For this season, this is it.
One year ago, like many others, I was amazed by the
new discovery of
@Marcel Drechsler,
@Xavier Strottner and
@Yann SAINTY.
So, the soonest possible, I started capturing data in August 2023 with the intention to find out if I am able to go for such difficult targets, if I can bring out in an image the newly discovered O[III] arc. In August I was sometimes not able to cool the ASI294MM in front of the hyperstar to -10C. By the time of last captures, in January, the outside temperature reached -10C. Weird hobby this astrophotography.
I captured over the season 186h (or only 176h?!) of total exposure with 4 telescopes in 1 or 2 panels. All data was acquired traveling to dark skies, sometimes just for 1-2 hours.
Even logging the data here on astrobin took me more than 1h.
50 hours were shot through a Celestron C6 + hyperstar with the ASI294MM through an Astronomik 6nm O[III] Max FR filter as a single panel to catch the O[III] arc and the galaxy.
For the Ha and LRGB image, I went for 2 panels side by side so I could get a wider field.
Sometimes I put 3 telescopes on the mount, though mostly I put only 2. Aligning all telescopes to point to the same direction, same camera angles, taking care of synchronized dithering for different exposure times was also a challenge.
All good images were shot under Bortle 2-4 skies, SQM 21+, while the O[III] was shot nearly the zenith. When the skies were brighter (SQM 20.8), I shot some Ha.
I don't know what kind of skies and exposure time I need to pull out all the details I saw in the original discovery. Perhaps a better camera.
But that's something for the following Andromeda season.
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