The Andromeda Galaxy - My First Deep Space Object Picture

So in my last post I had implied that I was going to try and image Messier 34 (The Spiral Cluster) once I got hold a T Ring and a friend's DSLR. Unfortunately I managed to fail quite hugely at trying to find that cluster when I had a camera attached to the telescope. However, one DSO I always know how to find is Messier 31 (The Andromeda Galaxy) as it is pretty clear in my finder scope even if I couldn't see it on my laptop screen and so it turned out that the first DSO I would ever image was that instead.

However, I am probably getting a little bit ahead of myself here and should probably try and explain to you what equipment I was using to get the photograph. Basically, I had a Canon EOS 1100d DSLR which I borrowed from a friend, I then used an EOS-T2 Adapter which enabled me to attach the DSLR to the back of my telescope. To control the camera I used the laptop and some software called "APT - Astro Photography Tool" which let me alter the exposure times, view the camera image via the laptop screen, conduct focus calculations on the image to ensure I had the focus as tight as possible and finally it allowed me to take a photograph without touching the camera itself.

Whilst the above sounds great I was actually using one piece of equipment which not suited at all to astrophotography. Namely my Alt-Az mount which isn't the most stable, doesn't have the smoothest tracking and doesn't track the movement of the skies exactly so you can get field rotation. So this is my excuse for why the images I am going to show below aren't the best!

Now it is time for me to actually show the pictures, the first is basically a single 25 second sub which has had 10 Dark Frames and 20 Bias Frames applied to try and help the noise issues.

As you can see all I have gotten here is a rather small patch of fuzzy light in the center although I also managed to get the satellite galaxy Messier 32 in the bottom right of the frame as well which was unexpected. My next step was therefore to try and stack a few subs together and whilst some of the images I took weren't very good due to mount movement etc. I did manage to at least get enough shots to enable me to stack 4 off 25 second subs together which I then processed with 10 Dark Frames and 20 Bias Frames which is shown below.

I got a much brighter and larger object here because the improvement in signal to noise ratio from stacking enabled me to pull out more data without increasing the noise as much. I think Messier 32 is even clearer here as well and obviously looks different to the stars that in the field which should be expected as it is a small galaxy.

Overall I am actually quite happy with the images and suspect that I could get some nicer images in the future even with this limited set up once I get better at using the equipment and processing software.