Andromeda Galaxy (M31)

M31, known as the Andromeda Galaxy, is the closest major spiral galaxy to the Milky Way and also the most distant object visible to the naked eye. It is located about 2.5 million light-years from Earth, and under very dark conditions, it can be spotted as a faint misty patch in the constellation Andromeda.

Andromeda is larger than our galaxy – containing an estimated one trillion stars and spanning over 220,000 light-years. In photographs, its bright core stands out, surrounded by vast spiral arms and its satellite galaxies, M32 and M110.

Acquisition

This is the first photo taken with my new rig (the full set of telescope, mount, camera, and other accessories). It is a RedCat 51 WIFD, a small portable refractor, which differs from my Celestron in that it is:

1. Smaller, and therefore more portable, though it doesn't have as much magnification. On the other hand, it captures a wider area of the sky.
2. A Refractor - Instead of mirrors, it uses only lenses to focus the image onto the camera sensor.

I also acquired a new dedicated astro camera with cooling (ZWO ASI585 MC Pro).

Photo of the rig here:

Software

Back to acquisition: I used N.I.N.A for full automation and PHD2 for guiding using a guide camera (I used my old ASI678MC) and a guide scope (William Optics Uniguide 32mm).

To stack the photos together, I used DeepSkyStacker.

For processing, I used PixInsight, which I was learning to use at the time.

There were two iterations:

• First: Sept 19, 2024, when I tried editing something for the first time.
• Second: Sept 22, 2024, when I tried editing the photo following a tutorial and slowly learned how the program works.