The Andromeda Galaxy is our nearest (big) galactic neighbour, at a distance of 2.5 million light years. It is about twice the size of our own Milky Way galaxy and the two are expected to merge in to a single galaxy in about 4.5 billion years time.
Acquisition: Sky-Watcher Evostar 80ED DS-Pro, Sky-Watcher 0.85x reducer, ZWO ASI1600MM-Cool, Atik EFW2, Astronomik LRGB 1.25″
Mount/Guiding: Orion ST80, QHY 5, PHD2, Sky-Watcher NEQ6, EQMod, Sequence Generator Pro
Processing: PixInsight 1.8.5
Dates: Dec. 8th and 28th, 2017
Lights: L 31 x 300s, R 10 x 300s, G 10 x 300s, B 10 x 300s, Unity Gain, -30C
Bias: 300
Darks: 100
Flats: 30
Compare to my previous attempt from 2013 using a DSLR camera.
Very beautiful, I love the way the stars show their individual colour and stand out so well against a black background. Excellent!
A superb image capturing the dust lanes and nucleus really well. The colours are really natural anspd the stars pin sharp. The spiral arms exhibit fine detail, a overall effect is very pleasing, a really great achievement.