Grinde

There are times when new images pop up that changes the way we look at things... The hubble deep field, for instance, made us realise how much "stuff" there really is even in the emptiest parts of the sky. And this mosaic of Orion will forever change the way I look upon Orion on the sky, it's simply the best widefield I've ever seen, period. I love the way the whole image looks so "uniform", how the big structures kept the same level of quality across many panels, there simply aren't any visible telltale signs of this being a 30 panel mosaic (except for the ridiculous number of pixels). How's this even possible? Top job guys, we're very grateful you made all this possible, thanks for sharing! Sign me up if you start selling big prints of this Jonas

There will be futuristic stuff regulating the observatory-bandwidth so we won't strangle the data-pipeline too much! And since the rigs are fully automated, no user-inputs will be required during imaging, just submitting the imaging-requests which can be done anytime through any web-browser device such as smartphones, tablets & so on. I'm very curious what can be done from Les Granges top-quality skies, since this image was shot under quite crappy conditions compared to Olly's!

The image is cursed, I keep looking at it as well I just received a list of both old recent novas within M31 that I'll try to add to the annotation when I get the time...

That's a great question, where do I go from here? To Procence, actually. My rig will be transported down to the new remote observatory this summer where it will share roof with 3 remote rigs. My horrible Swedish seeing is holding me back too much since I want to fully unleash my rigs potential under perfect skies. Everyone who've visited Olly Penrice's location knows what I'm talking about, there's no coincidence so much astronomy goes on in that region. So with significantly darker skies and probably 4 times as many clear nights as my part of Sweden, I will probably start doing real big & crazy(stupid) projects since I have a hard time saying no to challanges. & I belive Mr.Penrice once dared me to make a full mosaic of the entire cygnus-loop at this resolution, so yeah, I'm just getting started Funny, I know exactly which cluster you meant by reading your post! I remember myself thinking exactly the same thing! Just imagine the view from those locations, especially from C275! One can dream...

I want to extend my most humble and sincere thanks to all of you who enjoyed and commented my image!!! It's been a long journey and I'm very happy to be able to share this epic "space-voyage to andromeda and back" with all of you. Seeing so many ppl being inspired and encouraged in exploring this fantastic galaxy really makes my day! It definatelly makes up for all my hard work, and it's already making me look forward to my next project, what ever that may be!A lot of ppl might think I'm crazy, spending all this time and and money on astrophotography... But I'm really making my childhood dream come true, exploring nebulas, galaxies and beyond. My telescope is my spaceship and the ccd is my window. I'm living my dream. Those who don't, they are the ones who's crazy So to all of you... Thanks! At f/3.8 and under my skies, 3 minutes was enough to make the background in my subs sky-limited. Increasing sub-lengths beyond that won't bring out fainter background-galaxies (since the sky is "outshining" the weaker ones). In fact, longer exposures would reduce the dynamic range in this photo, bloating more stars and blowing out the core of M 31, so I see no point of going for even longer exposures on this target since its entire dynamic range fits within my cameras dynamic range. The only target I've shot so far that motivates the hassle of multi-length exposures is M42. But for all other than M42, I stick with a single sub-length for all my filters. Note that these are all my personal opinions based on my own experiences, not to be taken too seriously Great idea!! But unfortunately I belive the subs for that particular mosaic-panel was shot during a short period of a few days in the same week, but I'll definately have a look! Perhaps compare it with the earlier M31's I shot with my 190MN. Thank you! And once again the pleasure was all mine, thanks for giving me the opportunity of coming down & meeting you all, what a fantastic astro-community you have! Hearing other people being inspired by my work is making it all the hard work worth it. Every single night of cursing the moon, clouds, photoshop & other infernal forces us astrophotographers have to fight all to often Thanks! Thanks Gina! "Out of this world" was my state of mind while processing this... Over and over again I found my self not processing, but exploring I don't mind my work being used as wallpaper or toiletpaper as long as it's for personal use But just a quick reminder to all of you thinking of printing it: at home with your own printer is OK, but taking it to a printing-lab without my permission to do so would be a copyright-infringement and against the law & so on. (And don't think of sending it to a magazine under another name, because I will find you Just like I found someone else posting my Rosette Nebula last year (ended up in S@N magazine). We settled things like gentlemen with no need for Judge Judy to step in... But if it happens again, I will come after you. Of course I have my self to blame by posting stuff in full resolution, but I guess it's the closest thing I have to "artistic pride", I don't want to castrate my work by downsizing it or slapping enormous copyright-labels & watermarks all over the image.Don't exploit my work, explore it!

