Finally some clear skies, if just for one night.
This is my first ever attempt at astro photography and I quickly realized that the learning curve was steep. It took me quite some time to setup the mount, balance it correctly and do a polar alignment. I did both a manual polar alignment and assisted using SharpCap. I had to repeat that process for a couple of times due to the fact that I disturbed the mount.
Once I had that working my tracking just stopped every time I turned it on. After a couple of hours and some research on the web I found a setting that helped with that. I also had to adjust PHD2 guiding a lot before that worked without error messages every once in a while.
Still, I did get 100 exposures at 20 seconds each at ISO1600 on M31, Andromeda galaxy.
Image stacked with Deep Space Stacker and processed with PixInsight. I still have a long way to go, but I’m looking forward to the next evening under the stars.
Clear skies!