This was my first attempt at taking an Astrophotography image with my new telescope. I didn’t do any preparation and target selection before shooting hence I chose M81 as my first target as it was the first one I identified within Stellarium at the time I setup my telescope.

Since I underestimated the energy consumption of my full gear running at the same time sadly my battery ran out after 3h. So I only have a total integration time of about 2 hours.

As one can clearly see, there’s a slight red-shift and some artifacts visible on the image. After some further reading into it, I think this is due to missing/bad flat frames hence these are likely artifacts of dust particles in my image train.

Next time I’ll make sure to take proper flat frames for each filter used and give my image train a proper clean.

Equipment used

• Camera: ZWO ASI2600MM
• Guide Camera: ZWO ASI174MM
• Telescope: ZWO FF80 APO
• Mount: ZWO AM3
• Accessories: ZWO EFW, ZWO EAF, ZWO OAG-L

Image statistics

• 30x120s / 15 Flat L
• 15x120s R
• 15x120s G
• 11x120s B
• 20 Dark / 50 Bias
• Processed with PixInsight