Quick Andromeda Galaxy to kick off the season.

[scross86]

Hello all, just decided to head out back with the wife tonight for a little fire and some star gazing. Haven't been out since May. Andromeda was rising enough over the horizon to try to compare the newer equipment. Very happy with the results;

Camera is a Canon T5i, taking 1.5mins shots, lens is the 50mm prime stepped down to F4.0 for better image quality. My mount is a rather heavy Amazon Basics pistol grip tripod with a Sky-Watcher Star Adventurer stuck on top. Its certainly not overkill but I appreciate its ease of setup when I want to go out. I think if I had to spend much more time to polar align with the time I have to play it might keep me from going out too often. A quick rough align is good enough for couple minute wide field shots. Its still so much better than being stuck with a few second shots without the Star Adventurer along for the ride. This is about 27 mins total time (90% best of 20 subs). Wasn't meant to be more than a nice evening out but compared to last years non-tracking attempt its awesome.

Some close inspections shows I should have been paying more attention to the focus, looks soft, but the wide field makes it a bit forgiving I think.

[wimvb]

That's a nice image. To isolate the galaxy, you can use a longer fl lens. With the 50 mm lens you could try getting M 33 in the same frame for a wide field.

[Grotemobile]

I think U have done well there. Looks good.

[scross86]

2 hours ago, wimvb said:

That's a nice image. To isolate the galaxy, you can use a longer fl lens. With the 50 mm lens you could try getting M 33 in the same frame for a wide field.

That is the goal to have something with more focal length. For now it makes setup easy and gets me taking photos sooner without needing that finer polar alignment. Also to add I am using the x3 drizzle function when stacking.