new to astro imaging

[d4m0n]

Hello, quite new to the forum and to astrophotography, ive mainly just been looking with my scope, but i now have a heq5pro and skywatched 200pds, im using a canon 550d, i took 70 lights of 30s exp. 800 iso, 60 darks, and 20 bias. This is the result of my stacked image

ive been trying to do photos of andromeda for about a month now(5/6 nights of few hours clear sky in my garden), but i just cant seem to get anything out of the image, i do the levels by moving the black point to meet the base of the histogram, making sure not to clip. i then adjust curves, and it doesnt seem to bring out any of the image, could someone help me out? maybe im doing something wrong?

any advice would be appreciated.

[Daniel-K]

first things first the orange glow is light pollution you can get rid of most of that by aligning the rgb in the histogram which i have done for you in photoshop. you have the core of m31 and m32 or ngc 205 one of them i always get mixed up at the bottom. i would take the bias out for now you seem to have some weird pattern in your image, just stack the lights and darks, also whe you save your image in dss make sure you save with applied adjustments, you can also align your rgb in DSS before you save it. HTH

[AndrewG]

My only comment would be that you have done a great job photographing the central core (that many images means low noise levels), however you need much longer exposures to bring out the area's around the core.

In my limited experience you will need 4 min exposures if you have a fairly fast scope albeit that is what I have had to do, the following image was using a f3.9 astrograph with 4 min subs, it my best so far but it has taken a lot of time to achieve:-

On the next clear night you could take some longer exposures, stack and then combine the core image on separate layers in photoshop.

Hope the above helps

[dph1nm]

That looks more like a single image than a stacked one. 70x30s should get you pretty good picture. It is also showing posterization, but that might just be how you have displayed it on the forum. What did you use the stack?

This is ~2500s in 30sec subs with an 8.5" scope and a Canon 1000D, so pretty similar set up to yours:

NigelM

[DaveS]

Also I've been reading Gina's thread about noise in Imaging Discusion, and it looks like ISO 800 might be the very WORST setting for Canon cameras. Use ISO 400 and double the length of subs? But then I'me a novice at DSO imaging, though have used DSS with some wide-field DLSR AP a while ago.

[d4m0n]

not sure how to attach as thumbnail on here, hence the large image, this is what ive managed to get out of the photo in photoshop, but thats about it.

It should be clear here tonight(hopefully), will try some more with different settings etc.

[cfpendock]

I am also fascinated by Andromeda. Its distance, shape, and relative ease to see make it attractive to me. I don't understand why you have a problem unless it's the camera. I have the same - canon 550d, but no tracking system yet. So I am limited to short exposures. I took this one with max ISO (i think it's around 12000) so lots of noise. Also some light pollution and four days after a full moon. It is a single 10 seconds exposure. That is why I think you maybe have a problem with your camera - especially also because of the strange concentric rings. Is the lens securely fixed? etc etc etc...

Hope this helps

Chris

[cfpendock]

Sorry, I should have mentioned that the image I attached is of course highly cropped - no telescope was used - just the camera on a tripod.

chris

[tbird]

I agree with dph1nm in that it looks like a single sub. I don't know if you're using DSS, but I've had a problem with it not stacking RAW images from my 1100d resulting in images like yours d4m0n. As a temporary fix I've converted to jpeg and those have stacked correctly.

[AndrewG]

I believe there is a problem using DSS with cannon RAW but the latest Beta version works much better, there was a thread on this a while ago.

I have used the BETA with much better results, has anyone else?

[tbird]

I'm using the beta version.

[d4m0n]

yes i had the same problem with the raws not loading up, so i used dss beta 3.3.3 i think it is, but that was the result of my stack

[tbird]

Try converting a few frames to jpeg and stack those, DSS 3.3.3 is not stacking RAW frames for me.

[dph1nm]

DSS tells you how many frames it has stacked at the end (well, it gives you the integrated exposure time at the top of the image), so check this makes sense given how many subs you have put in. It is possible that DSS has not found enough stars (8) per sub, in which case it will not stack.

NigelM

[tbird]

In my case it was finding 100's of stars but not stacking RAWs but would stack the same images in jpeg.

[jackrussell0232]

Hopefully this will cheer you up. As big and bright as M31 is, it's actually quite a tricky target thanks to its wide dynamic range. The centre is really really bright. The distant lanes are very very faint. The best images you'll see use several layers, in a similar manner to terrestrial HDR photography. Apologies if this is egg sucking, but just want to reassure you that your kit is fine. I've managed to capture some half-decent pics with a 550d, check out my site alphageek.co.uk