Andromeda 1/20/25
I’ve been so swamped with work I haven’t been able to do much photography. But last night was likely the last night I’d even have a remote chance at photographing comet c/2024 G3. So I got setup to try and take a photo. I wasn’t very hopeful given how dim it’s gotten and how close to the sun it is. I got something that sure looked and behaved like a comet and was in the correct location, but I’m dubious.
Regardless, since the conditions were actually pretty good for astrophotography (except the wind), I had everything set up, and Andromeda was in a pretty good location, I figured I could mix some photography with work. I could set the camera up with computer-controlled photography and just tell it to start taking photos while I went inside and did some work. I had to throw out a number of the photos because the wind caused enough vibrations to mess up the image. But I still had enough to make a decent stack. I’ve been wanting to get a decent shot of Andromeda for a while. The only photo I have is one from a few years ago when I was just starting to try and get some deep space objects, and it was before I knew how to stack photos, so it was a single shot. While OK, you just can’t beat doing a stacked photo for deep space targets. This was taken from my roof on Beach Blvd, with one of my standard telephoto lenses (not a telescope). I’m still learning the details of post-processing astro photos, but I thought it came out reasonably well.
