Hello!! It's Joseph

   This guy only mention the equipment changes and much longer exposure times.  Only "upgrading" the camera, the equatorial mount etc, won't make all the quatum leap change. Something is missing.... He didn't mention LRGB or narrowband imaging, stacking etc He didn't mention the post processing improvements. Which is about 50 % of astro photography ( maybe more than 50%)  btw, the elephant trunk only occupy 1 /25 of the field ( new setup) vs 1/16 ( old setup) 2.12" x 2.12" per pixel (new) vs  1.31" x 1.31" per pixel (old)  and there is a lot of cropping. anyways, all of this show his dedication to astronomy astrocat course

 major differences between NEX-5, NEX-5N, NEX-5R, NEX-5T starting from NEX-5N, the low light performances improve a lot, using APS-C 16 Megapixel Exmor IMX071 sensor 2 The cons, is that there is no port for tethering, and you need make/buy an IR intervalometer, and use IR sensor on the handle to do the trick replacing the IR blocking filter:       you can easily find a second hand body for ~hkd 1,000-1,200 cloudynights:   NEX-5N astromod NEX-5N astrophotography   Hhastro DPreview DxOMark   shutter release port  of other sony models NEX-5 series is basically running Linux CE with source codes provided gphoto support is NOT available  discussion for NEX series 1 , 2   download image(PTP mode): ok remote capture(aka tethering) (PC control mode): not ok Someone 1.00 hack on A55 OpenMemories tweak PlayMemories ( not avail for Alpha 7,9) PMCA smart remote control app support on NEX-5T, NEX-5R   ifixit   Shutter  app on iPh...

funny to find two different approaches in light polluted environment: 1) Roger Clark use short exposure times that is 1/4 to 1/3 histogram, and use more subs: Once one reaches a sky histogram of 1/4 to 1/3 histogram on the camera LCD, exposure time is long enough and longer exposures will not improve given a total exposure time. Simply saying sub exposures are not long enough without knowing other parameters is insufficient and could actually be detrimental. Exposing longer so that the sky histogram peak rises above the 1/2 level would decrease dynamic range, saturate more stars and bright areas losing color. For example, below is an image that goes at least as faint as your image, yet is ONLY 1-minute subs and only 9-minutes total exposure time. In another thread you said you do longer than one hour total exposure time and chided me for not going as long. How long is your exposure time? (Note too you have very little h-alpha and lost a lot of red). Exposure is collec...

criteria of sensor for astrophotography: -low readout noise -cooling -high quantum efficiency -large enough chip size to match with telescope's FOV From Philippe Bernhard: From PointGrey: Sony's ExView HADII, ICX694/ICX674(same chip but smaller size) seems to best all-round from Xpírijensis astrofotografa Biblioteka Riklaunima and ATIK