Andromeda Galaxy 9/6/21

crimbfighter · Sep 9, 2021

My first night out under the stars in a while this week, so I picked a nice big target! When I was in northern Wisconsin in early August, I could see the Andromeda Galaxy naked eye. It was really amazing!

Nikon D610 - astro modified
Nikon 200-500mm lens @ 500mm
100 sec exposures at ISO 640, f/5.6
Total exposure time of 1hr 20min
Celestron AVX mount
Orion Starshoot guide camera
60mm guide scope

I have been having trouble with my clip-in light polution filter, so i had to keep the exposures shorter. In retrospect, I didn't collect nearly enough data given the conditions. It took a tremendous amount of processing to tease out the galaxy and keep the background halfway decent. All in all, I'm pretty happy with the results!

K9Kirk · Sep 9, 2021

Sounds like it was hard to process, you could've titled it, "The Andromeda Strain", and got away with it. Nice shot, looks very cool!

jeffashman · Sep 9, 2021

Very nice! Much better than I could pull off. (rolling eyes at K9).

TATTRAT · Sep 10, 2021

So damn cool. Would love to get into astro-photography. Amazing to see an image like that and realize there are some out there that think we're the be all, end all.

Jeff15 · Sep 11, 2021

Good shot.....

slat · Sep 12, 2021

Nice shot. Some nice detail in there.

crimbfighter · Sep 13, 2021

K9Kirk said:
Sounds like it was hard to process, you could've titled it, "The Andromeda Strain", and got away with it. Nice shot, looks very cool!

Thanks!

crimbfighter · Sep 13, 2021

jeffashman said:
Very nice! Much better than I could pull off. (rolling eyes at K9).

Thank you! I was honestly not expecting to get as much out of it as I did.

crimbfighter · Sep 13, 2021

gk fotografie said:
Very interesting! Nominated POTM September 2021

Wow, thank you!

crimbfighter · Sep 13, 2021

TATTRAT said:
So damn cool. Would love to get into astro-photography. Amazing to see an image like that and realize there are some out there that think we're the be all, end all.

Thanks! I will fore warn you, it's yet another rabbit hole of a hobby, haha. It definitely opens one's eyes as to what's out there and adds some perspective to our place in the cosmos.