M31, Andromeda Galaxy

[WaveSoarer]

Aenima,

It's overcast here tonight and also quite breezy. Good luck and I wish you every success. I'm glad you managed to fix your bahtinov mask.

Dave

[Aenima]

Aenima,

It's overcast here tonight and also quite breezy. Good luck and I wish you every success. I'm glad you managed to fix your bahtinov mask.

Dave

Yeah, thanks - stoopid me set the goto off slewing with it still hanging on the end of scope, it was very cold so it cracked. Luckily after losing it and finding it again tonight, and a little sticky tape and good as new. Pretty chuffed about that.

Shame about the weather, british weather and all that, the wind will stop me getting the camera out but a good old fashioned visual observing can be nice for a change. Now I have seen a few of the images its a bit easier to recognise their shapes in the eyepiece - double cluster also looks nice 'in the flesh' as well.

Hope the weather cheers up a bit for you soon. Hello to Mrs Wavesoarer, too.

Regards

Aenima

[WaveSoarer]

That's good Aenima. I enjoy my visual observing and the imaging is a valuable addition. A fun thing to share too.

I was working all day at the synchrotron and I managed to miss the clear conditions earlier in the night. Totally overcast when I did get home late. I hope that we do get a decent clear night close to new moon to see some of the faint fuzzies.

Dave

P.S. Mrs WaveSoarer says hello too.

[WaveSoarer]

Mrs WaveSoarer has now reprocessed the sub images in DeepSkyStacker. The resulting image gives a less blown core and there is a hint more detail elsewhere too. The colours have been aligned so the overall result is more monochrome.

[Gina]

Very nice

[WaveSoarer]

Thanks Gina. Much appreciated.

[Aenima]

Yep, it looks great. Mrs Wavesoarer has talent, it's cool that you make a team effort there.

You got it all in the one frame i'm guessing?

I'm getting stuck when trying to process images that span multiple frames, the background never looks even - especially when there's a gradient. It looks like obviously seperate layers at the respective angles ajnd gives the impression of paper pages stacked up and rotated with the faded areas showing the outlines way to clearly - if there is a trick to getting the background to look all the same shade of black/grey/blue etc. then I haven't found it yet.

With the power of digital image processors i'd have thought that this issue wouldn't be too hard to fix, but my limited skill with PS or DSS doesn't stretch that far I'm afraid.

Thats a great Andromeda, though, guys. Nice one.

Regards

Aenima

[PH-R]

Very nice, well done!

[WaveSoarer]

Thanks Aenima and PH-R. It was indeed just one frame and we haven't yet looked at creating a mosaic - though M31 is just crying out for this. I'm sure that there will be plenty of advice elsewhere on SGL on how to do this. I expect that the combination of flats and careful melding of the overlaps in PS will help.

Dave

[Aenima]

I'm hoping to learn more about photoshop techniques, its all well and good getting a decent editor but without knowing how it works it might as well be 'windows photo gallery' with a few extra bits.

I liked the idea of using it to stack the original frames but i'm guessing you'd need to calibrate them somehow else the darks and other extras will not be used right.

The deepskystacker program is at least easy in that respect, you can just follow the instructions by feeding it the right files (lights, darks etc) and press go.

Anyway, I took some shots of M31 that included : the core + top shots, and also: the core + bottom shots - so i'm hoping the core can be central (ie the bit thats in all the shots) with a two pane image connecting top and bottom (I got about 12 of each side) but have yet to set it running in DSS.

Be interesting to see the result, and probably learn something from mistakes i'm expecting to have made

Regards

Aenima

[jammo]

Superb shot there

[petercoxphoto]

Much improved in the reprocessed version - definitely heading the right way!

[Aenima]

Carl,

Tips on masking would be useful. Mrs WaveSoarer is a dab-hand with PS but any help would be welcome as we don't want to have anything that looks artificial.

Dave

Hmm........

Methinks there might be someone else interested in how to layermask....? (could it be a subtle hint, or am I imagining it?)

*coughs*

That question from Wavesoarer sure is a good one.

Aenima

[Gina]

Hmm........

Methinks there might be someone else interested in how to layermask....? (could it be a subtle hint, or am I imagining it?)

*coughs*

That question from Wavesoarer sure is a good one.

Aenima

Yes indeed

[Aenima]

[ollypenrice]

Here is one of the subs. You can see how compact and bright the core actually is.

This shows that you didn't overexpose the core. It became overly dominant in the stretching of the image. Very often folks feel they have to shoot cores or bright stars in short subs to avoid over exposure, but no, this is rarely needed. All you need is to do a separate stretch just for the core. Use a curve which rises steeply and then flattens very early. This brightens the faint stuff far more than the bright stuff. You put this soft core stretch underneath and softly erase the overstretched top core. Easy does it, feathered erasor at low opacity and lots of little iterations.

In this example (the straight line is drooping in this curve: sorry about that!!) you see that the notorious Alnitak is not over exposed in 10 minute subs at F3.9.

You're obviously serious about your imaging so I'd urge you to get into flats as soon as possible. Your picture does need them.

Keep 'em coming,

Olly

[Beardy Bob]

Amazing how a few 20-30s exposures can enhance your visual experience of an object. It gives a nice idea of what you're trying to pick out when viewing.

Darks are very easy (just a few exposures matching the times of your 'lights', but with the lens cap on) and mean that you can stretch the final image a lot more without pink glowing bits from the corner of the image taking over!

Good work.

[WaveSoarer]

Olly,

Many thanks. I'll see what I can do regarding flats. I've been discussing this on another thread about M33. That's a very nice image of the flame and the horsehead by the way. They are very faint and very close to extremely bright stars, especially Alnitak, which makes optimal control of the light curve extremely important. I expect that there is a tricky balance between overexposing the brightest stars (especially Alnitak on this image) and having a sufficient number of counts on the faint stuff (the whole point of the image). Great work and thanks again for the advice.

I'd like to have an attampt at the flame and the horsehead but I expect that I'll need to up my game a bit before then.

all the best

Dave

[Ewan]

Very nice shot there well done, my first was just the core as my camera was at prime & it over filled my frame, bought a piggy back bracket but yet to try it with planetary & weather taking the imaging time away but looking forward to another bash soon.

Btw i think you only need to cover the viewfinder over if you are NOT using manual mode, but doing imaging you would be using manual mode anyway so you should not need to cover it over, light getting in the viewfinder will effect the metering only & not the shot itself from what i have read & tried.