP filter removed and replaced with a clear glass plate. Decent for broadband Milky Way work, genuinely painful to calibrate for narrowband. The ASI294 replaced it in March 2024 and I haven't looked back.
The first mount was a Skywatcher Star Adventurer. It lasted two years before I wanted longer subs than 60s without star trails. I still keep it for travel.