Andromeda...dull

[Rudeviewer]

I think the focal length of my scope and camera setup will not allow me to take good pics of Andromeda due to how zoomed in the object is in the field of view.  Is this why its easier to get a shot with a camera and regular lens? 

[Langy]

Have you stacked the image or tweaked it?

To me it looks over exposed for the lights but not in the colouring, which is why people stack the images.

[Rudeviewer]

Not stacked a single image.  Nothing changed at all yet.  Didn't think anything there was worth taking and modifying yet.  I think it was an iso 1600 at I minute.

[Rudeviewer]

I have done a lil bit of messing in registax with the 6 diff exposures and times that I took and its a bit better but not too much.  Guess I just gotta mess with the program more to get used to it.  I didn't have good luck using DSS.

[ronin]

The 6SE is probably too long a focal length, the image formed is proportional to the focal length so the image formed is big and therefore often dim.

Will say you have managed to get a pretty good image with a 6SE OTA.

One "problem" everyone has with M31 is simply the core is bright and the arms dim.

Expose for the core and the rest is dim, expose for the arms and the core is washed out.

Search out DSS, Deep Sky Stacker, think it is free but 100% not sure.

That is what is generally used on Deep Sky objects, thinking it may be better or more applicable the Registax.

Someone may come along and suggest how to get both core and arms looking normal.

[Robbo AR]

As I understand it (disclaimer - I'm still very much in the learning stage)

You take a number of different timed exposures , say 10 at 10secs for a nice dim core and another 10 at 30 secs for more detail in the arms and so  on - probably pushing it as far as you can with your mount (guided / unguided) 
You then stack the various times together , so you stack the 10secs  together , 30secs together and so on (using DSS - registax is generally used more for stacking movie frames)
After that you process the various stacked timed images (either in DSS or photoshop by layering)

There's a lot more to it , like needing darks , flats ,bias etc.

Everyone interested in astro photo's should buy and read this book http://www.firstlightoptics.com/books/making-every-photon-count-steve-richards.html

It explained the whole process for me (and in laymans terms to)

[mrjolly]

I would say that if you stack them and had a play around with the histograms you'd get quite a bit of detail out of that!

As an example, I took a series of 60s and 120s shots a few weeks ago - straight off the camera the 60s shots looked like this:

After stacking and playing around with them in PI for a bit (still learning this so far from knowing exactly what I'm doing!) the final result came out like this (only 5 dark frames, no lights or anything):

Don't be put off by the light pollution etc. in them, once you get rid of that, you'll probably be surprised at what you have left 

[Rudeviewer]

Wow,  amazing!  Was the format shot in raw? 

[Rudeviewer]

and what program do I play around with it in?  had bad luck with registax and dss both.  I have photoshop 6.0.

[mrjolly]

Hi,

Yep, it was made from 10x 60seconds and 2x180 seconds unguided and badly polar aligned through an 80ed - iso1600 on an unmodded 1100D.

I realised I might have been a bit misleading as re-reading you seem more concerned about the size and fitting the whole galaxy into shot, one thing you could try is rotating the camera slightly if possible to get it diagonally across the frame, that way you'll probably capture quite a bit more. The pics I posted are cropped to center on the galaxy but even so I didn't manage to get the whole thing into frame as I'd framed it badly - for reference here's the uncropped but resized:

Regardless, I still think you'll manage to pull out quite a bit of detail from around the core if you play around with a stacked version of what you captured!

[Rudeviewer]

Ill give it a try thanks!

[mrjolly]

I've never had any luck with post-processing DSS. Until recently I used DSS for stacking and Paint Shop Pro for processing. Photoshop will be fine for playing with the stacked version from DSS

[Rudeviewer]

Here is another processed image to see what else I could see out of this image.

[Pete Presland]

it is pretty good for a single image, there is a decent amount of data there. stacking will show so much more!

[Rudeviewer]

If i can get them to stack right is the issue.  Registax is always close but no cigar, and dss sucks even worse.  I am thinking about buying PI and have just downloaded the trial to see if I can get better results using that program.  Heard good things about it.

[brantuk]

Use Registax for stacking moon and planets. For dso's you want to use DSS - it's a tried and tested routine. I've no experience of PI so can't comment on that one.

[Zadoq]

As mentioned above, you should give Deep Sky Stacker a go instead of Registax. DSS was designed to bring more detail out of faint objects whereas Registax is better with quite bright objects like the planets and the moon and does an amazing job of turning a bunch of not perfectly focused images or a movie into quite a sharp one.

[Zadoq]

By the way, if you haven't read the book "Make every photon counts" by Steve Richards, I would highly recommend it. It's well written and full of information. It's apparently aimed at beginners, so I guess I'm a total beginner as I learnt a lot from it (still finishing it off in fact) 

Nico

[Rudeviewer]

I definitely am going to get that book I have heard so many good things. 

[Zadoq]

We've come across a video about stacking. It's pretty impressive I think.

In fact we now love that guy so much we've spent hours watching the informational / training videos he's made.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0JSTF8SGi4

Forrest Tanaka - we're not worthy 

And if you like the link, you could do a youtube search for "Astronomy part 1" and 2 and 3. I certainly learnt some stuff from there too

Cheers

Nico

[Rudeviewer]

Not the best starting image due to the elongated stars but I had to try to work with something while the snow is here and cloudy skies are everyday it seems.  I used pixinsight to get most of what I got here and I still don't know what I am doing.  Hope when I get some good skies and a better focus ill have some good stuff. 

[Rudeviewer]

uncropped and rotated

Andromedaabest.tif