M31 - 4 panel mosaic

[ONIKKINEN]

Our next door neighbor, the Andromeda galaxy. This is a "faithful" rendition with stars left perhaps a little bigger and brighter than would be ideal if i were to emphasize the faint outer glow, but this is the version i liked the most:

And a starless version, but with stars within the Andromeda galaxy emphasized and added to the starless layer for a further stretch. This is obviously a little bit subjective and one foot in the art category as you are trusting my ability to discern which star is foreground and which is not, but it made a pretty picture:

 

The image is a 2x2 mosaic with just 1 hour per panel of lights from a bortle 3-4 zone on a night of decent transparency but lackluster seeing. Shot with the usual kit: 8'' f/4.4 newtonian + paracorr to f/5, Rising cam 571 OSC camera and an AZ-EQ6.

Did not do a bayer split for this dataset like i usually do, instead debayered like normal and then binned the subs x3 in ASTAP before feeding them to Astro pixel processor for mosaicing. Had some mosaic issues with the mono stuff, so had to do it this way but this image scale works well for the image anyway so maybe the right choice after all. Processing in Siril and photoshop with StarXterminator for the starless stuff.

Initially was not going to post yet, but i was itching to post it since i liked how it turned out. Still planning on getting at least 1 more night under similar decent conditions, but who knows when the next moonless weekend night arrives so might as well post it now.

Comments, criticism, thoughts welcome of course!

[scotty38]

The starry version for me please 🙂

[Sunshine]

These are wonderful! I'm so torn between starry and starless, theres something about the starless I can't pry my eyes from. Ah I know why, the starless seems to draw more attention to those wonderfully rendered dust lanes

which seem to show through more in starless version. It seems my eyes capture more detail in the starless version, beautiful work.

[barbulo]

Nice job. I like both, but the starless version seems appealing to me since there are not many starless renditions of galaxies.

[tomato]

Very nice, I’m not a huge fan of starless images, galaxies in particular look to me like they are suspended in ‘nothing’ but the stars give them some form of context. Just my opinion.

[AMcD]

I too cannot take my eyes of the starless version.  I think it creates a sense of almost being 'at' the Andromeda galaxy, with the foreground stars of the Milky Way 'behind you', as it were.  Lovely work on both versions.

[teoria_del_big_bang]

Fantastic mosaic, and +1 for the more natural image with stars

Steve

[ONIKKINEN]

Thank you all, opinion seems to be divisive between the 2 versions which is why i posted both. I tried processing so that i would have the best of both worlds, but no cigar on that yet. Either the milky way starfield suffers too much, or the galaxy is overstretched or requires intense HDR workflow to make the image work which i am not so good at to make a presentable image.

3 hours ago, AMcD said:

I too cannot take my eyes of the starless version.  I think it creates a sense of almost being 'at' the Andromeda galaxy, with the foreground stars of the Milky Way 'behind you', as it were.  Lovely work on both versions.

This was the attempt. Not so much a starless image, but rather a "foreground removed" image with the view of Andromeda as it would be just slightly outside the milky way.

[ONIKKINEN]

4 hours ago, tomato said:

Very nice, I’m not a huge fan of starless images, galaxies in particular look to me like they are suspended in ‘nothing’ but the stars give them some form of context. Just my opinion.

My opinion too of starless galaxy images are also something like this usually. I tried keeping the stars in M31 in there to give the eye some kind of pop to hold on to so that its not just a flat image, almost like a painting in many cases with starless galaxies. What would give the image more pop would be H-alpha, however my wallet disagrees at the moment. This will make a fine reference frame for future mosaicing if i do end up shooting Ha at one point though. Also, the framing is a little bit claustrophobic, could use some extra panels around the corners as the signal does go all the way to the corners in a diagnostic heavy stretched version.

[starhiker]

This is a great picture. I like the starry version more.

[The Lazy Astronomer]

That's lovely. I like the colours, nothing overly-showy, nice and tastefully natural.

The starless version does allow m31 to jump out a bit more, but I think the starry one has the edge for me too. 

[ONIKKINEN]

3 hours ago, The Lazy Astronomer said:

That's lovely. I like the colours, nothing overly-showy, nice and tastefully natural.

The starless version does allow m31 to jump out a bit more, but I think the starry one has the edge for me too. 

Colour calibration for this one was whatever APP made of it with, just saturated a little bit afterwards. Pleased with the result myself too, but it is a little bit blueshifted from what might be considered "real colour", whatever that means.

[The Lazy Astronomer]

2 hours ago, ONIKKINEN said:

Colour calibration for this one was whatever APP made of it with, just saturated a little bit afterwards. Pleased with the result myself too, but it is a little bit blueshifted from what might be considered "real colour", whatever that means.

Well, m31 is blueshifted, so spot on 😁