Spaced Out

Hi All I’m a newby just trying to learn about my telescope and imaging so apologies if this sounds daft. Attached is my first ever image of Andromeda, it’s 9 frames stacked in DSS taken through a SW 130PDS. I was reasonably happy with this as a first attempt until I noticed split diffraction spikes on the brightest stars. I’ve checked each frame and the split spikes are there, so it isn’t something to do with stacking. Having googled it and searched on here I am guessing the cause is most likely a twisted spider vane ? It is interesting that the split spike is prominent on one side of the stars only and also only appear to be on the left side of the image, just wondering if this means anything ? If it is a wonky spider vane, is there a hassle free way to identify which vane and straighten it out ? I only ask because I made the mistake of fiddling with secondary mirror a while ago and it took me days to get things good again ! I’ve looked at the vanes and they look OK, if you squint and use a bit of imagination one of them might be just a tiny bit twisted looking, but I’m not really that confident tbh. Could a twisted spider vane be really difficult to spot and still cause this ? Thanks in advance for any advice you can offer.

Thanks very much ! Yeah it was my first attempt. Read up a bit of background beforehand and have done a bit of landscape stylee astrophotography before (milky way etc) so not a complete novice with a camera. However, I am a complete novice with a telescope and mount and DSS software. Really enjoyed getting this first image, I learnt a lot from it and it has spurred me on to read up more and try to improve at this (and probably get better equipped too) Some of my landscapey astro stuff is here.... https://www.flickr.com/photos/132427272@N04/ I hope to be adding some more DSO stuff to this soon !

Thanks for the advice, was thinking about getting a Bahtinov mask next, they seem well recommended. Still finding my way around the Skyscan bizness, tbh honest I find it harder to align that than polar aligning the mount itself. Just getting the scope locked onto the correct star takes me ages ! Sure it'll come with more practice and learning some more stars. Next job is to read up more about methods and processing, got a very basic grasp on things, enough to chuck my dslr on there and get some frames, but feel I need to have a much better understanding in order to improve my images.

Hi all This is the thread that encouraged me to buy a 130 PDS as my first telescope. I used it for the first time a couple of nights ago and this is my first ever image from it. I had a real hassle setting up because I’m a total newbie and didn’t have a clue what I was doing. Took me hours to polar align my mount but got there in the end, then had hassles getting anywhere near focused, then tried using DSS which has a lot of settings to give you a headache ! Anyway, I got something in the end. It is far from perfect but I am reasonably happy with this as a first time effort, it has given me enough encouragement to start learning more about astrophotography. Thanks to everyone on here who’s 130 PDS images have inspired me to get involved !

WOW !!