Triangulum Galaxy

[Gerr]

Triangulum Galaxy (M33) is a spiral formed galaxy 2.7 million light years from Earth in the constellation Triangulum. The third largest of the Local Group of galaxies behind Andromeda and our own Milky Way.

I found this one very challenging to image (low surface brightness) and to process (despite over 4hrs image acquisition time)!

Lights:  62x 240secs at ISO800.  Canon650D with Optolong L-Pro filter. SW200P Reflector on HEQ5 Pro mount.

Waning crescent moon. Bortle 5/6.

Stacked in DSS and processed in Photoshop CS2.

CC's please!

Gerr.

[Gerr]

I decided to apply the HLVG filter in photoshop to reduce the green envy on this image!!😂

Bit better on the eyes now at least!

 

[ONIKKINEN]

You have nice detail in there, all the spiral arms are present.

Looks like maybe you have clipped the whites in processing as the core is very bright, also colour balancing might have taken a hit in the process.

Light pollution filters in general are not very helpful with galaxies as galaxies are the brightest around the same wavelengths as light pollution, also makes colour balance more difficult due to the missing colours.

I found processing only in photoshop quite difficult at first, actually i still do if i only use PS. Its difficult to see whether you've clipped the data and you generally cant see what you're working with until you stretch the stack. If you want to try something else i can recommend SIRIL, a free astrophotography processing software. You can stack in DSS, colour balance and stretch in SIRIL and then do final touches in Photohop. SIRIL is easy to use (for an astro processing software) and makes clipping whites or blacks entirely optional. Also it has a photometric colour calibration tool in it, pulling the correct colour from the stars recognized in the picture itself, not something you have to balance yourself. Might not work with light pollution filters though, as they cut off significant portions of the spectrum.