Andromeda

[yakbut]

My first atempts at deep space photography. The Andromeda galaxy is 2,555,000 light years away. Any tips welcome

[pitabread]

Two comments:

1) That doesn't really look like andromeda to me. I dabbled in astrophotography a number of years ago, and andromeda always looked more "flattened out" to me. Granted the pictures I took were with a Konica C35 under w/ terrible sky glow, but the shape was recognizable.

2) You look like you've got some star blur. I'm assuming these photos weren't tracked w/ the sky's rotation. If you're serious about astrophotography, you'll want to track timed exposures (generally anything over 15 seconds should be tracked). You can either use a equatorial telescope mount or make a cheap "barn-door" tracker. The latter option is what I did and I found it worked well for exposures up to 10 minutes.

[John Ellis]

Can't say I know much about the subject, picture looks interesting.