M 31 from the South Dakota Star Party

New dew controller in hand (see last entry) I was ready for the South Dakota Star Party. I had a short list of targets--The Iris Nebula, the Lagoon Nebula, the Heart Nebula. The one chosen would depend on the sky conditions. So much for plans.

Thursday night was partly cloudy with heavy dew and fog. I stayed home. Friday night started with high clouds, but went mostly clear as twilight ended. The view to the Lagoon was full of light from Sioux Falls, which was only about 15 miles away. I decided on the northern sky. I did a bore-sight polar align and tried to start with M 103. I switched over to M31 because I wanted to image something prettier. I got everything set up and running, but the first few frames were bad because the autoguider was losing the guide star in the remaining cirrus. There was a bright star at the edge of the autoguider's FOV, so I used that instead.

I set up the camera control to shoot five lights through each of the LRGB filters and then loop. That was at about 11:30. Amazingly, the system continued to run unattended for almost five hours! Focus held steady all that time, and tracking remained solid on all but one frame.

In the end I had to toss 25 frames because of clouds, one for tracking, and a couple because satellites passed right across M 31. Here's the result

Messiers 31, 32, and 110

Click for a larger version. Visit Astrobin for image details and a full-scale version.

I know the cores are overexposed, and maybe I need to do something about the blue fringing on some of the stars, and maybe I left it all a little dark. But I think I like it. Thank goodness I didn't cut the imaging short to chase after another object.