ANdromeda or: What else shall I image?

[lukepower]

Hi everybody,

 

alright, I had a funny time (cough) trying to improve the collimation of my scope, and after a few hicckups, I ended getting a slight improvement in star roundness and size - not bad, after all.

Now we are lucky and enjoying a long clear weather period (should last at least till sunday), so I am acquiring images at full throttle.

 

That said, here is a never version of Andromeda, taken through my Cassegrain at 3550mm focal lenght. For Luminance I combined 20 sec- and 300sec subexposures, for RGB all 300 sec subexposures, this time getting close to about two hours of data per color channel and three hours for Luminance. I still need to improve my processing skills, but I am quite pleased with the result:

 

And for clarity, here an image shot through the webcam:

[nakbrooks]

Superb shot of an ever-popular target. Wish I could do the same - I've given up attempting to collimate my new 400mm Cass as something seems seriously amiss. ASA have promised to help.

[lukepower]

Thanks! I actually had to try for about 6 months to get there, I had the secondary not centered in the tube (off by 3cm!) and also the lateral supports of the main mirror too tight , seriously disturbing collimation.

and an endless load of other issues, like shiny screws. You'd expect a better system for those prices ...

[MarkS]

Great detail, Luke. It was worth all the effort!

 

Mark