First Andromeda Image

[chriscoles]

I bought a Skywatcher 250PDS with NEQ6 pro mount. After 3 weeks of waiting for clouds to clear in southern England, here is what I got.

I used Deep Sky Stacker to process the images taken with my Canon EOS 1000D. 48*1min, 5*3min, 3*7min. I also used the Skywatcher coma corrector. I am happy as a first attempt but I hope there is much room for improvement!?

[springbok]

It's a good start indeed, onwards and upwards.

[JamesF]

Indeed so. M31 is a tricky target because it's hard to get lots of detail in the outer regions without blowing out the core. I think some people do it as two separate exposures, but I'm not at all sure how.

James

[Star Gazer]

I'm not sure that image has had its full potential realised. How did you stretch the Histogram? If it came out of DSS, then you probably want to use Levels and Curves in a photo editing app to stretch the histogram?

[Gina]

Nice start with plenty of scope to drag more detail out of your image Well done

[chriscoles]

Thanks for the replies. I finally got a chance to try again. Dont think theres too much of an improvement. The tracking is a little better.

I have spent a while adjusting curves. Is there any other steps that can be made?

[chriscoles]

And tonights image

[Chris]

Thanks for the replies. I finally got a chance to try again. Dont think theres too much of an improvement. The tracking is a little better.

I have spent a while adjusting curves. Is there any other steps that can be made?

Good first attempts well done, you could try taking some flat field exposures to subtract any vignetting (lunimosity gradient from the centre fading towards the edges). I'm wondering if some the the brightness in the image is vignetting rather than the galaxy, if so then stretching the image after you have included flat field images should show an improvement. I should take more flats my self, they are tricky to get right sometimes though:) You can buy expensive flat field panels to give good flats but a cheap and cheerful way is to stretch a white T-shirt over the opening of your scope and shine a torch uniformely over the T-shirt, then you want to take a short exposure so that the image looks like a grey card like this for example (not mine):

http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://www.astrophoto.net/images/flat_example.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.astrophoto.net/calibration.php&h=563&w=750&sz=82&tbnid=rn5b1bRqnjje-M:&tbnh=101&tbnw=135&zoom=1&usg=__Qog820_IRC7Chx546Z85EEII51c=&docid=Tt8QRjj1krH13M&hl=en&sa=X&ei=YycQUdC3A83I0AXXv4E4&ved=0CEkQ9QEwCA&dur=23

There is a section in DSS so you can add flat fields and dark frames as well as your light frames, and adding these will basically remove a lot of artifacts like vignetting and dust specs on your sensor.

hth

Chris

[Quatermass]

Great start this one is a tricky devil but great fun to keep coming back to

Sent from my Scroll Plus using Tapatalk 2

[davo]

That's fantastic! sooo many dust lanes

[chriscoles]

Just reading your guys fantastic replies. Bought a synguider for Christmas so gonna have another bash at this!