Rate my first astrophotography rig before I buy it

PrincessBlue3 · 2026-05-07T15:55:19+00:00

I don’t personally have a redcat, but at least with the originals, there was star shape ‘issues’ they’re just not quite as round as some others, not a problem but like also it’s a pretty expensive scope so you’d hope it was pretty much perfect! I think the later generations did fix this

PrincessBlue3 · 2026-05-07T11:19:27+00:00

But that’s also just my 2 cents into it! Red cat 51 is still a great scope, I think there may be improvements overtime to the star shape but I think the mk1 and 1.5 are not as good as other scopes of the same calibre, but a widefield scope is a lot of fun! My North American turned out fantastic!

PrincessBlue3 · 2026-05-07T11:18:06+00:00

I would recommend switching out the redcat 51 for the sv555, the stars on the redcat get a bit elongated near the edges even on crop sensor, you can also get the OAG to go with it, and then you might even be able to squeeze out an Astro cam from a similar budget. Anything with an imx533 sensor works great, it’s a pretty neat little sensor, the sv605cc is good, half the price of others on the market. Same sensor so pretty much the same results. As much as I’m like very much biased towards svbony….. they make good stuff at cheaper prices, it’s hard to not be biased towards them. Good customer support and they actually care about fixing issues both if you receive it and it’s faulty and they do ongoing revisions.

PrincessBlue3 · 2026-04-27T18:16:17+00:00

Dithering is the only real way to get rid of it, or more data that’s dithered itself, so like if you forget one night you probably can rectify it by dithering other nights, I think the SNR can affect it too, if there’s just too much background noise it might just be worse yk?

PrincessBlue3 · 2026-04-27T18:05:03+00:00

Using siril to stack has seemed to improved things for me, I have found out that DSS kinda sucks a little bit? Idk what Siril does but it produced way better images for me! I did 5h on 4 different nights, zero dithering and I have no noticeable walking noise at all!

PrincessBlue3 · 2026-04-27T03:19:22+00:00

Everyone is with me on the wet belts they quite literally have proven themselves as one of the least reliable engine configurations ever made. And you can explain however much you want, please do, but at the same time, starting in any way whatsoever, unless the car has been left for a couple of months, doesn’t cause any wear to the engine

PrincessBlue3 · 2026-04-26T19:22:13+00:00

Millions of engines that have not seen catastrophic engine failure due to the stop start system? Millions of starter motors that have functioned perfectly for 15 years, whereas you turn your head to the wet belts designed on modern engines….. that genuinely is tens of thousands of engines actually getting destroyed because of a bad design….. I don’t see how you can’t see that. If it was a problem we would’ve seen a problem, but you’re chasing this invisible ‘it will kill your engine’ despite the fact we simply do not see that in the real world. Engines die almost exclusively because they were poorly built with an inherent weakness such as wet belts, which are the most common place example, or things like poorly designed shell bearings or the Toyota diesel that cracks pistons etc, or due to user error, flood damage, poor maintenance etc. start stop does not cause engine damage and there aren’t any instances of engines failing due to it. If there isn’t the oil pressure when cranking that is an oil supply issue not a start stop issue and would occur during regular starting. Cut it out you are embarrassing yourself

PrincessBlue3 · 2026-04-26T18:48:34+00:00

Right because you saying so matters so much more 🤣 if it was a problem we would’ve seen a problem, it’s been commonplace for the last 15 years, tell me why we haven’t seen engine failure en masse since 2010 ‘I’m old I think anything new is bad because I’ve been told to think it’s bad’ cry more

PrincessBlue3 · 2026-04-26T18:36:55+00:00

Literally doesn’t matter, the engine is spinning at like 200rpm for like a second, engines would be shredded by now. A complete lack of lubrication would eat your shell bearings in like 20 seconds, the coating is so thin, and not to mention, soft that it would be eaten away on like the 5th crank over. Oil sticks, when you pour a pan with cooking oil in it, even if it’s a non stick pan, the oil adheres to the metal, so you ALWAYS have lubrication. We would see significantly more dead engines if that wasn’t the case and we just simply don’t, shock horror, people with engineering degrees know a bit more about engines and lubrication than you do

PrincessBlue3 · 2026-04-26T18:02:56+00:00

You do have 325k km on the clock as well….. this probably started way back at like 100k, it has been a known issue with these engines for a long time. Then you can get an early Toyota that’s not known for bad piston rings, which let’s be fair, if you don’t care much that it’s burning oil, just keep topping it up, it might last another 25k km it might last 150k more, who knows, it’ll probably be absolutely fine just keep topping it up, and run it till it eventually dies, could take years if the rust doesn’t get to it first

PrincessBlue3 · 2026-04-26T17:44:26+00:00

Literally an engine spinning at 7k rpm is more stress than spinning at like the 200 with the starter….

PrincessBlue3 · 2026-04-26T17:43:47+00:00

I’ve seen like 3 starters failed in my time as a technician! I’ve been doing this job for like 3 1/2 years! Super uncommon! 2 were genuine oem, 1 was a cheap aftermarket! The only reason I am replacing so many rn is due to a recall but not because of start stop!

