Un-guided EQ3-2 M31 project final stack.

[stan26]

Well I'm calling it a day, or night depending how you look at it, with the M31, I'm fairly happy with the results given the equipment I have. Next project on the learning curve will be M45.

Setup as per sig, ST102 achro, EQ3-2 RA driven, un-modded canon 500D, no filters no nothing , just a T-adapter on the draw tube. Focus achieved using homemade cardboard bahtinov mask.

Image details:

470 x 30sec exposures at various ISO ranging from 1600-6400.

Thats 3.9 hrs of imaging. 14,100 seconds

Stacked in DSS with darks only. Edited in photoshop CS2.

My final image with some saturation/contrast, in....er...funky M31 colours

stan:)

[angusb1]

That is absolutely excellent Stan. Nicely framed and I like the colour balance.

[stan26]

That is absolutely excellent Stan. Nicely framed and I like the colour balance.

Thanks, Yeah I have gone totally opposite with this edit, my others with M31 were subtle less contrasty, but this time Iv gone for the hubble colourful approach!

I have actualy just toned it down a bit and re attatched it, It looked abit over kill on here. Don't know if thats because its jpeg/forum or something, but the tiff in PS looked better.

Stan

[todd8137]

thats really nice

[msinclairinork]

Well that's a hundred times better than my 5min guided subs produced!!

Kudos to you!

Michael

[austen4]

nice picture, should be happ with this one!

[stan26]

Thanks guys. I can't get over how huge andromeda is!

I saved this snap shot of the core area during the editing process. Bareing in mind this is with an ST102 on a 1.6x crop body, so not really masses of magnification involved, this is an actual pixel size crop of the area before I resized the image!

And an ever so slight re-tweak of the final pic, noticed it has a greeny hue. Its not that noticable in PS..

stan

[Quatermass]

Looking great Stan you must be having a lot of fun with this one I am moving on to my next target before I wear a hole in the sky. Was thinking of going for the Crab Nebula.

[Stargazer Jack]

Superb image! Well done

[CelestialHaz]

That is absolutely stunning! Really like the images! I have been toying with the idea of a second scope between the ST80 and the ST102, this may go along way to convincing me to go for the latter! I know a lot of work will have gone into getting it to how you have but it definitely paid off!

[Photosbykev]

it will be worth checking what colour space you are using in PS if you are seeing a change in colour when you upload. For the best on-line viewing the jpg should be sRGB rather than aRGB

[stan26]

Thanks for your kind comments folks, it certainly was a fair bit of effort to get this with the EQ3. Hopefully my pics will be inspirational to people wanting to image on a budget like me. M45 is my next project, not sure how i'm going to get around the CA with it, but Il figure it out....

Thanks for the tip Kev, Il check my PS colour settings.

Cheers

stan

[stan26]

Looking great Stan you must be having a lot of fun with this one I am moving on to my next target before I wear a hole in the sky. Was thinking of going for the Crab Nebula.

Thanks Quatermass, I'm going to snap M27 dumbell whilst I wait a couple of weeks for M45 to get over my house at a reasonable time of night.

stan:)

[Quatermass]

good plan im waiting for it as well but have a annoying tree to get past first might need to get out my chainsaw ;-)

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