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The Triangulum Galaxy


alexbb

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At the same astro party where I shot the Pleiades and partially Iris + the surroundings, I started gathering data for M33.

For this image I used only a SkyWatcher 150PDS through which I recorded the photons on an ASI1600MMC.

Curiously enough, I shot ~3.5h of luminance there under Bortle 2 skies, but a simple STF in PixInisght revealed less details than in 4h of luminance (through a LP filter) shot from home under Bortle 6-7 skies.

Nevertheless, I put all the luminance together, I shot another 40mins of each RGB + 1h45min of Ha and made an image. A bit of colour only I also borrowed from an image I made 2 years ago, but in a small ratio.

For full resolution: https://www.astrobin.com/yqr8xe/

image.thumb.png.7323f772757b490aa337649b75a46baf.png

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4 hours ago, alan potts said:

That's very nice Alex, I made a start on this the other nigh only to realise after an hour i had forgotten to cool the camera with all the other things I had to do on the new mount, PA, cal etc.

Alan

I do that all the time.  I had to throw away a ton of data from two clear nights earlier this year because of this!

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On 11/10/2019 at 17:58, alan potts said:

That's very nice Alex, I made a start on this the other nigh only to realise after an hour i had forgotten to cool the camera with all the other things I had to do on the new mount, PA, cal etc.

Alan

Thank you, Alan! After I connect all the cables, my habit is first to start cooling the camera. Then I proceed with the alignment, focusing, calibrating guiding, etc. By the time I finished setting up, the camera is probably cooled.

On 11/10/2019 at 18:46, Craney said:

Very nice image Alex.

    I struggle to get defined spiral arms with this object, but you have caught them a treat.. and with a  150PDS.... marvellous.

Thank you, Craney! I used a few more MLT layers than usually and I also increased the parameters values higher too. It helps in making the spiral arms stand out more obviously. My 150PDS was a bit tuned. It has everything flocked, the focuser was tightened, the secondary mirror was replaced with a larger one too. I could have been more careful with the collimation/tilt, you can see to the bottom-left corner that the stars become elongated, but after the first night of lights I didn't want to mess up with the camera as that would imply to re-adjust a few things and retake the flats and it didn't actually bother me that much.

On 11/10/2019 at 22:06, kirkster501 said:

This is really nicely done.  It is difficult to get the right  balance with M33 (and M31/M81 as well) between the background sky and the brightness of the galaxy.

Thanks! I found M31 much easier to process than M33. I didn't give M81 and M82 a real try yet as from where I live I get some nasty gradients depending where I'm pointing the scope. The IFN stands no chance to be obviously distinguished from the gradients so these have to wait until I carry the scope to somewhere dark. I do have good highlights for these 2 galaxies though.

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