Another M31...wip

[RikM]

With the recent clear skies, I just had to have a go at this one.

This is 60x 90sec subs + flats and bias. I lost all the darks??? I set APT to take a set of 30 and the camera was clicking away, but...no darks on the card or on the lappy. I obviously clicked the wrong button, but I have no idea what.

I tried to take a second set the following night but the Exif chip temp of the second set was 26°C. The chip temp for the lights was 29°C Anyway, they made the noise worse, not better so I ditched them and kept the stack with no darks.

This is also the full frame of my Canon 1000D on a 150P. I normally crop just the centre 75% or so because I don't have a coma corrector yet. I wasn't at all sure it would fit on the frame.

I consider this a work in progress and will add to it over the autumn or at least as long as this galaxy is favourably placed.

[cloudbuster]

despite the probs u faced, this is a nice image rik. i had a go at guiding on m31 for the first time fri night, and im still learning / struggling with the processing.

[RikM]

Well I haven't had a chance to add to this image and as I now have a guided set-up with a coma corrector, I thought I would finish this off as best I could and draw a line under my unguided imaging.

I went back to the DSS tiff output and redid all the stretching using curves rather than levels. I find I can control the noise better that way. I also ran the horizontal banding noise reduction from Noel's Actions.