The Pleiades and the Andromeda galaxy
Two deep-sky classics that will never let you down :-)
The rig I used is for sure not top-notch, but it did do a fair job. It consists of a SkyWatcher ED80 refractor as the main imaging scope with a Canon 350D DSLR, with an “el-cheapo” SkyWatcher 70/500 refractor as the guidescope together with a Magzero MZ-5m camera for autoguiding. The whole setup rode a Losmandy G11 mount with a FS2 motor drive.
The shots were taken on September 27 and 28, 2008. Exposure details are as follows:
The shots were taken on September 27 and 28, 2008. Exposure details are as follows:
- M31: 70 min total (12 x 5 m + 1 x 10m) at ISO 800, 3 dark frames, no flats
- M45: 80 min total (8 x 10 m) at ISO 800, 3 dark frames, no flats
- Canon’s DPP for converting raw frames into TIFFs
- DeepSkyStacker for sub-exposure registration and stacking, and dark-frame subtraction
- Adobe Photoshop CS3 for final adjustment
This is was my first crack at DeepSkyStacker, and I must admit it really impressed me for its features and ease of use.
The pictures may look decent at first sight, but actually they do have a number of flaws (guiding and focusing problems, together with the scope’s field of view not being perfectly flat), and for sure there’s much room for improvement. The Pleiades probably came out slightly better, and there is quite a bit of M45’s faint reflection nebulosity visible in there.
You can click on both pictures below for higher resolution versions (Please note that a minimum screen resolution of 1280 x 1024 pixels is needed).
M31:
)
M45:
)