M31 from a dark site

[minimalist]

Not sure if anyone's interested, but went on vacation to a really dark site (near Yellowstone Park in the US), horizon to horizon Milky Way.

Took a few different target pics, still processing most of them. Thought I'd post this one, taken with my field setup. Canon 70-200 f2.8 lens at f4, modded canon 1000D with astronomik luminance filter, and at iso 800. 18x10min subs. I was pleasantly surprised at the depth of the image, and the fact that I hardly had to fiddle with the colors at all.

Hope you like.

Daniel

[Paulus]

Wow, that is impressive

One day I hope to be able to do something similar, will need to save the pennies first though

Look forward to the others when processed

[Deneb]

You've nailed this one, congrats.

[Darth Takahashi]

Very impressive, I gave this an hour the other day but from my location the results are only average, nothing I'd be willing to post. Excellent job.

I'd love to get a decent 3 hour window to image M31

Neil.

[Aza]

Great result!

Dark skies really do make a massive difference.

[Craig H]

Wow...thats a cracker!....

I love M31 and friends...

[Beyond_Vision]

An excellent capture Daniel what a difference a nice dark site makes to an image. My only comment though would be that you have clipped the black point a bit and the star field looks biased towards the blue.

Regards

Kevin

[minimalist]

Thanks guys, very much appreciated. Kevin, you're right, I think I'll have a redo of this one. Not had a chance to work on anything else, been busy catching up with the world.

Paul, the setup I use when traveling is actually fairly inexpensive. The lens I use is not cheap, however you can get one that performs as well (and maybe even better) as an astro lens for a fraction of the cost.

Daniel

[minimalist]

Ok, following advice on here and Richie's excellent article on the GaBany method, I did a reprocess. Unfortunately I overwrote the original, so the first post now contains the reprocessed image. Sorry about that.

Does it look alright though? In addition to trying not to clip the blacks and eliminate the blue cast, I also left the image a bit softer.

Clear skies.

Daniel