M31, take 2

[tomato]

This is my second go at M31 since Astro darkness has returned, a combination of  139 x 2 mins with the RASA8/QHY268c and 125 x 2 mins with the Esprit 150/RC571c. Calibrated, stacked and combined in APP, processed in StarTools, PI and AP. There is another set of data still to add, "high res" on the core, but that is being captured with good old LRGB, so it's not finished yet. @Tomatobro is collecting data on the same region with his SL RC10, and his subs look superior to mine so that's what will go in the mix when all the channels have been collected.

Thanks for looking

[JeremyS]

Now I’ve seen lots of images of M31, but this is truly impressive 👍🏻

[CraigT82]

Wow…some nice detail in the dust lanes around the core.  Is the background sky black clipped? Might just be my phone screen. 

[tomato]

1 hour ago, CraigT82 said:

Wow…some nice detail in the dust lanes around the core.  Is the background sky black clipped? Might just be my phone screen. 

Thanks for your comments, much appreciated. The background could be clipped, the majority of the stretching was done in StarTools and that can result in a clipped background if you are not careful. I will have another go in PI. I forgot to mention I downsampled in ST by a factor of 0.35, the original was 163M pixels...

[CraigT82]

I’ve just had a look at a couple of other M31s and they look the same, so it’s probably just my phone display, apologies!     Looking forward to seeing the result (on my monitor!) with the RC10 data added

[scotty38]

Sorry but I have to ask the stars seem to have strong artifacts, is that just the jpg used for displaying on here?

[tomato]

I doubt it, the star shapes aren’t great in the RASA raw data, so there has again been a lot of processing to correct these, which has no doubt created artefacts. I pushed the settings in NoiseXterminator to improve the galaxy detail, but there is always a trade off.

[tomato]

Here is another version where I have tried to improve the stars a little bit.

[cajen2]

You imagers are so fussy! 😄

It's just a beautiful pic.

[assouptro]

Awesome! 
those Rasa’s really suck in the photons!! 
great result! 
 

Thanks for sharing 

Bryan