1st ever DSO the M31

[Dean Martin 69]

This is my first ever Deep Sky Image that i have finished, and is not a blur. I have only been into this hobby for about 4 months, and after some fun getting the mount polar aligned and finding my way around the stars, getting clear nights AND with a lot of help from my local Astronomy club, I resisted an urge to throw my gear in the back of the cupboard, and finally got the image in the middle of the camera screen.

After having some teething problems with DSS not stacking CR2 Files correctly (All Greyscale) I took some advice on an earlier post and converted all the images to TIFF Files then stacked them.

There are 20 x 60 second exposures, with 5 x 60 second Darks. ISO 3200

Still not sure what the others are, bias, lights etc. or how to do them.

Cannon 700D, ED80, EQ5 Pro. stacked in DSS & Processed in Pixinsight.

There are still some "HOT" pixels in there, but im sure that in time i will get there.

Any comments / feedback would be much appreciated.

[Dave In Vermont]

Nicely done! Please continue. For a first image, I am duly impressed!

Clear Skies,

Dave

[baggywrinkle]

That is a bit like getting a hole in one on the first day on the links.....nice one.....you buying a round?

[Vox45]

Very cool pic ! Great job on a 1st try

[allcart]

My first M31 looked just like that.. except it had no colour and you couldn't see the dust lanes, but apart from that it was just like it.

well done Dean, its a keeper.

[PatrickGilliland]

Hi there great image for you first attempt, also impressed.

Bias, lens cap on fastest exposure speed minimum of twenty but I would do fifty min, this gets rid of camera inherent noise.

Darks same as exposure length see you have done some but again minimum of 20 this gets rid of noise camera builds at that exposure.

Lights are the actual shots.

Flats which I can see you would benefit from are more complex. You need to half fill your sensor well. Not sure how to do this on dlsr normally you have a histogram option on camera and this should give you info required to fill the well. Once you now how to measure then adjust exposure length at same iso to half fill the well. This needs to be done when camera is pointed at a light source that is equal like a clear dawn or dusk sky or a flat panel. You then need to diffuse this light I white t shirts pulled equally over lens is the norm here.

If on dlsr you then load all frames into something like deep sky stacker.

There is lots of Web info out there on types of framesvbut hopefully that helps. Will take some experimenting but when run you may find as much as 200% of data hiding in that shot allowing you more processing options.

Paddy

[Robp]

Very nice start to astrophotography, well done!.

[MattJenko]

Way to set the bar high! Extremely good first effort, much better than mine. You have a bit of an uneven background which is easily remedied with a bit of processing (I don't know PixInsight so can't help on how to actually do it). This would make the galaxy stand out even more. Excellent effort, imagine what they will be like in a year or so!

[Pete Presland]

very nice 1st image, one to be very pleased with. the colour does look a little off though, a little too blue for me. the star shapes look pretty good and there is plenty detail in the dust lanes!

[Jokehoba]

fter having some teething problems with DSS not stacking CR2 Files correctly (All Greyscale) I took some advice on an earlier post and converted all the images to TIFF Files then stacked them.

Any comments / feedback would be much appreciated.

Great picture. And this is your first? Mine were way below your standard.

Not sure if this will help with CR2 files in DSS. I struggled with this and had to save all subframes as TIFFs too but I got fed up with the huge files eating up all my disk space! Then I stumbled across the DSS wiki. There is a beta version available which solved the issue:

http://deepskystacker.wikispaces.com/My+RAW+files+don%27t+load+correctly

I've actually moved away from DSS  now (I use Nebulosity for stacking) and, like you, have just discovered PixInsight as a great post-processing tool.  DSS had given me a great stack of M42 last year that I was impressed with. But when I reprocessed this in PixInsight...wow, I never realised my image contained so much detail!

There is a gradient in your image, as MattJenko pointed out. Did you use the DBE tool in PixInsight? 

Look forward to more images from you in the future. Perhaps M42?

John

[Syed Saif Alam]

Hats off man ... really inspired by you .... aahh someday ill capture something like that.... mesmerising