Star gazing

I know, I know, Martin. But look at the shots Bilbo's been taking.. It all depends on what your target is. Planets, the Moon, some of the major Stars only need one shot and you can shoot in JPEG if you want. One of the tricks is to stick the camera on a tripod and take several exposures in RAW, then stack them together and then convert to JPEG. . There are plenty of free processing software out where for stacking [like Registack], and GIMP for processing, you just need a little time to learn how to process........and if I can do it you most certainly will be able to!!
My ZWO ASI 178 camera is the cooled colour version and is a one shot camera which allows me to take video, or exposures from 1000th of a second up to several minutes, and multiple shots in the hundreds in the one operation.

 

Yep, not bad shots, but you can tell there's been some long and heavy processing done. So, to be honest, the images owe more to the processing than the lens, where they've layered different filter colours [RGB] on top of the RAW data and then likely used the Hubble Palette.
If you keep things simple you'd been surprised just how amazing some of your shots will be without all the extra equipment quoted.

 

Agreed, Martin. To be truthful, when I first started astronomy I was purely a visual guy, and couldn't see myself getting interested in imaging. But when the owner of the Forum "Astro Shed" started selling off his gear cheaply I bought a MAK 180 and a QHY8L camera off him. Once I figured out how to use it.........I was hooked but I still don't believe you need all those hours of long exposures, and all those hours in front of a computer to get a decent image.

 

Look at the Stars, Martin, and you'll see they're elongated rather than round. That means even on a tripod a long exposure will record the movement of the Stars........but it's still a great shot.

 

I don't think my images are good enough for such a site, Gail Besides, if you want some really fantastic, jaw dropping images for Wallpapers then look at the NASA Image Gallery

 

Oh, I know that, Martin, but Bilbo has achieved a great shot with just minimal, but excellent, gear and I couldn't compare that one to the other which was taken with a good refractor, an autoguider and guiding camera, then multiple imaged, followed by long processing.

This would be Bilbo's image of the Orion Nebula as taken by my scope and the ZWO ASI 178 colour camera [which is basically just a high end sensor, with software, and a cooling fan]

 

@ARMANDII I always like black backgrounds so I see my shortcut icons..at the moment I have a blue 3D tiger on there with the rest black

Well, should there be any images of mine in this thread that you like you can certainly copy any and download them into your pictures library and then use it as a Wallpaper.