M31 - Getting to grips with Pixinsight

[Tzetze]

The new season's here and I managed to get out to my favourite dark site for an all nighter a few weeks ago. There were the usual hiccups and things didn't go perfectly smoothly but I did manage to get about an hour's worth of good data on M31 before the early dawn brought the session to a close.

After having some experience with a trial version of Pixinsight earlier in the year, I was reluctant to go back to Photoshop even though my PI results were far from optimal (very noisy). A couple of weeks later, I splashed out on PI and got stuck into getting some practice with it. I think I'm beginning to get the hang of it now.

With the fresh and archived M31 data, I had a total of 5hrs total exposure and was keen to see what kind of results I could get with it. I couldn't be happier with this for a result, although there are some strange shadowing areas visible above the satellite galaxies. Something weird happened with the registration files. There may be some light frames that don't have the correct flats or something.

Anyway, here's;
30x 600s subs @ ISO800
Darks/Flats/Bias calibrated
450d, CG5-GT, ED80, PHD-Guided
Calibrated, registered, stacked and processed with Pixinsight.


M31 by .Tzetze., on Flickr

[andyo]

Great image dust lanes are fantastic well done

[Daniel-K]

Oh wow !

[harry page]

Hi

Excellent stuff , nothing like a good image to keep your self happy

I would just say there seems to a tad too much noise reduction and a little green showing ( scnr will remove this)

Regards

Harry

[Tzetze]

Many thanks Harry!

The C&C is very much appreciated. I used your excellent tutorials to guide me through and they have been a huge help.

I recall that you mentioned that 'less is more' when it comes to ACDNR. I think I'll get into the habit of using SCNR whether I think it's necessary or not as my red/green colour blindness probably doesn't help in this regard.

[Coco]

Fabulous... !

[zeroy]

Its a fantastic shot TzeTze, you can only be happy with this!

[Sp@ce_d]

Nice.. I love the warm tone of the core. PI's great isn't it.. it just gets better. Harrys worth his weight in gold for the tutorials.

[anthony]

Excellent. Great colours and very smooth

[David_Pickles]

Great image and nice colours! Well done on getting to grips with PixInsight - I had a go with the trial version but could not get the hang of it so reverted to Photoshop.

[SkyJamie]

Awesome image Tzetze

[lensman57]

Your PI skills are a hell of a lot better than mine and that is an absolutely lovely image with tons of detail, I agree with Harry's point about a little green showing but I sit on the fence about the noise reduction, the image seems to be smooth and detailed with good background intensity.

A.G

[ollypenrice]

I agree with Harry on the green but SCNR will zap it in a click.

This is a very attractive image and doesn't have the over-done look of many PI processing jobs. It is nice and subtle. You've gone well into the core, too.

I might drop the black point just a tad, myself.

Olly

[Dougie]

Very good.

Shows what can be done with OSC

I've put this one on the back burner for now.

Can't wait for your next image.