Wide field image of M31

[lrt75914]

Hey guys,

I used the clear sky on Saturday night to squeeze in a couple of shots of the Andromeda Galaxy with a TS-60-Apo that I borrowed from a local  telescope vendor. Since I was to lazy to travel to the nearest 'low-light' area I set up my equipment in my garden. Although light pollution was pretty high due to a pesky street lamp, I was able to capture 56x1 min subs before dew started building up on the telescope. Post-processing was done using PixInsight.

 

Equipment:

• Camera:        Nikon D5300 
• Mount:           Skywatcher Star-Adventurer
• Telescope:    TS-Optics Photoline 60mm f/5,5 FPL53 Apo

[tooth_dr]

Super view with lots of nice stars in the area surrounding the galaxy.  Often I think that in photos M31 look a bit squashed in, this looks perfect!

[ebdons]

Hi, excellent image, trying to get a good widefield image of M31 with 825 trius mono, and my attempts are still not good enough to post on here. hope for clear skies soon. Tony

[RayD]

Very nice indeed Sir. Lovely natural colours.

[triton1]

Superb nice wide field image and natural looking.

[ebdons]

On ‎02‎/‎08‎/‎2017 at 17:40, ebdons said:

Hi, excellent image, trying to get a good widefield image of M31 with 825 trius mono, and my attempts are still not good enough to post on here. hope for clear skies soon. Tony

Tecnosky 80 EDT  SX TRIUS 825 mono + Lodestar X2 mono, EQ6 pro on custom pier  altair 60 mm  guider                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  

[celestron8g8]

Georgious capture ! Thanks for sharing !

[HunterHarling]

Great image! I love the star colors. Did you use a reducer or flattener?

[Space_Plane]

That's a really nice, detailed image, good work! 

Does that setup cause you any trouble with balancing?

[lrt75914]

Thank you guys for all the kind remarks!

19 hours ago, ebdons said:

Tecnosky 80 EDT  SX TRIUS 825 mono + Lodestar X2 mono, EQ6 pro on custom pier  altair 60 mm guider

That's a pretty nice setup you got there. What software are you using to control the imaging/guiding camera?

13 hours ago, HunterHarling said:

Great image! I love the star colors. Did you use a reducer or flattener?

Yeah, I forgot to mention that I used the TSRED279 Photoline Corrector in conjunction with the telescope to capture those wide field images. It's a nice enough combination although I'm not to impressed with the star shapes at the edge of the frame. But, considering how portable and relatively cheap the 'scope is, one cannot really complain about these minor shortcomings. 

2 hours ago, Space_Plane said:

That's a really nice, detailed image, good work! 

Does that setup cause you any trouble with balancing?

The setup does balance out but that is as far as I would try to push the star adventurer before moving on to my larger mounts. If your polar alignment is spot on you might be able to get 3min unguided subs out of the system, provided you are using a sturdy enough tri-pod.

[ebdons]

NEBULOSITY V4, but stacked with DSS as nebulosity sometimes crashes when using the stack utility, it took me some months to get it all working, but when  sorted  works like a dream! Tony