Time for my annual image of the Andromeda Galaxy! This is M31, the spiral galaxy in Andromeda, with its two companion elliptical galaxies, the very sm

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Time for my annual image of the Andromeda Galaxy! This is M31, the spiral galaxy in Andromeda, with its two companion elliptical galaxies, the very small M32 below, and larger M110 above. North is up in this framing, in a set of images taken from home September 6, 2021. I shot this as a test of the Canon R6 mirrorless camera. It is a stack of 8 x 8-minute exposures at ISO 800, blended with a stack of 8 x 2-minute exposures at ISO 400 for the core, to prevent it from overexposing too much, all with the SharpStar 76mm apo refractor at with its field flattener/reducer, and autoguided with the MGEN3 autoguider, with interframe dithering applied, and no darks or LENR employed. It was on the Mach 1 mount. Some light haze added mild star glows. The faint arms and outer glows were brought out with luminosity masks created with Lumenzia and Zone System Express 7. All stacking, alignment and blending with Photoshop.

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Size: 5400px × 3593px
Photo credit: © Alan Dyer / VWPics / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No

Keywords: 76mm, andromeda, astrograph, autoguider, blend, canon, dithering, eos, exposure, express, galaxy, high, lumenzia, luminosity, m110, m31, m32, masks, messier, mgen, pass, photoshop, r6, sharpening, sharpstar, spiral, system, zone