M31, First LRGB image

[Danjc]

I knew this target would be to big for my setup SW ED80 FF/FR & ZwoASI183mm-Pro but I also had to crop it a fair bit due to me not rotating the camera 180 degrees after a manual meridian flip. I thought I had framed it spot on with the core in the same place in the fov after the flip but failed to recognise it was now 180 degrees out  🙄 so I had 2 bunches of lights that were offset a fair bit.....another learning point.

Bortle 6, Mag 19.06

LUM 44 X 120s

RED 15 x 120s

GREEN 15 X 120s

BLUE 14 x 120s

Gain 71 & Offset 8 but I'm sure the gain had somehow changed settings to zero for some of the data.

I have tried not to overdo the post processing and keep it as natural as I can but my skills in this department are still not great

I have included the LRGB TIF files if anybody would like to have a play and any advice or criticism is welcome.

LUM.TIF

RED.TIF

GREEN.TIF

BLUE.TIF

 

Dan.

Edited November 2, 2019 by Danjc
Wrong sub amounts given

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Very nice detail captured. The core does look a little pink on my monitor, but that could easily be corrected with some tweaks

[ollypenrice]

I'd agree with Michael. Focus is tight, detail is fine, but the colour would benefit from attention.

Olly

[david_taurus83]

I dont understand, why rotate the camera after a meridian flip? Stacking software auto aligns the frames anyway?

[tooth_dr]

12 minutes ago, david_taurus83 said:

I dont understand, why rotate the camera after a meridian flip? Stacking software auto aligns the frames anyway?

Absolutely, once the camera is set at the beginning of the session there is no need to touch it.

[alacant]

1 hour ago, Danjc said:

offset a fair bit

Hi. yeah, that's unfortunate. You lost a lot of the galaxy, but I found recently that even with a dslr I was going to have to mosaic or get a telescope with a shorter focal length.

I combined the frames in Siril and had a quick poke at the colour. Is this closer?

Cheers and HTH

[Danjc]

2 minutes ago, david_taurus83 said:

I dont understand, why rotate the camera after a meridian flip? Stacking software auto aligns the frames anyway?

It was as I had to frame it with the core off centre to make the most of my FOV. After the flip I just placed the core in the same position in the FOV but this was now 180 degrees out so I had this affect after stacking and the images all aligned. 
 

If my FOV was larger I would just centre it on the cross hairs in APT and it wouldn’t have mattered... hope that made sense and I may have missed a trick ? 
 

 

[Danjc]

2 minutes ago, alacant said:

Hi. yeah, that's unfortunate. You lost a lot of the galaxy, but I found recently that even with a dslr I was going to have to mosaic or get a telescope with a shorter focal length.

I combined the frames in Siril and had a quick poke at the colour. Is this closer?

Cheers and HTH

That looks loads better , thanks. 

[david_taurus83]

3 minutes ago, Danjc said:

It was as I had to frame it with the core off centre to make the most of my FOV. After the flip I just placed the core in the same position in the FOV but this was now 180 degrees out so I had this affect after stacking and the images all aligned. 
 

If my FOV was larger I would just centre it on the cross hairs in APT and it wouldn’t have mattered... hope that made sense and I may have missed a trick ? 
 

 

All your problems with meridian flip can easily just go away!

https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/334568-setting-up-platesolving-in-astrophotography-tool-apt/

[Danjc]

1 minute ago, david_taurus83 said:

All your problems with meridian flip can easily just go away!

https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/334568-setting-up-platesolving-in-astrophotography-tool-apt/

I have just recently set up plate solving as per your very good and helpful tutorial. 
I just haven’t yet put it into practice, but I now know how useful plate solving can be 👍🏻

[Miguel1983]

Choosing a reference image in the Luminance stack is also very important, and as said, plate solving will save you a lot of cursing