M31 The Andromeda Galaxy

Here’s an old and evergreen deep-sky classic… M31, aka the Great Andromeda Galaxy, taken during my 2014 stay at Colle dell’Agnello, a pass in the Italian Alps on the border with France, located at a whopping (at least by European standards  ) 2700 m elevation.

Worth noting is the fact that this picture was made with a PC-less, fully stand-alone setup: Canon 6D + Pentax 75 OTA riding an Avalon M-Zero mount, autoguiding and exposure timing with a Lacerta MGEN stand-alone camera. Processing was done in Pixinsight and Adobe Photoshop.

In my opinion, this image has one important flaw: the galaxy’s core is burned out because I forgot to take some short-exposure shots  . On the whole, however, I’m quite happy with the result, which is way better than the one I took back in 2008.

Click the above image for a larger version. Enjoy!