I spent good few hours at the weekend rescuing this image. I hope you like it!

Neil

No telescope used for that! I'm pretty tight-fisted , and anyway if I'm flush I will spend it on the workshop – astronomy is just another excuse to make things (various adaptors, motor drives etc.)

£30 Canon 10D off ebay, with the IR filter removed (ok I had a disaster and had to spend £16 on a second hand replacement sensor).

400mm PrinzGalaxy lens, I saw one on ebay for £15, but I bought mine second hand well over 30 years ago. Dismantled and adjusted so it will focus to infinity with the modded camera – the loss of 3mm of glass means the lens needs 1mm of extra travel.

EQ3 mount that came with my £180 second hand scope, on a a £40 tripod (EQ5)

Side by side camera and scope mount made by grafting the head of a knackered old tripod onto a spare dovetail and miling a scope clamp for the other end. Effectively free.

Home made stepper drive, all bits box except <£10 of components.

Dew shield made out of a length of aluminium fire extinguisher (single wrap of duck tape inside makes it a comfortable sliding fit!)

Various extras – second hand CF card, spare battery and charger, remote release, interval timer, cheap 1 1/4" IR filter (blu tacked inside t-mount), various T-mount adaptors. I think only the filter cost more than £10.

Polarscope for aligning mount ~£30 – one essential!

Lots of software, mostly freeware or demo – so far I've spent £15 on software plus a couple of modest donations for good freeware, but will buy some of the others when demo periods run out.

(I do have couple of scopes, an inexpensive achromatic refractor and a decent 6" Newtonian reflector).

As for the actual process, it was 40 shots of 80 seconds each at ISO 1600, stacked in the free Deep Space Stacker, and beaten half to death in photoshop with the help of 'action' from Noel Carboneri and Steve Richards – and one of my own

You can easily spend ten or twenty times as much, and the results will be stunning, but at my skill level I don't think they would be 10 to 20 times better. I'd be better off spending that sort of money on holidays in places with less light pollution.

Tonight's project – putting back together my 58mm lens so it will focus to infinity.

Neil