M31 Andromeda retake

[Bluesboystig]

So after messing up my first go at this classic, last Friday I managed to get 3.5h of data.Given the brightness of the object I'd have expected to be able to extract a lot of good information from the data keeping noise under control, but either I was (again) mistaken, or I really need to learn to process better. I have the feeling it's going to be both  My stars are elongated, especially int he top left corner, not sure why, guiding was really good. I noticed the same issue on other recent projects, but only in that corner, while here it seems more across the entire image. Not sure if it's poor tracking, weight of the camera, or sensor tilt. 

Acquisition: 70x180s, 10 darks, 20 flats, 20 biases, ISO 800, Bortle 5

Equipment: Star Adventurer GTI, WO z61 with Flat 61, Canon 2000d modded, Optolong L-Pro, AsiAir mini, ZWO mini guidescope and Asi 120mm guide camera. 

Processing: Siril: stacking, crop, colour calibration, green noise removal (I didn't do any background extraction because despite trying basically everything I kept obtaining funky backgrounds, full of brighter and darker patches), star removal with Starnet ++, Generalised hyperbolic stretch. GIMP: levels, colour selection and stretched only the galaxy. Siril: star recombination. I have tried to run Denoise AI but I didn't like the loss in sharpness so kept the noisier version. 

I'd really appreciate any comments/suggestions to help me improve. I'll attach the stacking result from Siril in TIF format if anyone want to have a go at the data. Thanks so much!

result_12600s.tif

Edited November 13, 2023 by Bluesboystig

[alacant]

On 13/11/2023 at 23:48, Bluesboystig said:

Not sure if it's poor tracking, weight of the camera, or sensor tilt. 

Hi

Excellent shot.

It's slightly tilted, but nothing bad. Usually simply reseating the camera/ff/focuser assembly is all that's required.
Processing: perhaps go with a less-is-more approach? Especially with the background. There's loadsa detail emerging and the stars are wonderful.

Cheers and HTH

[Bluesboystig]

1 hour ago, alacant said:

Hi

Excellent shot.

It's slightly tilted, but nothing bad. Usually simply reseating the camera/ff/focuser assembly is all that's required.
Processing: perhaps go with a less-is-more approach? Especially with the background. There's loadsa detail emerging and the stars are wonderful.

Cheers and HTH

Thanks for your comments, as always very helpful! I like you managed to keep the colours! I'll give it another go, I'm sure there's plenty I can do better in processing.

Cheers

[Clarkey]

9 hours ago, Bluesboystig said:

I'm sure there's plenty I can do better in processing.

Processing is probably 75% of imaging. I have been imaging for 3 years and still consider myself a novice. Not only is it a learning curve, but the software is improving rapidly too. Give it a couple of years and we will just plug in the images and AI will do it all for us🤣😭