This was a beautiful October Ohio weekend with highs in the 70s and golden leaves on the trees. No real moisture to speak of for three nights in a row. Friday, Saturday, Sunday nights were all clear skies (except for some choppy clouds as Saturday night started). And this was in near proximity to the new moon.

I had tried Andromeda twice when I was getting started a couple years ago, and I wasn't pleased with the results. This time I'm doing photography over three nights, capturing a lot of data, using a new insane camera, and blending broadband and narrowband. I think this is my best Andromeda Galaxy project to date.

A few firsts on this weekend:
First time doing flats and dark flats with a OSC camera, my new QHY268C. The Ekos calibration wizard makes it pretty easy.
First time shooting Andromeda with the new camera.
First time mixing L-PRO and Triad Ultra Quad Narrowband filters into a single picture.
First time using the new QHY268C with the 0.8 field flattener, so I had to quickly create an updated profile in Ekos.
First time using RSYNC with certificate-based auth to the Astroberry Raspberry Pi 4 to transfer photos to my M1 MacBook Pro without password prompts every time.
First time leaving my scope set up in the yard for three days straight, covered with plastic between nights
First time collecting this much data for any target

I battled Ekos crashes at the beginning of each night's session. They typically happened when doing solving or after the second capture in the sequence. Quite frustrating. Turned on logging. Still haven't figured out the root cause yet.

This is from my Bortle 6ish backyard in central Ohio.

Total exposure: 9+ hours
2022-10-21 107 x 120" SkyTech L-Pro Max filter
2022-10-22 98 x 120" Radian Triad Ultra Quad Narrowband filter
2022-10-23 78 x 120" Radian Triad Ultra Quad Narrowband filter
Flats, Dark Flats, Darks

Total processed frames: 8 hours
10/21/22 106x120" SkyTech L-Pro Max
10/22/22 71x120" Radian Triad Ultra Quad Narrowband
10/23/22 64x120" Radian Triad Ultra Quad Narrowband
241x120" = 8 hours total exposure processed

Camera Settings:
QHY268C
Mode 1 high gain
Gain trying 60 this time instead of 56 after seeing a few other folks trying it, wondering if that will help with noise
Offset 30
USB speed 10
Temp -10C

Processing:
APP: Remove light pollution, Calibrate Star Color, Reduce stars, Crop
GIMP: Crop, Levels (all channels), Levels (green mid sweep), Curves, Shadows-Highlights, Hue-Chroma (slight boost on chroma), Color Temperature, Scale

So the first draft of this image is just the first three hours of L-PRO MAX filter with a whimsical starless processing from APP. Experimenting and learning this new feature. I like starless, because you can see the dust lanes much better. However, this particular rendition looks like a party of fireflies hanging out in the Andromeda Galaxy, a bit of an art piece. The bright center has an odd hour glass look from the star reduction. I've added the quad narrowband filter in a subsequent revision to draw out the Ha in the dust lanes and to get a better version of the star reduction.