C8 Hyperstar and Atik 414EX

Good day everyone!, I am very inexperience and have took me over a year to buy all the pieces of my equipment.

So, last night I did briefly a Polar Alignment following the iOS Scope Tool, a quick Aligment of the CGEM mount and installed the Hyperstar with Atik 414EX. (I am still waiting for my guidescope and Polarmaster to arrive)

My goal was to at least see Andromeda Galaxy (M31) after taking pictures. Since I want to be familiar with different programs I used MaximDL, Nebulosity (these programs in 30-day trial) and Artemis Capture. Temperature were about 21-22C and Sky 6/9 of light pollution.

Unfortunately, I only grasped two stars. I am learning how to process images too so I give it a try on Photoshop CS.

I tried different exposure from 0.001s, to 5mins. Usually exposures over 30 secs outputted all white pictures. So here is what I got.

I sincerely want to know what I am doing wrong that I cannot take at least a blurry picture of M31.

https://s7.postimg.org/fxay0ks8r/Andromeda_010.jpg

Can you take a picture of the moon?

Joe

I don't know, that looks suspiciously like a dark frame, with a couple of hot pixels. Maybe the shutter is not opening or you chose Darks instead of Lights?

What I would suggest is to pick a very bright star, make sure it is in the frame, using an eyepiece in the draw tube first if necessary. Then use 2 second continuous exposures and try to find the focus point. It is possible that you setup cannot reach focus without extension or something, that is not unheard of.