Thanks for your compliments John, I'm very happy you enjoyed my work Thanks!! It feels like I've been on a month-long expedition to Andromeda, exploring clusters & dustclouds through a panoramic window, (which is partly the truth as well) and I'm very happy I'm able to share this experience with the rest of you! Regarding the 3minute subs (180s), That was my maximum exposure-length with the lum filter without overexposing the core of the galaxy, the fast focal-ratio of f/3.8 really speed things up, and since the background sky overpowered the readnoise-level I doubt anything would be gained by going for longer subs. And with my crappy seeing and lots of moving clouds, less data got wasted with the short subs and the stars less bloated and less burned out cores.

Hi guys!I finally managed to decide I'm done processing my insane photoproject of digging deep inside M31.Long story short: One picture of M31, 27megapixel 2x2 mosaic, +3 months of imaging in crappy weather, 18 separate nights, 534 separate exposures, +150 hours of processing, 1233 manually annotated objects inside M31.(images in the end of this post, lots of "bla bla" first)I had a great start last autumn with loads of clear nights, which made me think it be a quick stab to make a 2x2 mosaic (my first mosaic btw) of M 31 since my f.o.v is to narrow to capture M31 in one frame...But pretty much as soon as I started, the swedish weather turned into a mess which made me shoot M31 during 18(!) separate nights, during more than 3 months(!).I also spent countless of hours studying the M31 Atlas available online at: http://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/ANDROMEDA_Atlas/frames.htmlIt contains +40 annotated plates of M31 captured with Kitts Peak 4m telescope and contains +1000 globular clusters, open clusters, stellar ascossiations and dust-clouds inside M31.By looking at those charts, I manually annotated 1233 objects in my image, along with names & outlines (except for dustcloud-names, since it cluttered the image too much)Here's what I found within my image:232 Globular Clusters235 Open Clusters140 Stellar Assosciations626 Dust CloudsData captured using ACP + SchedulerCalibration was done in Maxim, registration & stacking + mosaic-merging done in PI, the rest in photoshop.Gear:Telescope: Orion Optics AG12Camera: QSI 583 wsg-8Mount: 10Micron GM 2000 HPSGuiding: UnguidedSummary of exposures:Lum: 364 x 180s / 1092 minutesRed: 39 x 300s / 195 minutesGreen : 36 x 300s / 180 minutesBlue : 43 x 300s / 215 minutesHa : 52 x 900s / 780 minutesTotal time: 2462 minutes / 41 hoursHere are a few 100% crops so you can appreciate the level of resolution and the hard work behind it.(note Hubbles famous Cepheid, marked as "Var 1")Also, here's one of the charts used for annotation along with a matching crop from my image:If you're not using a mobile device, I highly recommend following the links to my homepage where the image is presented in full resolution along with selectable annotation-layers containing the following:Globular ClustersOpen ClustersDark NebulaeStellar AssociationsGrid + DSO'sIt was really mind-boggling processing a image of this scale, realizing that all those fuzzy spots visible inside the galaxy are actually open clusters and globular clusters, along with Ha-regions and much more!Unfortunately mobile devices usually downscale the huge 27MP resolution images and have trouble with the annotation-layers, so if you're using a computer(highly recommended), click the following images to be taken to my homepage where you can select which layers of annotation to be displayed, as well as the choice of 3 different resolutions. Otherwise there are direct-links to all versions below the images in this thread.Direct-links to images, No annotation:http://www.grinderphoto.se/pics/Med_102.jpg - (1024px width)http://www.grinderphoto.se/pics/Large_102.jpg - (3500px width)http://www.grinderphoto.se/pics/Full_102.jpg - (+6000px width)Direct-links to images, Annotated:http://www.grinderphoto.se/pics/Med_102_Annotated.jpg - (1024px width)http://www.grinderphoto.se/pics/Large_102_Annotated.jpg - (3500px width)http://www.grinderphoto.se/pics/Full_102_Annotated.jpg - (+6000px width)Thanks for watching, I hope you enjoy exploring all the details in this fantastic galaxy!Best RegardsJonas Grindehttp://www.grinderphoto.se