Another from last tuesday... (the maybe, maybe not night) - M31 Andromeda (Core)

[Tim]

So here is the result of tuesday's all-nighter, although there is only 2.5 hours on this one. It is the core region of M31, taken with a canon 350D slapped on the back of a C9.25 with an F6.3 reducer.

Initial stack was 26 x 400 secs, plus five flats, ten darks, two bias. Not sure how many pics made the final edition, most of them I think.

I am pleased with this one, not least because it has helped to answer the question I had regarding M33, and why M31 doesn't have the red patches. I see now that it does, but they are in the main ensconced in the dust lanes, and difficult to pick out at first glance. I am also surprised how rich in colour M31 is, it gets easy to think of most of them in dull greys and blacks and whites. I was also pleased to see some extra areas of dust near the core itself that I hadn't seen before.

Whilst stacking I didn't notice that I had selected 2 x drizzle as an option. This made the original .tiff 1.27Gb!! The full size Jpeg here is a 50% reduced version of that, and the small pic here is 25% of the 50% one.

Cheers

TJ

Full size here: http://ukastronomers.com/Tim/image/8319_large.jpeg

[legion48]

My word, that's a great image TJ. Yes are right to be pleased.

[Psychobilly]

Nice on TJ ...

I lost 90 mins of subs (Taken over 2 hours) of a 4x2 degree widefield on M31 lastnight becuase I slackened the screw holding the 2" nose-piece on the WO FF III instead of the one to rotate the T-mount by mistake and ended up with 90 mins of donuts since the camewra slipped back slightly

Ah well there's always another night...tonight hopefully ... sleep.....sleeps for wimps (or other similar sub atomic particles)

Billy...

[jonbarr87]

Simply stunning!

[Beyond_Vision]

Great amounts of detail in that one Tim. Like you said you can see the clusters of Ha nestling in the dust lanes. If the Galaxy was a bit more face on I suspect these would be pretty evident. Nice to see the structure of it up close.

Regards

Kevin

[Jamie]

A superb image there TJ.

Nice one.....

[Tim]

Whilst waiting for the clouds to clear last night I sat at my desktop PC for a while. I found this image from january which was my first attempt at M31, so I thought I'd post it for comparisons sake!

Cheers

TJ

[RobH]

Excellent work TJ.

Very fine processing job too. You've managed to stretch the outer regions without losing any core detail and the detail in the dust lanes is great.

Cheers

Rob

[Tim]

Thanks Rob, I've had fun with this one. At the moment I am testing out the difference between using purely the 360 sec frames, and the mix of 300, 360, 400 and 600 secs, and also, the various different options for stacking in DSS, I am surprised there is such a difference in the results, i'll post a couple of the others when I've done them to highlight the difference.

TJ