M31/NGC 224, the Andromeda Galaxy, M32/NGC 221 and M110/NGC 205: The Quality of Dreams

Andromeda Galaxy with friends.

Also features NGC 206 star formation region.

 

Anyone into astrophotography should have one, and generally wants more than one of this :) Now I have three...

 

Acquisition time: between 20:00 01.10.2016 and 00:30 MSK 02.10.2016 (GMT+3)

Equipment:

Canon 60Da with Astronomics

CLS-CCD clip-in filter powered by Canon EOS Utility and Canon EF 70-200 f/2.8L IS USM @f/4 riding on Skywatcher NEQ6 Pro mount unguided.

Aperture (effective) 50 mm

Focal length 200 mm

Tv = 120 seconds

Av = f/4

ISO 1600

Exposures: 74 plus 20 dark frames, 30 bias frames, 15 flat-field frames with 15 correspondent dark frames for flat-fields.

Processing: .CR2 images were converted into Adobe .DNG and stacked in DSS using AHD colour interpolation and Average stacking method. Stacked image was processed in Photoshop by increasing gamma and stretching. Initially I was planning to apply median filter with σ=1 and then downsize it to 75 or even 50%, but it turned out just right outright :)

 

Note: I know that mounting short focal length handheld lens on a mount with 25 kg load capacity is failsafe/bootstrap/plan B/side-kick/back-up/shortcut (underline the appropriate) :)

Done