I've been looking to get a short focal length refractor for wide field deep sky and planetary conjunction imaging, and after lots of research took the plunge with a William Optics GT-81 triplet APO refractor. Still waiting on some backordered parts for the full rig, but with the main scope in hand couldn't resist some first light imaging on the first clear night after it arrived.

Second target was a deep sky object one I've been looking forward to imaging for some time, M31. This was a quick trial run as I haven't added the camera rotator and field flattener/reducer to the setup and am still on a steep learning curve with polar aligning the AVX mount. After 6+ months of dedicated planetary imaging, I need to get me deep sky though processes going again too. So, I ended up gathering about 40 minutes of high ISO, short exposure images to play around with on this first go. Without the field flattener, the results are the perimeter aren't too pretty, but I was really happy to see very little vignetting of the D750's full size sensor (one of the reasons I went with WO over Stellarview was the larger image circle).

The other big development for me is that I've jumped onboard the Pixinsight bandwagon. Still learning a basic DSLR processing flow, but I have to say I am becoming a quick convert and am amazed by the power of this software. Light pollution gradient removal has been a rough spot in my past processing, and PI does a simply amazing job. I'm looking forward to going back and re-processing some of my old favorites to see if I can improve the original processing....

M31 imaged with WO GT81 at F5.9 (478 mm focal length) and Nikon D750. Stacked using DSS for a total integration time of ~40 minutes using 20 sec subs at ISO 1600 and 3200. Subtracted darks at each ISO, but forgot to gather all the flats and bias at both ISO so processed without. Processed in Pixinsight: Cropped, gradient removal with DBE, Background Neutralization, Color Calibration, SCNR, stretched using Histogram Transformation Tool, Curves Transformation, HDR Multiscale Transform, ACDNR noise reduction, Morphological Transformation to shrink stars.

Really looking forward to trying this again with the field flattener, longer subs, and proper image calibration!