On a recent trip to Hawaii I went to a star party hosted on the northern part of Hawaii at the Dillingers Air Base.
One of the main astronomical items I wanted to see while in the northern hemisphere was the Andromeda Galaxy. Since it is very low on the horizon where I live and unless I find a tall viewing point with clear views north I don’t get the chance to see it yet alone take images.
At the star party I did get to see it, along with a fantastic view of the night sky, it was so clear the number of stars visible was amazing.
As for imaging it, all I had was my DSLR (Canon 550D) with a 50mm f1.8 lens on a basic tripod. I took quite a few images but many had star trails from too long exposure with no tracking so I managed to pick about 16 reasonable frames, cropped them down and stacked them. The result was pretty ok considering:
M31 Andromeda Galaxy
If I’d known it’d work so well I’d have taken lots more and stacked for a better result.
Still inspiring for me.
Need to process all the other photos from the trip and add them to a gallery…
Cheers.