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Spent 3 nights trying to shoot the Andromeda galaxy, then learned it's 6 times bigger than the full moon in our sky
I kept cropping it out of frame at 200mm thinking I was aimed wrong, until a guy at the Tulsa Astronomy Club meeting pulled up a Stellarium overlay showing M31 spans about 3 degrees wide. How are you all framing it without a star tracker, just stacking wider shots?
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the_claire7h ago
Small correction but M31's core is what tricks people, that bright middle part is actually pretty small and tight. The full 3 degree span is mostly that faint outer disk, which you can barely see unless your skies are dark. At 200mm on a crop sensor you were probably only catching the core and the inner dust lanes, so it looked like a tiny smudge and you kept guessing wrong on framing. Stacking wide helps but honestly the outer arms only show up when you shoot from somewhere with way less light pollution. Tulsa's not doing you any favors there.
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