M31 Attempt - advice needed

Hi There!

Just need some advice!

Attempted to shoot M31 the other night. Was using my Nikon D40 piggybacked atop my XL200 with Milburn wedge. Polar alignment was A-OK. I used the stock 55-200mm zoom, set at 200mm.

The attached shot is a converted RAW file to JPG. It is of one of my 3 minute exposures. I converted it to JPG just to post here. Have been using RAW files for stacking. I know focusing is a bit off, and a couple of dustie blobs made their way on there too!

Does it look too "light"? I took 16 of these and the resulting image is really ordinary after running through DSS. Very light image and a light dome from center to about 50% field of view of the frame, if that makes sense.

Any ideas? Wait until M31 is higher in the sky? Too much light pollution, maybe?

Thanks!
Phil

Attached Image:

And attached to this post is the DSS processed image without modification.

Cheers,
Phil

Attached Image:

Looks normal to me.
You just need to take flat images to remove vignetting and dust bunnies.
Now it's too late for this image but you could try Gradient Xterminator for this:
http://www.rc-astro.com/resources/GradientXTerminator/

Hey, Phil...The "red" sky in you single JPEG looks like light pollution to me. It would be hard to get a very deep exposure under those conditions. On the stock lens that came with my D70, I have found good focus by manually setting the lens so the indicator on the barrel is centered on the infinity sign. If your lens allows this it would be worth a try.