My Son's first go at M31 for GCSE Photography

[Mogfor]

Hi, I helped my 15 year old son to capture some images of Andromeda during the summer.  Images were taken on a guided Skywatcher Esprit 80ED using his unmodified DSLR. He's been processing the images in Pixinsight whilst learning to use it - with more success than me so far!  

He wants to use the image as part of his GCSE Photography exam next year and asked if I could post the image up here for comments.  He wants to know if there are areas he can improve so looking for any advice that's out there.....

[bottletopburly]

well done superb looks awesome  ,more data the better  

[Brian28]

I would be over the moon with first shots like that one .. well done to him .. and dads help .. 

[wimvb]

Excellent image. Well framed, round, tight stars, background not clipped.

He could apply a pass of scnr noise reduction. This will "warm up" the colours. Atm, the galaxy has mostly cool colours. The core could do with more yellow/reds.

[JimothyC]

Looks pretty fantastic to me, much better than anything I've managed so far. Well done to your lad.

[tomato]

First class image, nicely framed, sharp focus and wonderful detail in the dust lanes. I would agree with Wim, perhaps a little more red/yellow in the colour balance.

I would give that a grade A or 1 or whatever the mark is these days?

[knobby]

You should be proud of him, that's a beauty , whatever age !

[Mogfor]

10 hours ago, wimvb said:

Excellent image. Well framed, round, tight stars, background not clipped.

He could apply a pass of scnr noise reduction. This will "warm up" the colours. Atm, the galaxy has mostly cool colours. The core could do with more yellow/reds.

Thanks, so far he’s been following lots of YouTube Videos, presumably there’ll be one for that as well.  Just need to get the PI process flow from him so I can have a go at a few of my more pathetic attempts...

[Mogfor]

10 hours ago, Brian28 said:

I would be over the moon with first shots like that one .. well done to him .. and dads help .. 

Thanks, I helped with getting the autoguiding set up and focusing but the rest is down to him (and YouTube!).

[wornish]

Really excellent work.  I agree a quick use of SNCR process in PI to remove any green thats in there will help.  How many shots did he take and what settings ?

[Demonperformer]

Great result. Looking forward to seeing more of his work ...

[SIDO]

Really well tempered editing for such a young person you must be so proud he is excelling in your interests...Nicely done image ?

[Mogfor]

5 hours ago, wornish said:

Really excellent work.  I agree a quick use of SNCR process in PI to remove any green thats in there will help.  How many shots did he take and what settings ?

Tom said "Thank you but what am I supposed to do with the SNCR?"  Images were captured on his Canon 750D which is unmodified.  He took about 60 Lights and then calibrated and integrated 42 of the best in Pixinsight along with Darks, Bias and Flats.  Lights were 42 x 300s at ISO1600.

[wornish]

1 hour ago, Mogfor said:

Tom said "Thank you but what am I supposed to do with the SNCR?"  Images were captured on his Canon 750D which is unmodified.  He took about 60 Lights and then calibrated and integrated 42 of the best in Pixinsight along with Darks, Bias and Flats.  Lights were 42 x 300s at ISO1600.

In Pixinsight load the final image you have posted here  and then open the SNCR process. I think it defaults to remove Green.  then drop the triangle on the image any green tint willl be removed.