Very well-known M31 Andromeda galaxy, close to our home galaxy Milky Way. M31 has a diameter of 152,000 light years and approximately 2.5 million light-years from Earth. Andromeda is expected to collide with our Milky Way in about 4-5 billion years from now, but we have plenty of time till then
to observe. It was my DSO target when I started with Astro-imaging last year around the same time of the year. I started by getting a better mount first EQ6R-Pro, and played with my Nikon D5200 DSLR camera and amazed to capture long exposure and tried my first stacking/processing experiment. No UV-IR filter, very wide FOV and it wasn't that great to share. But it was enough to create a spark within me to continue with my DSO imaging journey. One year later, I captured this image with the same EQ6R-Pro, ES/ED102 telescope, and dedicated OSC camera with proper light filters, with a little bit more clue about stacking and processing now. Still a lot to learn, but I am happy with where I started a year ago and with this image today.
For this session I used Starizona APEXED-L (0.65x reducer/flattener). I was little concerned about severe vignetting with ES/ED102 as others mentioned in various astro forum. It wasn't a major issue in my case, and able to remove it with flats. So I really like 0.65x reducer factor and able to capture M31 all in single frame.
For the two sessions, I have tried one with the Optolong 2" UV/IR filter and another with the Antlia Triband 2" filter. I liked the one from the Antlia filter. I think I still need to experiment with a combination of gain and exposure time followed by better processing next time.
Cheers!
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