This random late-night thought that hopefully someone can quickly point me to (my Google-fu is weak tonight). I'd like to see some pictures of space from the ISS that don't include Earth. I live in an area that is heavily light polluted so my nightsky view is terrible and I've seen amazing images from other places on Earth that look stunning - I figured a view from the ISS would be even more amazing.

Some of the ones I've quickly found on google appear to be photoshopped - as I'll find the same scene with only a few stars, another seemingly showing the entire Milky Way and then another plain black highlighting the earth.

Many Thanks!

I'm not sure how big the astrophotography community, if any, is on ~tildes but I'd figure I'd open a topic up and see! Astrophotography is one of my hobbies, and it was brought to my attention (see link for two quasars near the M3 globular cluster) that it's actually pretty easy to photograph quasars. The same are visible in my attempt at photographing M3. Anyway, my question here is does anybody know of any particular interesting or distant quasars to photograph? I assume most will just be "dots" but it still sounds like fun since they're among the most distant objects you can see. I assume most quasars would be broad spectrum, so no filters are really needed, but I'm also curious if there's any bright yet redshifted objects you'd need infrared to capture.

My setup is an Astro-Tech AT80EDT 80mm Refractor f/6. I just got the f/0.8 reducer which I'm excited to take for a spin. It's a chonky piece of glass. My camera is a ZWO ASI585MC which does decent enough for deep sky.

Edit: To add, using something like http://simbad.u-strasbg.fr/simbad/ is great for finding interesting objects once I've already taken a photo, but it's less helpful to plan my shots.

I do some astrophotography for fun in my spare time. I'd like to get into doing deep sky photography. In order to do that, I need a moving mount that can keep the camera aligned with the stars for minutes to hours at a time. I'll be using (at least initially) a Canon 7D (original version) with Canon lenses rather than a telescope. I currently have a 200mm lens with 2x extender, which makes it 600mm equivalent on that body.

I'd like to know if others here have ever done this and what type of hardware they've used for the motor and mount? Prices seem to be all over the place and options vary greatly on different devices. For example, I see the following:

Sky-watcher EQM-35 - $623.00US - Seems pretty full-featured for the price, as it includes tripod, motorized mount, alignment scope, and database of astronomical objects.
Celestron Advanced VX Computerized Mount - $899.00US - Seems very similar to the above, but does not include a scope, but is ~$250 more
Orion AstroView EQ Mount & EQ-3M Motor Drive Kit - $269.99US - Like the first one, but without the scope and holds less weight, and no database of objects to look at

I get the difference in price between the first and last, but not the middle one.

In any event, curious if anyone has used any of the above or any others and what their thoughts are on the quality of different brands, and anything I should be looking for or avoiding.