Finally!!!

[Synchronicity]

I've just passed 2 hours worth of 5 minute guided subs on Andromeda!  And I know how I did it!!!

I'd almost got to this a couple of weeks ago with my EQ5 but bought a nice used NEQ6 last week so had a lot of extra learning and fiddling to do.
I've spent so many nights trying things, making progress, having setbacks and sometimes getting it all going ok but having lost track of what I did!

I'm grateful to everyone who has answered my questions and all the other questions I found answers to searching and browsing here - I absolutely couldn't have got this far without all you good people 👍👍👍👍

Now.  How the ???? do I process this? 😂😂

Michael

[wimvb]

GIMP, PS, Pixinsight, APP, or Startools. GIMP is free, but depending on your ambition, you may want to invest in one of the other tools.

[happy-kat]

For stacking there is DSS or SIRIL to think of two both free, the latter also works on MAC and Linux as well as Windows.

[johneta]

11 hours ago, happy-kat said:

For stacking there is DSS or SIRIL to think of two both free, the latter also works on MAC and Linux as well as Windows.

+1 for Siril

[Synchronicity]

Thanks folks

I had trials of Pixinsight and PS last year and settled on Pixinsight.  I've experimented with images before but I now have my first good data.  I've got about 6 hours on M31 over 2 nights.  The camera was rotated the second night so I have flats for both nights but am using the darks and bias from night 1.  It's a QHY10 OSC camera, steadily cooled at -25 C

I've stacked both sets with DSS using the default or recommended settings and am reading up on how to align and combine the two stacked files.  Excited and daunted by all there is to learn but it keeps me busy 🙂

Michael