M31 – The Andromeda Galaxy
September 10th, 2009
So, it’s been a bit quite here recently as August was a very busy month. Myself, my wife and my three year old son drove the 1000 miles or so from Basingstoke to north Italy for a two week holiday in the lakes. Specifically we stayed at the wonderful Camping Al Sole on the beautiful Lago Di Ledro, not far from the north tip of Lago di Garda. We had a fantastic time, visited various castles, swam in the lake a lot and I of course got some imaging done.
I took my Vixen Sphinx mount on it’s portable pier setup, and a lovely little William Optics ZS66SD telescope with the 0.6x Focal Reducer and flattener. I was tied to the tent unfortunately as I ran out of space in the car for a portable power supply, but as we were 2000ft up in the mountains it wasn’t the worst thing, at least I had a bottle of wine close to hand. The seeing was excellent even with the camp sites bright white globe lights, and Andromeda was the best target in the clear view between the trees. Here is the result :
- William Optics ZS66SD / 0.6x Focal Reducer / Flattener
- Canon EOS 1000D – unmodified
- Vixen Sphinx Mount – no guiding
- 93 x 2.30 exposures / 3h 52m total exposure time
- Stacked in Iris
The critical viewer will note that on this processing attempt I’ve made a few mistakes, noticeably I’ve over done the white point resulting in some nasty looking stars and wiping out detail in some areas. Also I think my flats have been incorrect, I’ll be taking some more tonight to get the exposure level better and recompiling the image.
Unfortunately I managed to damage my Starbook over the weekend so I’ll be out of action on the deep space imaging until it is repaired. I’m not sure if Jupiter is in a suitable position for imaging with the webcam right now either but I’ll be giving it a go.
