Finally caught M31 and M33 together. Plus Cassiopeia with M103

I finally got a good shot of M31 and M33! So happy.

I have a much larger version, should you be interested. In that one, you can see that I was starting to capture the arms of M33, but I really like the spikes on Mirach (the star in the center of the picture). NOW I am done with Andromeda for a while.

I had clear skies on the November 10th, so I went out and played. Brought the 35mm lens and tried for Cassiopeia and Perseus. Found the lens was a bit too wide for my tree-filled yard, which made cropping out branches and color-correction a real challenge. Perseus is an interesting looking constellation and I will try to capture it from a better location. The 35mm may be about right for it, as it is rather large. Nothing from that night turned out very well, but it beat being stuck indoors.

Tonight, the 14th, is a New Moon, and after solid clouds for the past couple of days and nights, the skies cleared at 8:00PM. I grabbed my trusty 50mm lens and went out to try for Pleiades, but they were stuck in the neighbor’s tree. Orion was climbing up the same tree after them, so I turned my attention northward…and upward. I was looking at my list of Messier Objects and noticed that M103 is in Cassiopeia. As Calin was slow in getting to bed, this constellation was at 75º and in the north, over the back neighbor’s house. I really do not like their two floodlights, which burn 24×7. They seriously mess with my night vision, but they didn’t seem to bother my camera.

There is an unannotated version, as well. I stacked this is Sequator and was happy enough with the results. I am sure that Astro Pixel Processor could make something better, but Sequator really does a good job on constellations, and in a fraction of the time. It needed very little cleanup and color correction.

If the skies stay clear tomorrow, I think I am going to head out to the west bank of the lake and see about Perseus, Pleiades, and Orion.