My first attempt at astrophotography, Andromeda.

[BobInYorkshire]

So I finally got some clear sky last night and had a go at Andromeda.

My setup is a Skywatcher ED100 on a AZ-EQ6 mount with a 0.85 field flattener and a Nikon Z6ii, 

I took twenty five one minute exposures at ISO 1600 plus dark, flat and bias frames and stacked in Deepskytracker.

I know it’s not very good and I think the exposure times were probably too short but overall I’m pretty happy with it as I’ve learnt from some of the mistakes I made while doing it and I think I rushed the stacking side of it a bit as it was getting late so might have another go at that tonight.

 

[Ohgodwherediditgo]

Very nice. Have you processed it at all after stacking? 

[BobInYorkshire]

13 minutes ago, Ohgodwherediditgo said:

Very nice. Have you processed it at all after stacking? 

Thanks.

I just did a curve adjustment in Affinity photo and cropped it a bit.

Its going to be cloudy tonight so I might have another go and spend some time on it, last night was very rushed as I had to be up early for work.

[barbulo]

Different framing: I like it. 
I’m far from being an expert in AP but there must be more data hidden in that image. 
If you upload the original FIT file (result after stacking) I’m pretty sure you’ll see what real experts can do with it. 

[AstroMuni]

3 hours ago, BobInYorkshire said:

I took twenty five one minute exposures at ISO 1600 plus dark, flat and bias frames and stacked in Deepskytracker.

Looking great. As others have said some post processing should get more details out. Good luck

[BobInYorkshire]

1 hour ago, AstroMuni said:

Looking great. As others have said some post processing should get more details out. Good luck

Thanks, I’m going to have another go at the processing tonight, fingers crossed.

[Dazzyt66]

Looks great!! - there is lots of data there - be prepared to reprocess again and again and again and... well, that's my experience anyway! 🤣

[AstroMuni]

3 minutes ago, BobInYorkshire said:

Thanks, I’m going to have another go at the processing tonight, fingers crossed.

There are a few good tools out there - Affinity, Startools, Siril and the big daddy PixInsight. The final choice depends on how comfortable you are using the tool I guess. I like Siril and follow this tutorial https://siril.org/tutorials/tuto-scripts/ and its free  

[BobInYorkshire]

1 hour ago, AstroMuni said:

There are a few good tools out there - Affinity, Startools, Siril and the big daddy PixInsight. The final choice depends on how comfortable you are using the tool I guess. I like Siril and follow this tutorial https://siril.org/tutorials/tuto-scripts/ and its free  

It will be Affinity Photo and I might also try editing the stacked image in Luminar A.I. as I have both of those already.

I might even try stacking them in Affinity as the latest version has a dedicated astrophotography tool for that.

[kosmoplan]

That is a marvellous first attempt. Congrats.

[Stargazer33]

Great first attempt! You should be very happy with that. The shortish exposures have contained the core and stopped it from blowing out. The dust in the arms is showing itself too.

After you reprocess, if you upload the image in a lossless format, such as .png or .bmp, we can better enjoy your efforts. 🙂

[BobInYorkshire]

2 hours ago, Stargazer33 said:

Great first attempt! You should be very happy with that. The shortish exposures have contained the core and stopped it from blowing out. The dust in the arms is showing itself too.

After you reprocess, if you upload the image in a lossless format, such as .png or .bmp, we can better enjoy your efforts. 🙂

Hi Bryan,

I've just had half an hour messing with Affinity Photo followed up by a bit more tweaking in Luminar A.I.

Here is the PNG version.

Thanks

Bob

[AstroMuni]

13 hours ago, BobInYorkshire said:

I've just had half an hour messing with Affinity Photo followed up by a bit more tweaking in Luminar A.I

Wow. That looks great.

[fwm891]

Try APP trial. Great thing with APP is you can basically throw all your lights, darks, flats, bias.... into it press integrate and let it do it's stuff. When it spits out the image you can tweak it with its own processing tools to correct backgrounds and star colours.

Like most processing programmes once you get into it you can play with settings. I don't now use it (PI man now) but I wish it had been around when I started AP.

Francis

[fwm891]

Great image by the way...

[BobInYorkshire]

25 minutes ago, fwm891 said:

Try APP trial. Great thing with APP is you can basically throw all your lights, darks, flats, bias.... into it press integrate and let it do it's stuff. When it spits out the image you can tweak it with its own processing tools to correct backgrounds and star colours.

Like most processing programmes once you get into it you can play with settings. I don't now use it (PI man now) but I wish it had been around when I started AP.

Francis

Hi Francis,

Please forgive my ignorance but what is APP? When I put that into Google it comes up with loads of “apps”.

Regards

Bob

[vlaiv]

8 minutes ago, BobInYorkshire said:

Hi Francis,

Please forgive my ignorance but what is APP? When I put that into Google it comes up with loads of “apps”.

Regards

Bob

Lookup AstroPixelProcessor

[fwm891]

7 minutes ago, BobInYorkshire said:

Hi Francis,

Please forgive my ignorance but what is APP? When I put that into Google it comes up with loads of “apps”.

Regards

Bob

Astro Pixel Processor.

https://www.astropixelprocessor.com/

There's a 30 day trial

[BobInYorkshire]

2 hours ago, fwm891 said:

Astro Pixel Processor.

https://www.astropixelprocessor.com/

There's a 30 day trial

Thanks, it might be worth holding off until I get some more imaging sessions in and then process them together in the thirty day trial period.

Edited October 1, 2021 by BobInYorkshire

[DaveS]

And don't overlook AstroArt, now at V8. It'll handle everything from your capture, guiding, through stacking to post-processing. Has a trial version too.

[DaveS]

Oh, and Deep Sky Stacker is also free. On occasion I've found DSS to give a clean stack where AA8 just plays silly whatsits.

[sthow]

Great photo of Andromeda , especially seeing as its your first one. 👍

[BobInYorkshire]

13 minutes ago, sthow said:

Great photo of Andromeda , especially seeing as its your first one. 👍

Thanks, I did try hard but I suspect it was more luck than judgement. 😁

[BobInYorkshire]

On 01/10/2021 at 16:50, DaveS said:

Oh, and Deep Sky Stacker is also free. On occasion I've found DSS to give a clean stack where AA8 just plays silly whatsits.

I’ve already got that thanks but I decided to use Affinity as I’m pretty familiar with it having used it for a year or two for my landscape photos.

[dweller25]

On 30/09/2021 at 20:39, BobInYorkshire said:

Hi Bryan,

I've just had half an hour messing with Affinity Photo followed up by a bit more tweaking in Luminar A.I.

Here is the PNG version.

Thanks

Bob

 

Hey up @BobInYorkshire that look great 👍