First Light with the Sky-Watcher 80ED Pro

So only a few days after moaning about the bad weather, we actually had a couple of nights with clear skies. It was also about -5ºC across the two days so I felt a little bit cold when I was out trying to use my new Telescope and Camera.

As it was my first night out I decided to be boring and pick everyone's favourite target, M31, aka the Andromeda Galaxy.

So after setting everything up and getting on target (which took about 2 hours) I was ready to start imaging! I basically took 16 x 90 second subs at ISO 800. I failed to get any Darks or Lights as I was beginning to feel the cold and just didn't have the dedication to stick it out any longer.

I processed the image in Photoshop and whilst I know I lost a bit of data in the processing, I am happy enough with this first attempt.

You may notice there are some issues with the focus on the stars along the left hand side of the image. This is because I believe I had some issues in the optical train which resulted in my DSLR sensor not being square to the optical path. The reason was that I struggled to get focus so ended up setting up a very badly held together "botch" job.

Since taking this image however I have found a little extension tube in my telescope case which states "DSLR Adaptor" rather obviously on the side of it. This would have given me a much more firm extension system to help achieve focus. I probably should have checked it out first but I was just a bit keen!