Finally finished my ongoing Andromeda project

[madjohn]

Just spent three hours finishing the processing of my last imaging run of Andromeda consisting of 6 hours at 15 min subs. I then manually scaled, blended and eliminated the edges of the FOV distortion from the Williams Optics 66 Zenithstar I was using via the lens correction tool in PS then paste it onto the original image I posted up in November.

This image is now the composite of 25 hours of data from 1 min, 2 min, 2.5min, 5,min, 10 min and the final 15 min imaging runs on two different telescopes - namely my Orion ED 80 + 0.8FR and William Optics 66 Zenithstar + 0.8FR

Maybe one day I'll be doing narrowband imaging and when I do I may even revisit this project as there is a nice ring of HA emission around Andromeda that would really set this off but in the meantime I'm well satisfied with what I've achieved using my modded Canon 450D!

[Astronut1982]

Thats an awesome image, the time spent on it has definitely paid off!

Jeff

[Tim]

Now thats deep!

Well done John, your perseverance has really paid off, one of the nicest images of this I have seen from a DSLR.

Tim

[stellawolf]

What a superb image well done

[Gina]

Gosh! It's all in there! Excellent Fantastic effort - well done

[cfpendock]

That is a superb image.

Chris

[FranckiM06]

Wow, it is great shot and really good process. Congratulations for this splendid image

Franck

[ollypenrice]

Oh yes, that's a splendid Andromeda. I particularly like the outer parts which are very subtle indeed.

I'm impressed!

Olly

[studdedsole]

Is it just my perception or is the general level of AP on this forum scaling new heights, there have been some breathtaking submissions just recently and this is no exception, it is staggering what you guys are achieving - fantastic!

[madjohn]

Thank you all for your kind comments - it really was a labour of love and too late I realised early on that my Orion ED80 didn't have a wide enough FOV to get all of the astoundingly large outer halo in the shot (understandably as its normally very hard to pick up, especially with a DSLR) so I had to do a load more work getting more data using my WO 66 Zenithstar to get the outer edges of the shot just to get the image scale right.

Olly, I showed you the original smaller FOV image on my mobile phone when I stayed with you in December. I finally got the data and time to finish this marathon project only a few days ago and I'm so pleased how it finally came out after all the work

[Mr Spock]

That's a really nice image. It shows what can be done with a DSLR.

[Moon monkey]

thats lovely well done ....

[andyo]

Fantastic image well worth the time you have spent on it

[Steve 1962]

Very deep, very subtle and very natural looking - that's a real achievement. Just great.

[kid rok]

Awesome image

[VigdisVZ]

Great job!

[robbie c]

That is superb well done

[Mik3]

Impressive, just shows what you can achieve with a DSLR.

[springbok]

Fantastic image from a DSLR, well done.

[r3i]

A great image - well worth the effort.

[RobH]

Really top drawer image there, with anything, and for a DSLR, I'm with Tim in that I don't remember seeing a better one.

Processing is very subtle, the image doesn't look pushed but is very deep, which shows the time on target. This is a very good example of the fact that if you want really high quality results, you've got to put the time in.

Impressive indeed

Rob

[mgirdwood]

Persistence pay off. A very Fine image. congrats

[george7378]

Absolutely perfect - is that faint halo of nebulosity surrounding the main galaxy actually part of M31?

[madjohn]

Hello George - yes that is part of Andromeda, that's why I had to shoot a load more data using the WO66 as I hadn't realised just how large an area M31 is spread over, astounding really!

I hadn't realised just how much of the halo just drifts off from the main body of the galaxy which is understandable as I hadn't thought that my humble 450D would pick it up!

[madjohn]

Just ordered a A1 print to go on my wall from the excellent astro photo specialists Imagepallette.com.

I couldn't resist doing a final tweak to emphasise the dust lanes to the core and enhancing the colours of the disc before I sent off the Tiff file to the developers.

This is most definetly the last time I'm adjusting and tweaking this image!...... until I get some HA data in the future!

Tweaked image on left - original on right