It's been a tradition these past few years since I took up astrophotography to add integration time to my image of M31, as captured by my Zenithstar 61, and dedicate it to my father-in-law who has been hugely supportive and encouraging, and who is also a big fan of this particularly galaxy. This year, however, I decided to start from scratch with the AT92 which had been gifted to me this past spring by another hugely supportive member of the astrophotography community.
M31 does not fit within the FOV of my AT92 with the ASI533 - not even with the 0.8 reducer that came with it - so I knew this was going to be a mosaic. I was hesitant to start the project as it meant swapping out the 1:1 flattener which I'd finally got dialled-in, so I left this project until early October. I collected 4 hours per panel over a few nights, and then the rain came. It never left. I was only able to scrape together a total of about 7 hours per panel over the next few months.
After a few test stacks, I decided to throw in the towel and process and make the best of it. There are no clear nights in the forecast and M31 is hitting the trees pretty quickly these days from my backyard (or at least I assume it is - I haven't seen stars in a few weeks). Despite limited integration time, I think the reducer and the excellent optics of the AT92 have resulted in a passable image, and it felt good to finally complete it. Time to move on - whenever the clouds decide to move on...
I did use a bit of the Ha data from my
2023 Andromeda, as it felt like a step backwards to omit it from this year's effort. I upsampled slightly, stacking and assembling the mosaic in Astro Pixel Processor, and then finished processing in PixInsight and Photoshop.
Cheers, Bob, this one's for you. Better late than never.
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