Andromeda Galaxy M31

[Star101]

Andromeda Galaxy, taken over several nights 1 to 3 July 2019

Wiki - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andromeda_Galaxy

High clouds interrupted many of my 120s subs. I took 100 x 120s Lum but only managed to use 30.
R was around 60, G was 25 while only 10 B. Processed in Pixinisght. 
I've decided I have a love/hate relationship with M31. I don't find it very a pretty galaxy but I do find it challenging to image. And do like challenges

Scope - TS65EQ 460mm APO

Camera - ZWO183MM Pro

Mount = Mesu 200

Astrodon LRGB Gen2 E-Series Tru-Balance Filters

Lodestar X2 on a ZWO AOG and Atik 3 Filterwheel

Processed in Pixinsight.

Thanks for looking.

 

 

Edited July 4, 2019 by Star101

[wimvb]

Nice catch! Too bad that clouds spoiled the fun.

There is a colour gradient in your image, with the lower left corner blue and upper right more neutral / red. DBE with a few samples lower left and upper right should sort this.

[ollypenrice]

Nice, but I think you have masking or deconvolution artifacts appearing as dark surrounds around stars and the bright staellite galaxy?

Olly

[Star101]

Thanks Olly,

Yes, I tried to reduce the stars a little to make the galaxy stand out more. Every time I try I think I ruin the image a little. I need to learn how to reduce stars without leaving marks on the image. 

[wimvb]

2 hours ago, Star101 said:

Thanks Olly,

Yes, I tried to reduce the stars a little to make the galaxy stand out more. Every time I try I think I ruin the image a little. I need to learn how to reduce stars without leaving marks on the image. 

If you use morphological transformation, don't use erode. In stead use morph selection. Strength =0.25, amount = 0.5 an increase iterations. And a good mask, of course.

But best action is of course, not to let them grow too much to begin with.

[Star101]

5 hours ago, wimvb said:

If you use morphological transformation, don't use erode. In stead use morph selection. Strength =0.25, amount = 0.5 an increase iterations. And a good mask, of course.

But best action is of course, not to let them grow too much to begin with.

Thanks Wim, I will reprocess using this method and try again.

[Star101]

Thanks to lots of people here on SGL. I finally got to play with Andromeda using my new found tool Starnet, thanks SyedT and a trick I learned from Olly, again, thanks.

Basically, I took the semi processed Andromeda image. Saved a copy with stars. Saved a copy with stars removed using Starnet and PI. Using layers, I removed the star filled image to reveal the starless image. And hey presto

 

Not perfect but I never claimed to be great at processing ....I just enjoy it

Edited August 7, 2019 by Star101

[Star101]

duplicate

 

Edited August 7, 2019 by Star101