M31 - Andromeda Galaxy

M31 taken from WYAS 16th Oct 2012 by Tim Beale
This is my first proper image taken with the aid of an auto-guider!
It was taken from the observing pad outside WYAS using a Canon EOS550D and William Optics Zenithstar 80ED. The mount was my Skywatcher EQ5, modified with a soldering iron to hook up to a Shoestring Astronomy GPUSB adaptor and PHD Guiding. The guidescope was a butchered Skywatcher 9x50 finderscope with a Philips SPC900 webcam on the back. Quite possibly the cheapest autoguiding setup available, but very effective!
The image is a stack of twelve 2-minute exposures at ISO800, with five dark frames. Processed using DeepSkyStacker and Photoshop CS5. Very little cropping was done, which shows how large this object actually is. M32 and M110 satellite galaxies can also be seen.
On my next attempt, I will try to capture around 20-30 light frames rather than 12 and also try and get some flat frames to better balance the background.

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