Frist Light with the ZWO 2600MM: M31

Good evening, colleagues!

After several years of a break, and a first experience with the A7S, I decided this summer to invest in the ZWO 2600MM, a Hem27, and an RC8.

Not yet having fully explored the potential of the RC8,I focused on the 2600MM setup coupled with my Samyang 135mm. Achieving accurate back focus proved challenging.

I’m currently working on an easy and high-contrast target to gain experience: M31.

Despite my efforts, I encountered issues with guiding and technique – I initially left the camera gain at 0 instead of setting it to 100! This resulted in a important amount of wasted data in my exposures. I attempted to compensate with processing, but nothing beats a collection of clean exposures.

Here’s a summary of the data I collected:

• 15 x 180s exposures in Luminance = 45 minutes
• 7 x 180s exposures in Red = 21 minutes
• 7 x 180s exposures in Green = 21 minutes
• 8 x 180s exposures in Blue = 24 minutes (several of which have a significant shadow from a tree in the garden)
• Total exposure time = 111 minutes or 1 hour 51 minutes

Lens: Samyang 135mm

Mount: Hem27

This is my first session with this setup, and I’m looking forward to improving my results with further practice and refinement.