It's inevitable that every year I image Andromeda. This years take was with a new scope (ASKAR FRA-400) and my existing color camera (ASI2600MC-Pro).
The challenge here is that I live in light pollution south of Houston Texas. My bortle zone is a 7/8. I shoot north to target Andromeda which hangs over the Houston light dome. So I need to capture as much color and faint detail as I can by just getting a ton of imaging time in.
To simplify the setup, I used a color camera since I knew I would be shooting over multiple nights. This makes processing and calibration issues less likely. I used the same set of flats for all imaging sessions and it worked perfectly. Two nights of data were during a full or 3/4 moon, and another night of data had clouds interrupting all night long. In total I shot 5 nights and ended up with around 27 hours.
Previous attempts were with the
RedCat 51 and ASI1600MM-Pro, and also with the
Esprit 100 and ASI6200MM-Pro. The Redcat attempt had really poor star shapes, and is one of the reasons I switched to an Askar FRA400 and sold the Redcat. The Esprit attempt had absolutely brilliant levels of detail but the color wasn't quite there due to the lower number of hours.
In all, the FRA400 performed quite well compared to other options out there, and the FOV was just right for this target.
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