My Notes:

Captured on the night of September 5–6 from 21:57 to 01:04 in Northern Lincoln, Nebraska. I collected 90 2-minute subs (10,800 seconds total) while testing the ASIAIR Live setting that auto-stacked with its own darks, flats, and bias stacked frames, so I didn’t have separate calibration files later in Siril when I processed this. The “final” image created by the ASIAIR was unacceptable.

This was taken with my Celestron NexStar 6SE at f/10 (1500 mm) and a ZWO ASI2600MC controlled by ASIAIR, no filters. After the session, when reviewing the subs I noticed the stars blurred and stretched the closer they got to the edge of my image. I initially suspected collimation issues, but a check confirmed the scope was aligned; the problem was that the conversion tube between the telescope and camera was too narrow for the sensor, which produced pronounced coma star distortion. I decided to process the data anyway since this was my first try at using the new camera and ASIAir. I used the following software: Siril → GraXpert → Siril → Topaz Photo → Photoshop → Siril. The arms show some detail, but the amount of background noise was hard to edit around.

A historical note: NGC 7331 was discovered by William Herschel in 1784. Originally cited as a Milky Way analog in terms of size and structure, recent discoveries have revealed that the Milky Way is a Barred Spiral, whereas this galaxy is unbarred. The faint edge-on companion galaxies in the field are popularly nicknamed the “Deer Lick Group,” a moniker popularized by amateur astronomer Tomm Lorenzin after Deer Lick Gap in North Carolina.