So this started out mostly as a quick test during a six night trip out to the eastern Sierra. My real goal for this trip was NGC1333, but it wasn't high enough to start imaging until around 23:00 so I figured I'd grab some subs of M31 just to play around with. Even though I have the .75x reducer for my 8" F4, I still had to do a two panel mosaic to get it all to fit, and even then I feel like I'm missing some halo from the corners.
The HA was processed in a unique way I learned from Vincent Peris' HA Red continuum subtraction method. It's absolutely fascinating, revealing a dense spiral structure to the core I thought was only achievable using IR telescopes such as Spitzer. Vincent writes about it in GREAT detail here:
https://pixinsight.com/examples/M31-Ha/I also messed around with a different read mode for the QHY268m... usually I am in mode 1 at gain 56 but I decided to try Mode 0 gain 0 because hey, M31 is pretty bright. To my surprise with 180s L subs and 300s RGB subs I did not blow out the core. Since then I've read about Mode 3, and it's even deep well. I'll have to play with that sometime.
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