Rare Moonless, Clear Night. M31 Andromeda Galaxy

wornish

wornish

Messages
1,781
Name
David
Edit My Images
Yes
I needed lots more data as usual. But this is M31 The Andromeda Galaxy tonight taken from outside the front door in a light-polluted area.

A stack of 104 x 8 sec images using my OM1 with 300mm F/4 lens. at F4. ISO 5000.

M31_NO-unsharp-1.jpg
 
Very nice David.
 
That's lovely.

I had a go at M31 last night.

Drove to a dark sky (well, Bortle 4) and froze my mits off.

Don't think I took enough lights (30 subs @5 seconds on Olympus 45mm @f2).

Hardly got anything when stacked in Deep Sky Stacker.

I may have to wait for a tracker.
 
Excellent work ;)
 
GreenNinja67 said:
That's lovely.

I had a go at M31 last night.

Drove to a dark sky (well, Bortle 4) and froze my mits off.

Don't think I took enough lights (30 subs @5 seconds on Olympus 45mm @f2).

Hardly got anything when stacked in Deep Sky Stacker.

I may have to wait for a tracker.
Click to expand...
You really need a lot more lights. It's not a very bright object. The Orion nebula is a lot easier to capture.
At 45mm it will also be very small in the frame. I used my 300mm lens on my OM1 which is Micro Four Thirds so 2x crop. This makes the lens 600mm Full Frame equivalent. I did have a tracker so should really have increased my exposure time to possibly 20 secs per image.
 
Cheers David,

Yes I didn't expect to get much actually.

It's all good experience.

I'm going to get a Skywatcher Star Adventurer GTi when funds allow.

Good to see it's possible to shoot good astro with micro four thirds. I use an EM1X.
 
I had a Star Adventurer a few years ago. The big challenge was always getting good polar alignment and then actually finding your target for the night. That said It was good once set up.
 
That looks excellent
 
Yes sorry :)

Thanks, never polar aligned before so I'll need to practice that.

My polar scope has 2 circles one inside the other and my 2 polar apps have just one circle so going to have to Google this as to where to position polaris in which circle.

Aha, after a quick Google the outer "clock" is for the Southern Hemisphere.
 
Last edited:
GreenNinja67 said:
Yes sorry :)

Thanks, never polar aligned before so I'll need to practice that.

My polar scope has 2 circles one inside the other and my 2 polar apps have just one circle so going to have to Google this as to where to position polaris in which circle.
Click to expand...
There are a few videos on YouTube that will help you get to grips with polar alignment. Where you position polaris changes depending on the time of day and the date. There is also a moibile app that does it.
 
I went to the Kelling Heath star party some years ago, Took my Meede LX90 that I owned at the time , Managed to get the best view of the AG I have ever seen , Let some others have a look , Some time later I had a queue all wanting a look , Good times .
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top