Messier 31 - The Andromeda Galaxy

[Graeme]

Here's the First Light image from my new ASI1600MM astro camera. 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.

It's also the first image I've captured with the newly re-greased CGX. It's 4 x luminance, 4 x red, 4 x green and 4 x blue images at 180 seconds each, repeating until astronomical dawn.

The 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.

2023-08-19_Andromeda Galaxy_M31_EL.jpg

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

Graeme

[HansV]

Great!

[stuck]

Nice

Ken

[RonH]

Brilliant ... great dedication to hobby

[Graeme]

Thanks Gents.

Here's hoping for some more clear nights so I can start spamming the Scuttlebutt again!

Graeme

[ChrisGreaves]

... the first LRGB image I've captured or processed. ... the first image I've captured with the newly re-greased CGX. ... 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.

Hello Graeme. I would say "Good image" except I know little about just how good Messier 31 should look by any means of viewing.
I do see that you are doing much more than holding a magnifying glass in front of your smart phone lens

How do you cope with so many variables in your set-up? I count four above.

I suppose that for some of the variables you travel along a spectrum. For example, the weather/jet-stream variable might be resolved as simply as leaving the set-up as it is and running the shoot again on a better night; except that you already expect clearer skies to produce a clearer image.
How would you move along the spectrum to
(1) Better Grease (whatever "better" means in this context
(2) Less-sickly mount (tighten a few bolts and screws?)
(3) Better knowledge of your retirement camera?
Thanks, Chris

[Graeme]

How do you cope with so many variables in your set-up? I count four above.

It's worse than that, in addition to the light frames, there's the calibration frames


Graeme

[Graeme]

Hello Graeme. I would say "Good image" except I know little about just how good Messier 31 should look by any means of viewing.

This is what the whole thing looks like, well this is what the whole thing would look like if it was bright enough to see! The red rectangle represents my camera sensor and is the area of my image and is about 0.5° in height, the size of the full Moon.

Screenshot 2023-08-29 062825_EL.jpg