m31 LRGB - SA star adventurer + canon70-200f4L

[mytola]

Finally a semi-successful attempt at LRGB after a couple of failed attempts. Focus with the blue filter on is the mantra now!

Had strong wind and unfortunately the moon was full or near full, so I've got an unresolved gradient problem, but if I crop it's bearable. Also got some irritating persistent background color "blotches" that might be due to this gradient - don't really know - Any suggestions on their source are welcome.

Vitals:

40 s L exposures (~50 subs)

10 s (2x2) R, G and B

some biases and flats

Skywatcher Star Adventurer

Canon 70-200 mm f4 @200mm

Atik 314L+ mostly @ -20degC

Xagyl ultra slim wheel

Baader LRGB filters

Processed in Pixinsight - what an amazing image processing tool. I do processing of Seismic data in my day job, and this tool is very intuitive for me to work with.

The 2x2 binned RGB subs were heavily undersampled, resulting in annoying black rings around the stars after registration/stacking if using the default interpolation. Found I had to use b-splines to avoid this issue. The first image is the raw lrgb and the second is a crop and rotation with some processing applied.

[Adamar98]

Great image! What do you think to the star adventurer? I love mine.

[laudropb]

Very nice images.

[mytola]

Thanks!

For me the SA has worked out very well - It's very quick to set up and easy to align. With the Atik and f4 lens wide open I can get by with short subs. What I find somewhat tedious is finding the target - i spend a lot of time on this as I don't have any viewfinder and haven't yet found a good way to attach a finder scope to the rig.