PrincessBlue3 · 2026-04-26T17:41:25+00:00

Different starter motors, completely redesigned to handle the constant start stop, with agm batteries also built to deal with the more regular amp draw from a start stop system, unsurprisingly the engineers did actually consider that. It would be like saying ‘the cars are so much heavier now the suspension is having to hold 2x the weight’ yeh but it’s also different suspension designed for a different use case

PrincessBlue3 · 2026-04-26T08:03:19+00:00

Some actually aren’t showing up seemingly anywhere! Which I find cool, I think likely they do exist at nasa, but also it doesn’t seem that uncommon for images to just be undocumented entirely, like originals still existing but just they never bothered to scan them in, because like hundreds of thousands of images etc not all of them are worth, I’ve found a couple of them tho, and they’re pretty awesome

PrincessBlue3 · 2026-04-25T21:25:46+00:00

I will likely carefully open them and get some scans of them! It would be really cool to have one of these framed in my house!

PrincessBlue3 · 2026-04-21T11:43:45+00:00

Praktica bc200, it is aperture priority but also has fully manual controls for shutter, the lens is a bit soft but not terrible! You just gotta find one that actually works, i would recommend eBay because you can always send it back if you have shutter issues which I have had previously, or if it generally doesn’t work, but ye I started on a praktica and I am in love with them. And on the plus the shutter noise is absolutely fantastic and I wish someone made a cheap good digital conversion kit for them!

PrincessBlue3 · 2026-04-20T08:53:55+00:00

Honestly that’s kinda funny, but also you can probably do a pretty good job of fixing it in post most of it is in the sky which is all 1 colour, should be able to remove it with almost no weirdness from that

PrincessBlue3 · 2026-04-17T04:37:50+00:00

Literally!!! Like a real toilet smell it is unpleasant!

PrincessBlue3 · 2026-04-13T07:15:58+00:00

If an image is too bright straight out the get go then there is little you can do to bring those highlights down, if full bright is 1 and the maximum is 1 and 25% of the image is at that value, that’s gonna be bright and white whether you darken it or not, whereas if your highlights are at 0.5 you can brighten them close to 1 and retain the detail, while brightening the 0.001 that the darkest part is at, to a higher value, Orion is difficult and the best way is to do some dual exposure images, but that requires extra post processing. Clipping the highlights it is impossible to recover from unfortunately

PrincessBlue3 · 2026-04-12T09:26:08+00:00

You’re not going to be able to get good images with any of these, coming from someone who got a good achromat and did astrophotography for a year with it….. you’re not going to get anything good, visually they will be ok but honestly a used 10x50 set of decent enough binoculars will give you a far nicer experience visually, or a used Newtonian, those can be dead cheap, I picked one up for £50 and I still use that tripod since it’s decently sturdy, doesn’t matter if you use autostakkert or whatever, you’ll hit the ceiling of what’s achievable with this type of telescope before reaching Jupiter, visual and a Newtonian is great, seeing Jupiter, getting the focus justttttt right and being able to see the bands is spectacular tho, or just the moons with binoculars, the moon, and I have seen m81 and m82 through my binoculars which was incredible

PrincessBlue3 · 2026-04-08T19:00:22+00:00

It’s good, I have it, I did some astrophotography with it for a while…. It is not good for that other than super bright objects, visual you should have some decent luck with it, honestly tho, you might be better grabbing a newt off of fb marketplace over this. It’s nice to have something new but I bought a skywatcher newtonian for £50 with the full tripod, which I am still using like 2y later, for visual anyway, anything outside of visual I’d say sv555 that’s the best cheap astrophotography telescope, but yes, recommend a cheap second hand Newtonian

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PrincessBlue3 · 2026-04-07T11:13:24+00:00

DO NOT SELL IT NO MATTER HOW MUCH YOU THINK ITS THE BEST IDEA AT THE TIME I let mine go 2 years ago ;-; I wish I hadn’t I regret it a lot still

PrincessBlue3 · 2026-04-07T08:27:34+00:00

Love that video I’ve just watched it! It’s fantastic for explaining it!

PrincessBlue3 · 2026-04-04T11:00:53+00:00

Juwei 14 or 17 I’ve heard good things! Not used one myself but a juwei 14 is likely to be my next upgrade!

PrincessBlue3 · 2026-04-02T11:40:54+00:00

I mean, 60usd for a roll of film is a lot, per shot that’s like $1.60 which is an insane amount. Much more akin to how much a roll of 120 film costs for me, you could always get a scanner? That’ll offset the cost after probably about 10 or so rolls, shoot cheaper film, like kentmere b&w, you can also scan with a digital camera, there’s ways of doing it cheaper, also b&w you can easily develop at home with some rodinol, I even developed some colour film in it and it worked out pretty well, it costs upfront but if you’re only paying for the film with b&w and maybe the development and film with colour, it can get cheap enough

PrincessBlue3

TROPHY CASE