First Image of M31 Very Pleased

[Eri]

So last night I managed to get out for about 3-4 hours and took about an hours worth of photographs each of Andromeda, Flaming Star Nebula and Cas Nebula.

So far I've managed to process Andromeda satisfactorily enough to display to others and I'm hoping to get more data to stack for better stacking later. Cas and Flaming Star are being rather annoying as I'm currently struggling to focus the camera properly, the 700D's live view only shows black noise and the viewfinder is rather small to focus with pinpoint accuracy

my first Andromeda image can be found on my Astrobin page here http://www.astrobin.com/227876/as it's currently 12mb

[Mr Spock]

That's an axcellent image, I like it.

[Eri]

thanks I'm very pleased with it so far

[Charic]

Its great when it all comes together.

I don't dabble in astrophotography yet? but there are options, even with my Dobsonian and an Xbox Live Vision webcam?

Pushing the scope to stay on axis, then stacking some frames should satisfy my needs, but no rush just yet. I still enjoy the simple yet capable rewards from visual observations using  my Skyliner.

There are some  images of the Moon in my gallery,  achievable from nothing more than a mobile phone,  and  one-day I may even  turn the DSLR skywards more often?

[laudropb]

Very nice image. Thanks for posting.

[abodee2]

I had a quick process of your image in astrobin just to play around with and here's what i got

Didnt have time to get rid of the gradient but that's not too bad if you just use a plugin on ps like gradient xterminator

[Rachael]

Brilliant. That's a lovely image.

[Xio1996]

Great image. Love zooming into the dust lanes.

[Astrosurf]

Very nice image! Have you got a Bahtinov Mask for focusing? If not, get or make one! They're invaluable. Then you focus on a bright star with zoomed-in live view, remove the mask, and slew to the object. It will be in focus. Do check your focus periodically throughout the session as temperature changes might well alter the focus.

Alexxx

[stepping beyond]

Most excellent, you've got some awesome data collected there.

[Eri]

No I don't have a Bahtinov Mask yet Alexx, I shall be making one over the next few days, the biggest problem i have right now is focusing on the objects properly with the camera attached, the live view currently just shows black I'm going to go hunting the manual and net about zooming the live view and test... I was hoping for some clear skies the next few says as I've got some holiday booked but it looks like clouds have been ordered.

[Astrosurf]

I don't understand what's wrong with your live view. I thought the 700D was excellent; better than the 600D. Ask on here as the problem's specifically concerning astro rather than just standard photography. Good luck with your investigation and let us know how you get on.