Cassiopiea and Andromeda

[Stub Mandrel]

Cloudy skies mean going back to some of my 'fails' and using my emerging skills to fix them.

This is a stack of eleven images taken while hoping to capture shooting stars from the Perseids meteor shower on 12 August 2015. Each image is just a fourteen-second exposure at ISO 100, showing what can be done under relatively dark skies. No darks or flats.

Unfortunately there was rather a lot of thin cloud - not enough to obscure the stars, but it picked up light pollution from Burton Upon Trent about eight miles away and can be seen as faint bands from lower left to upper right.

The constellation Cassiopiea is clear at top left and Andromeda is at bottom right. Just above Andromeda near the middle of the image you can see the elongated smudge that is the Andromeda Galaxy. Much of the constellation Perseus can be seen at bottom left.

Pleased to get a good range of star colours, I hope they are accurate.. I wish I had used ISO 1600, the Milky Way might have come up better and Andromeda really would be showing well.

[Ouroboros]

Nice. It's good to work out from pictures like that which stars make up the familiar constellation shapes.

What I notice in your picture, and I see this in mine too, is that most of the bright stars are whiter than the faint stars which look redder. Is that how it really is? After all, white stars are by their very nature hotter and therefore brighter Or is there some photographic effect going on?

[laudropb]

Nice image. Working out the brighter stars with the help of an atlas gave me something to do on yet another cloudy night. Thanks for posting.

[cfpendock]

This is exactly the view I look at when judging sky quality - I use the "W" of Casseopiea to find Mirach, and then the two stars further back towards Andromeda.  If I can see Andromeda, I am well pleased because (from my point of view) it means I have a better chance of getting good images.  But it's the first time I saw an image of exactly this patch of sky.  

Thanks, it's nice.

Chris

[wimvb]

Nice image. Too bad for the thin clouds, otherwise you might have been able to stretch more. The clouds will probably interfere with any further processing

I always locate M31 by the second V in casseopeias W which points straight at the galaxy.

BTW, is that M33 just at the very bottom edge of the image? if you draw a straight line from M31 through Mirach to the edge of you image, there is a small smudge in a slightly darker area.

Maybe it's clearer in the original stacked image.

[Stub Mandrel]

BTW, is that M33 just at the very bottom edge of the image? if you draw a straight line from M31 through Mirach to the edge of you image, there is a small smudge in a slightly darker area.

Yes, I matched up the stars around it with Stellarium this morning. Quite chuffed.

I need to pick out the subs its on properly and just stack those.

[wimvb]

I noticed it because that's the way I try to locate M33 through my binoculars: Casseopeia -> M31 -> Mirach -> M33

M33 is about the same distance from Mirach as M31, just on the other side.

[triton1]

Nice capture and is that the "blue snowball" top right(looks like faint star).Its nice to see images like this so you can practice star hopping thanks.

[Stub Mandrel]

Nice capture and is that the "blue snowball" top right(looks like faint star).Its nice to see images like this so you can practice star hopping thanks.

Only just! Astrometry .net says its the right hand of the three 'stars' in a tiny triangle near 13 And -  the blue star a bit further right is a star!

I'm getting really chuffed with this pic. I think I will return to that spot and try some more wide field shots.