M31 - The Andromeda Galaxy

[Graeme]

Here's the First Light image from my new ASI1600MM, Messier 31, The Andromeda Galaxy, or rather the core of Messier 31, The Andromeda Galaxy. Captured 19/08/23.

It's also the first LRGB image I've captured or processed.

After the observatory project was finished I discovered my CGX was unable to guide properly. So it's also the first image I've captured with the newly re-greased worm drives.

With my mount uncertainties, I chose the core of M31 as it's viewable from astronomical dusk to dawn without requiring a meridian flip. I set up a simple NINA sequence with no dithering, capturing 4 x luminance, 4 x red, 4 x green and 4 x blue at 180 seconds, repeating until astronomical dawn. I kept it a bit too simple, I forgot to add a line for the auto focus routine!

The newly re-greased mount took a couple of hours of calibrating and guiding assistant tweaking before it was happy to go. The guiding was poor all night, caused either by my sickly mount or the sickly seeing sitting directly under the jet stream as southern England was on the 19th. Or a combination of both.

Processed after watching The Lazy Geek's My Simple LRGB Processing Workflow, an excellent tutorial.

Comments welcome:

 

 

For a first LRGB attempt with a dodgy mount, I'm not too unhappy with it!

Graeme

 

[GTom]

Looks great! Have you used a reducer/corrector?

[Graeme]

Cheers GTom

Yes, the 9.25 SCT has a 6.3 focal reducer on it.

Looks like my signature is a bit out of date now!

Graeme