M31 First Proper Attempt 80ED

[Phantom]

Took this, this evening with a 80ED and a 1000D at ISO 1600 image is 15 subs each 15 seconds cant track for long as only have a supatrak mount.

[red dwalf]

nice like it alot, the scope you use, is it the Celestron c80 edr that flow are selling ?

would like one myself, also where did you buy the 1000d from ? have just made up my mind today to buy one but don`t know the best place to buy from as i`m new to dslr`s,

cheers Rob

[barkis]

The galaxy is just starting to appear. I tried to bring more out, but there is not enough there I'm afraid, though I'm no processing expert. I think a lot more data is needed. I know it's difficult when your subs durations are limited, that's why you need a lot more of them. You have the Ideal camera for the job though.

Ron.

[Phantom]

Am quite happy with the outcome as I think the focus is pretty much spot on and without a goto and pretty light polluted skies plus the moon being up I found M31 straight away. I think if you squint and use you imagination you can just maybe make out the dust lanes and is that M32 and M110 in the shot aswell?

Yes the scope is the Celestron 80ED bought mine from FLO and am really happy with it. I bought the camera with 18-55mm lens kit from Argos only because it was the cheapest place that had it in stock, am very happy with this camera as well.

[Psychobilly]

You wont go far wrong with the 1000D... Just keep adding a load more subs and more and more of our "neighbour" will appear...

Peter...

[Cloudwatcher]

Thought I'd have a lunchtime play to see if I could draw out a bit of detail on an enlarged image. Started to see strange artifacts appearing in the shape of 'dotted snakes' (see enhanced R/H side) an wonder if anyone knows what causes this affect.

[rikyuu]

could they be hot pixels? As the mount was an ALT AZ, the field would rotate slightly, but the hot pixels would stay in the same place, or in reverse, DSS would keep the field in the same place, but the hot pixels would rotate (although they're not exactly going in an arc, so maybe wrong. I did get something like that when I stacked ALT/AZ subs though - ah it would also be down to the tracking which may not be perfect so DSS may have jiggled it a bit to align the stars. hence the snake shapes).

PS, that's a huge amount of detail you've brought out from very little data, I'm amazed again!

[Beyond_Vision]

Well done, it's nice feeling capturing a galaxy for the first time. The artifacts are hot pixels. As other have said taking lots of images will help to bring out more detail. It's quite surprising how far Andromeda extends from it's bright core. Deep sky stacker has an option to remove hot pixels or if you have enough frames a Sigma Delta stacking regime will get rid of these artifacts.

Regards

Kevin

[Phantom]

Your pulling my leg that isnt the same photo, SURELY!!! i am totaly gobsmaked at the detail you have managed to pull out, how on earth did you do that!?!?!?!?!? i have the full RAW file before i resized to upload to the forum if that will help? PLEASE tell me what you did to bring out the detail

Regards.

[jgs001]

Off to a very nice start there. Push it and see how far you can get on the subs. When I had a go at M31 last year in AltAz I was getting away with 120s subs (although I was losing 50% of them to drive train errors). And get lots more of them.

[Phantom]

Oh forgot to ask, what are hot pixels and what can i do to prevent them?

[Phantom]

Its ok answered my own question, so to remove the hot pixels I need to take some dark frames?

[Phantom]

I have just been reading up on this post processing stuff and I think a major mistake I have made is using GIMP (I use Linux) to process my files which I have just learned doesn’t handle 16bit images and will only work on 8bit images so there must be even more detail hidden away in the initial image that I have just thrown away. I really need to learn how you enhanced the above image I simply cannot believe there was that much detail there to begin with…………….amazing.

[Cloudwatcher]

Don't know if I can be of much help to you Phantom,what with you being a Linux/GIMP guy and me a Mac/Photoshop type.

I don't know what tools are available with GIMP but if layers and levels are included that would be the place to start. If you make a layer and play around with levels this will show rough detail that,in photoshop anyway,can then be enhanced with such tool as Dodge,Burn,Hue/Saturation,Sharpen,Blur etc.etc.........

See attached rough image where above tools have been used on an additional layer to provide a working base to be refined.

[Cloudwatcher]

Strange! Image didi not appear.

Will try again.

Success! You will see these actions do show the beginings of structure and also stacking defects but the latter can be dealt with when refining the image.

[Phantom]

Yes GIMP has those features but i think not being able to handle a 16bit image is a bit limited. I run a Windows Virtual machine for capturing and stacking so will install Photoshop on that to play around with the image and see what i can pull out of the 16bit image.

[Phantom]

If anyone is interested and could possible help me with my post processing i have uploaded the 16bit Tiff file for the above image so that should include more data i have also used DSS to remove any hot pixels and i also found 2 previous attempts of 20 second exposures which i stacked so there might be more information to pull out.

The file is located at:

M31_4mins.tiff

[tarqs101]

Amazing how that detail can begin to show with some tweaking!!

Wow!!

Gavin