first stab at M31

[majestic0110]

Hi all, here is my first stab at M31!

I took some images of Andromeda the other night of 45 sec exposures each, on a canon 500D at prime through a Skywatcher 200PDS on a HEQ5. This was my first attempt at trying to nail polar alignment and my first attempt at imaging DSO's, but I was quite pleased with the outcome! One immediate question I have is where is the colour? Why is everything all white? Is it some settings on my camera that I have set wrong? I set ISO to 3200, I was in quite a dark sky where I thought there was not that much light pollution. I did not shoot in RAW though (as I am a beginner I am using JPG).

[Dipper]

Well it's not purely black and white in your picture. You would be able to extract more colour if you stacked more pictures.

[majestic0110]

Well it's not purely black and white in your picture. You would be able to extract more colour if you stacked more pictures.

You think that's what it is yeah? I need more stacks?

[SteveA]

I'm no expert on imaging with a DSLR....but

I would try knocking the ISA down, experiment with different setting and exposure lengths.

You didn't say how many subs you stacked in this image?

[majestic0110]

Hi, sorry yeah I did mean to mention that - I only had 4 usable subs - is that part of the problem you think?

[Dipper]

You think that's what it is yeah? I need more stacks?

Is this a stacked-only picture or did you do a little post-processing? Most colour and fine detail come only after post-processing - adjusting colour balance or wavelets in Registax.

[majestic0110]

I did the stacking in Deep Sky Stacker, and changed the colour balance slightly in GIMP. I don't have a licence for PhotoShop and I am really not very good with GIMP! But before I did the post processing, the colours were very white