Andromeda, my first attempt to astrophotography!

[Gunnar]

Hi all!

I want to show you my wery first unguided attempt to astrophotography. Please, be kind to me, it`s my first attempt. I used my new unmodded canon-500d and shot some 3 minute exposures at iso 1600 no darks. I forgot to set the camera settings to lock up the mirror before exposure. Stacked in deep sky stacker. As this was my first attempt I didn`t imagine myself to get any reasonable result at all. But I think I can be a little bit happy with my first attempt and here it is. Yes I now it is only half of the galaxy:) It`s not perfect either. next time I will try to turn the camera a little bit to get more of andromeda in the pitchure. The scope was unguided because I dont have a guide camera.

I understand that I need to learn more about using photoshop now! Anyway after a little twiggling with photoshop and some good tutorials, the picthure started to came in to light and my impression was wow!

One thing i found tricky was to set the camera in to perfect focus. How is the best way to focus on a dso object?

I am more than happy to take some advices to get better images in the future.

Scope: Skywatcher 190-MN on NEQ6 mount.

Regards

Gunnar

andromeda original stack WEB.tif

[bcsman]

Beautiful picture,amazing detail

[themos]

Not much wrong with the focusing or the tracking or the optics in that one. In fact, it's quite perfect. Well done!

I would advise turning the ISO down to 400-800 for Andromeda as you don't want to burn the core (which you may have done a bit).

[johnh]

That is a great first attempt and good guiding for an unguided mount. You can easily join two images together to get the whole lot.

John.

[Gunnar]

Hi.

Thank you guys, Yes that was a problem to not burn out the core in photoshop, Themos i will try the advice to lower the iso a bit on next attempt.

Thanks

Gunnar

[Gunnar]

That is a great first attempt and good guiding for an unguided mount. You can easily join two images together to get the whole lot.

John.

Hi. At first, thank you for the kind words John.

How do I join two images together?

I found there is a mosaic mode in deepsky stacker, can this do it?

Gunnar

[SJJ]

Really nice image Gunnar. Keep em coming...