The Larysz Family Web Site

August 2023: Messier 31 - The Andromeda Galaxy

I finally took the good advice I was given last year and bought a modest refractor telescope on a very good mount. I had been working with large, elderly Newtonian telescopes, one of which I couldn't lift on my own. It was a learning experience.

This is my first acceptable image taken with the new rig. It is the Andromeda Galaxy, and it took about 4 hours of observing time to collect all the data. The framing of the galaxy is poor because I lost patience with it around midnight last night and I just took the pictures. Here are the technical details.

Astrophotography Telescope Assembly

Component

Specification

Optical Tube:

Askar FRA-500 Petzval flat field refractor telescope. 500mm focal length, 5.6 aperture

Mount:

iOptron CEM40 Center Balanced Equatorial Mount

Polar Alignement:

iPolar telescope and camera built in to the mount head

Main Camera:

ZWO ASI2600mc color astrophotography camera. Cooled, with heated widow. 3.76 micron pixel size with 6428 x 4166 frame size (26.1 MP). Sony CMOS 23.5mm x 15.7mm 16bit sensor

Guide Telescope:

60mm Astronomics guide telescope

Guide Camera:

ZWO ASi1200mm monochrome low resolution camera

Electric Focuser:

ZWO electronic focuser

Dew Heaters:

Not yet installed

Session Exposures

Light Frames:

200 frames at 60 seconds exposure, of which 115 were used

Dark Frames:

My heartfelt thanks go to the wonderful community at the Cloudy Nights astronomical forum. They educated me in my ignorance and comforted me in my technical troubles. They make the world a better place.