The Triangulum Galaxy (M33)

[Chris Willocks]

Hi everyone,

Just thought I'd share my latest image, of the Triangulum Galaxy (M33). 

This is the first image that I've acquired since I had a Pulsar 2.2m dome installed. A permanent setup certainly makes life easier; especially here in the UK, where the weather isn't always that great.

I acquired this image using my Takahashi FSQ-85EDX, mounted on a EQ6-R Pro mount and an Atik 383L. Guiding was done using an Altair GPCAM2 AR0130 mono camera and TS Optics 2" off-axis guider.

This was only a quick process in PixInsight, Photoshop and Lightroom. I think there is room for improvement, as I didn't use any flat frames, due to my flat panel not working. But I'm still fairly happy with the result.

More details about the image can be found here: https://astrob.in/8egwwe/0/.

Thanks for looking.

Chris

 

[MartinB]

You have some terrific detail in the galaxy Chris.  I've always found M33 to be a processing nightmare.  The colours are pretty vibrant and on my monitor there is a little bit of green creeeping in, it's also a little black clipped .  With a few tweeks I think it will be stunning.

[Chris Willocks]

Hi Martin,

Thanks for the kind comments and feedback. You're right; it's a difficult galaxy to process. Getting the colours to pop out of the image was the most difficult thing.

Fortunately, I was able to get my flat panel working and have reprocessed the image with a 2x drizzle; adding in some flats, flat darks and bias frames. I think the result is much more natural. The first version was far too overprocessed.

Chris

Edited December 3, 2019 by Chris Willocks

[MartinB]

Marvellous.  I new there was more to come from your great data

[Star101]

The second image appears much better on my phone. 

I've always found M33 a very difficult galaxy to image. It takes a lot of imaging time to get any detail. I find it has the usual three areas of bright centre dimmer mid drift and faint outer reaches of its arms. 

I think you have done well to get the detail here.

 

[carastro]

2nd process is great.

Carole 

[Chris Willocks]

Thanks for the feedback everyone. I appreciate it.

As Martin mentioned, for some reason I seem to have a green bias in my images. So I've just tweaked it the colours again i.e. reduced the green, cropped it and lightened the background a little.

Chris

 

 

Edited December 3, 2019 by Chris Willocks

[Chris Willocks]

Hi everyone,

With all this free time we have now, I've been playing around with the colour calibration tools in PixInsight and I decided to reprocess this M33 data.

I think the colour looks a lot more natural now than in my previous attempts. I'm quite impressed with the colour calibration in PixInsight. I think it's easier than messing around with Photoshop levels in order to get the colour right:

Chris

Edited April 3, 2020 by Chris Willocks

[Erling G-P]

A stunning image!  Your latest version is the best IMHO.

[spillage]

Nice data. I have found PhotometricColourCalibration good for M33. I have also found running BackgroundNeutilization before colour calibration works better. Just use two previews.

[Chris Willocks]

Thanks, I did use background neutralisation before colour calibration.

I tried using the photometric colour calibration a few days ago, but struggled to have any success with it. I couldn't get it to plate solve; even after changing the settings extensively.

Have you ever had this issue?

[spillage]

Hi Chris,

No I have not come across this issue before. I do click Force Plate Solving in the plate solving parameters.

cheers