Help! M31 first image

[Sfarndell]

Hi everyone.

This is my first ever DSO taken with a recently acquired modded canon 300d. M31 - 15 unguided exposures of about 20 secs on a 10"LX200 classic, aligned in GIMP. No flats, darks, etc as I was just testing the camera and am so new to DSO imaging, I just wanted to practice taking photos and processing. As you can see, it is rather rubbish and being colour-blind doesn't help.

However, I am hoping one of the processing gurus could show me what this could look like...1st one is the stacked and unprocessed image. The 2nd is my best effort using GIMP only using colour levels, none of the other stuff like curves/saturation/masking which currently just makes my nose bleed.

(click to enlarge)

(click to enlarge)

[Doc]

I'm not a processing Guru so cannot help you but I think you will find there's a fair bit of detail there.

Stars are nice and round so your guiding was pretty accurate.

[SteveL]

Can I ask why you are using GIMP to align and stack, when you could be using DeepSkyStacker to do it all for you?

[ngc2403]

Hello,

that is a good first image, but their is lots you can do to improve the final look of it.

starting by taking flats ( images of a plain white field through the telescopes camera combination ) these should be properly exposed .i.e you the camera exposure setting to find the correct exposure level. take more than 10 than stack.

darks are not so important but do help, take 10 or more ( they are the same length as the exposures you used in the image but with the camera chip in complete darkest i.e cover on.

after these steps remove the darks and divide by the flats to get your image. If you don't use flats and darks then you are limited to a very small amount of processing and advanced techniques will not improve your image.

ally

[Tim]

Hi.

Nice to see somebody else starting on the route to the dark side

It's a nice start to your imaging career, well focussed and composed, but M31 is a tough target at any time, even with a dark sky, and really requires much longer exposures to get anything useful from it. With your 10" scope, even at F6.3??? it takes quite a bit of time to get any detail at all to show up well against the noise. if you can, work towards autoguiding, which will allow you much longer exposures. If you can't stretch to that, then getting your ploar alignment as spot on as possible should allow you to stretch exposure times to around a minute or so, maybe longer.

Your image looks a little red on my screen. If you use Deep Sky Stacker (free) to do the stacking for you, you can also make sure the various colours are aligned, which will help you enormously, especially of you are red/green CB?

On the 300D, use 800 or 1600 iso, and a method of firing the shutter that doesnt involve touching the camera in any way. preferably you can use mirror lock and then have a gap of about 3 secs before opening the shutter, which allows the whole thing to stabilise.

My advice would be to start on a target with a much greater brightness. m31 is really quite dim compared to many targets. M42 on the other hand is very bright, and will give you the practice in processing nebulosity that you will need.

If could just choose ONE tool from the processing selection, it would be layers. With them you can pretty much do anything, but the sooner you practice practice practice, the easier it gets. I found MartinB's primers to be a very useful stepping stone, you will find them in the imaging section, but best to look on Martin's website for the pics that go along with the tutorial.

If you need any particular help with the dslr etc, drop me a pm, i'm more likely to see it in my inbox

Well done anyways!

TJ

[Tim]

oh, always shoot in RAW mode. The images are large, but the extra waiting around is worth it.

[Sfarndell]

Thanks everyone for your input. It is much appreciated. I was quite chuffed with the tracking and focus, just thought that i might get more detail out of the current exposure and I clearly have more to learn.

Steve - I just used Gimp as there was a tutorial on Sky-at-night magazine . Don't have DeepSkyStacker yet but I will get it. Thank you for the suggestion.

Ally - didn't realise flats had such an impact. Darks & Flats are next on my how-to-do-astrophotogrpahy list, along with autoguiding.

TJ - thanks for the all the advice. Will your suggestions on my next attempt. I took the pics in RAW + Jpeg mode at ISO 800. I actually took it using my Revelation 80mm at F4.7 piggybacked on my 10" meade (confused the scope/settings with a pic of the ring nebula I took on the same night... :scratch: ). I also looked at MartinB's primer - excellent stuff.

Thank you all for your input, hopefully next time there will be massive improvement. Still lots to learn...

S

[Tim]

There's a great tutorial for Deepskystacker as well floating around, takes all the mystery out of it