M31 19-Oct-2011 Rework

[cgarry]

Having seen many great M31 images being posted I felt inspired to have another go at it myself. But with the weather not playing ball I had to make do with reworking old data.

This is the thread with my first processing attempt:

http://stargazerslounge.com/imaging-deep-sky/160806-m31-19-oct-2011-a.html

This new attempt is a complete rework from scratch of the data, trying to bring out more of the fainter regions whilst not blowing out the core. As I am finding out, this is a tricky balancing act.

Cheers,

Chris

[Dave Dubya]

Looks fantastic.

[JimStan]

Can't imagine it hardly getting better !

Jim S.

[NickK]

Grr dark halos - the bane of sharpening! However being a natural-nut (i.e. minimum processing) I'm biased - good image!

[cgarry]

Thanks for your kind comments guys. This is the first DSO image that I have still been happy with the day after I finished it.

Right, now onto M42!

Cheers,

Chris

[Tim]

Nice one Chris. M31 and M42 are among the trickiest of targets to process, with such a large range of brightness and colour in them

[cgarry]

Nice one Chris. M31 and M42 are among the trickiest of targets to process, with such a large range of brightness and colour in them

Thanks TJ. I had heard that said before but I really did not appreciate just how tricky M31 was to process until I tried it myself. Still, it is all good experience for working my way up the imaging learning curve.

Cheers,

Chris

[studdedsole]

Jeez that's good

[Quatermass]

Got to love m31 great image such good fun working on this one.

[ollypenrice]

I agree with NickK that your stars show sharpening artefacts. I think the trick is to isolate the stars when sharpening. There's a good Martin B tutorial on here that explains it. However, let's be clear that the galaxy is looking good and no mistake.

Nice one.

If you tackle M42 you might find this useful;

Compositing 2 Different Exposures via Layer Masks

Olly

[cgarry]

Thanks for the advice Olly (and NickK for the same observation). I was concentrating so much on the galaxy that I probably took my eye off the stars during the processing. When you talk about halos are these mainly around the brighter stars or all the stars? I want to make sure I am looking at the right thing. I used PI's HDR Wavelet Transform rather than sharpening but I guess it is much the same.

I do not have Photoshop so handling the stitching together of 2 stacks for M42 may be interesting, or maybe another software investment in on the cards!

Cheers,

Chris

[cgarry]

With no opportunities to do any actual imaging I have been tweaking this one further. I guess I should leave the poor thing alone at some point!

Cheers,

Chris