Andromeda

Gosh, how difficult is this deep space astro malarkey!

It looks so simple on the Youtube vids - start the tracker off, take a load of shots, stack them, fiddle around a bit in Photoshop, and voila, an awesome image of a Galaxy.

Well, not for me, and I expect its the same for many newcomers to this field of photography.

But it has great appeal in these uncertain times we live in, to be able to do a variant of landscape photography from ones garden.

 

This is the only successful result of 15 evenings shooting Andromeda. Most evening’s results were fails due to inaccurate tracking as I just cant seem to Polar align to any degree of the required accuracy. Some fails due to lack of focus, and dew on the lens.

 

I notice its customary to include the technical aspects of the equipment etc, so here goes….

Sony A7 II, Sony 24-240mm at 240mm, MoveShootMove tracker, couple of Manfrotto ball-heads.

101 x 25 second raw images at F6.3, stacked in Starry Sky Stacker, then several hours messing around in Photoshop.

Done