Messier 32. That darling galaxy of the astrophotography world which regularly features in images this time of year. Well it does if what you are imaging is its brighter ‘super model’ cousin, M31, the Andromeda Galaxy.

Last night offered some rare clear sky in North Essex. For nearly two years now I have been battling with the collimation of my RC8 and having watched countless YouTube videos on how to tame these beasts, spent more money on collimation gear than the actual scope itself and created more new swear words to describe this dual mirrored nightmare, I decided to put in a final push to get this done.

So, having used a Takahashi collimating scope, a laser collimator and an OCAL to get in the ball park I set up outside for a star test. I was shocked and stunned to see that I had to make a single tiny tweak to the primary mirror when the CCDInspector (oh I bought that too!) confirmed a collimation error of 3 arc seconds. Done. Finished. I am calling this collimated.

The night was still clear and England were heading towards a bore draw with the USA so what do?

Well, when I first purchased the RC8 I had this idea of imaging M32 and also capturing the dust lanes of the Andromeda Galaxy in the same shot. I still had the image run profile in SGP so I dusted it off and ran it. I only managed 2 hours before high clouds drifted by so I called an end (for now) and decided on a bit of EAA between the clouds. What followed was a lovely two hours taking in the delights of the Owl Cluster, a very close up view of the Perseus Double Cluster and a screen filling Triangulum Galaxy. Mental note, I must do EAA more often.

So, here is the mighty galaxy M32 and its show off brethren M31, well its dusty bits anyway.