First light on FRA-400 (Julien Ellie)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Andromeda (And) · Contains: Andromeda Galaxy · HD3431 · HD3447 · HD3765 · HD3827 · HD3969 · HD4143 · HD4174 · HD4322 · HD4501 · M 110 · M 31 · M 32 · NGC 205 · NGC 206 · NGC 221 · NGC 224

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First light on FRA-400

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First light on FRA-400

First a little back story.

Way way back in the early days, when CCD was just starting to be a thing and old school photography was still a thing, I used to spend a lot of time at my local astronomy club. I was a tour host at our historical observatory for the general public who would come on Fridays or Saturdays. We did visual observation and a bit of astrophotography but it was rough...

I mostly left the hobby when I moved from Europe to the US. I wasn't giving up completely and had a few false start trying to get back into it: many years ago I had bought a Meade LX200 10" f/6.3 with the hope of using it for astrophotography (foolish...), then I got a second hand Mountain Instrument MI-250 mount with a Gemini 1 system (not foolish). It never worked out and I had kids, got a new job... nothing happened for many years.  Now my daughter is curious about astronomy and that has finally kicked my butt into doing something about it.

I upgraded my MI-250 mount with a Gemini 2. Yesterday I received an ASKAR FRA-400 and a William Optics ZenithStar 61 that I used as a guide scope (not the smartest move I know and overkill for a guidescope) but after buying more stuff (QHY268m, ASI290mm mini, Pegasus Astro focuser, UPBv2, a NUC, many cables), spent hours trying to figure out how to mount everything in a way that was balanced and stable, I was finally ready today to make things happen. Spent a good 45 minutes polar aligning with SharpCap, configured NINA, swore a few times... then first light! 2x150s for L, R, G, and B  As a total noob in PixInsight, I was in for some pain.

I did not do the raw image justice for sure, but I mostly wanted to see a color image. No flat, bias, dark and haphazard processing.

Please note: The following tables are updated every 24 hours.

Distribution of astrophotographers

This table shows the number of distinct astrophotographers who have been assigned and IOTD/TP award compared to the total number of images awarded.
	Distinct awarded users	Total awarded images
Image of the day
Top picks
Top pick nominations

Distribution of subject types

This table shows the distribution of awards per subject type, compared to the popularity of images of that subject type.
	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Deep sky
Solar system
Extremely wide field
Star trails
Northern lights
Noctilucent clouds
Landscape

Distribution of data sources

This table shows the distribution of awards per data source, compared to the popularity of images acquired from that data source.
	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Backyard
Traveller
Own remote observatory
Amateur hosting facility
Public amaeteur data
Professional, scientific grade data
Mix of multiple sources
Other
Unknown

The “AstroBin Image of the Day and Top Picks”, or IOTD/TP, is a long-running system to promote beautiful, interesting, peculiar, or otherwise amazing astrophotographs, with a focus on technical excellence. Learn more.

Submitted The date and time when you submitted this image for IOTD/TP consideration.	...
Views by Submitters (available since September 19th, 2023) Every image is assigned to 50% of available Submitters. In the event that at least 80% of them don't view the image before its time in the IOTD/TP process expires, it's assigned to the other 50% of Submitters and the process begins anew.
Promotions by Submitters When 3 distinct Submitters promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for Top Pick status. This requirement, in addition to anonymization of images and distribution to only a subset of them, prevents biases and ensures that the best images are selected.
Promotions by Reviewers When 3 distinct Reviewers promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for IOTD status.
Early dismissal Staff members have a lot of images to inspect on a daily basis, and they can dismiss images if they believe they don't meet the requirements for IOTD/TP selection. If an image is dismissed 5 times, it's removed from the process. This streamlines the process and ensures that any bias present in promotions could be overruled by other staff members.

Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	6194550
PixInsight job	4HR43E1CGJZP175VS69B3JOYN0ETPMCX
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	00h42m43s.19
RA (top/left)	00h37m40s.80
RA (top/right)	00h49m14s.40
RA (bottom/right)	00h48m03s.60
RA (bottom/left)	00h35m53s.10

Dec (center)	+41°15′34″.7
Dec (top/left)	+39°29′31″.9
Dec (top/right)	+39°40′22″.1
Dec (bottom/right)	+43°00′43″.9
Dec (bottom/left)	+42°49′18″.5

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First light on FRA-400

First light on FRA-400

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Image Index:

Contribution Index (beta):

First light on FRA-400

First light on FRA-400

Equipment

Acquisition details

Description

Comments

Sky plot

Histogram

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