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M31 Andromeda Galaxy


x6gas

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Hi all,

A single nighter on M31.  In fact this was more a test of the spacing for the Baby Q's reducer than anything else.  Lots of wind which was impacting on seeing, but the data actually isn't too bad considering.  Try as I might I couldn't get the lovely blues I see in some renditions of this target.  This one is distinctly yellow - I hope not too green (something my images suffer from despite my best efforts, particularly when loaded up to SGL - to do with my eyes, no doubt!)

18 x 180s each in RGB, no luminance.

Scope: Tak FSQ85ED

Camera: Atik 490ex

Mount: iOptron CEM60-EC

Guiding: Atik OAG, PHD2, QHY5L-II

post-11821-0-68328800-1414096764_thumb.p

Thanks for looking

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For a single-nighter under demanding conditions, this has come out really well Ian. To get the blue edge, in some instances it may be necessary to 'weight' the RGB combination more favourably towards blue, so rather than 1:1:1, perhaps push the relative contribution of the blue to a higher value. Having said this, you do have many nice blue stars, so the blue appears to be coming through.

Martin

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That's a great image for one night.  A lot more colour than I managed - may return to it this evening though.

Think Martin's point is spot on though may need to protect stars or reduce star size in blue channel to stop halo's growing - or colour noise reduction might work.

Nonetheless great image that I can only try to emulate.

Paddy

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Thanks for the comments and thanks, Martin in partiuclar, for the suggestion.

Certainly when I do the colour combine using AstroArt I get a very different colour... but I find I get better alignment of the three channels by using RegiStar to do the registration...

I tend to stretch each channel with exactly the same curve and adjust levels so that he background of each level is the same but I am experimenting with this data by holding the high and low parts of the stretch curve but giving a stronger boost to the blue channel - still working on it, but will post when done!  Is there another way?

Cheers and clear skies!

Ian

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Great stuff. Personally I'd drop the black point a tad for more contrast. (Rare for me to feel this since I think more images are black clipped than otherwise.)

On the colour you could try this;

Curves. Blue channel, pin the background where it is and put an S curve above that in which you slightly raise the mid values and lower the top. Red channel, pin the background again and put in the inverse curve, dropping the mid values and raising the top.

Easy does it, nothing drastic. Ironically I've tried and failed to lower the cyans in my M31...

Olly

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  • 2 weeks later...

I've tried a few times to get a better colour balance out of this data and - working in PS - I've completely failed!

So for this version I did the colour combine in AstroArt after registering the separate channels using RegiStar.

post-11821-0-91395300-1415478642_thumb.p

Thanks again for the help and advice.

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