M31 in 13minutes 20 seconds, I love Photoshop

[melsky]

This was my first photo session with my Megrez 72, I started the evening testing the FFIII spacing so I was only shooting 40sec unguided exposures at 1600 iso on an standard Canon 500D. After spending ages looking at various size blobby stars I was itching to try the set-up on a proper target. So I took 20 subs of 40sec each (total 13mins 20 seconds) of M31, bearing in mind I didn’t use any filters and the mount is unguided I was amazed at what I managed to get out the Raw files with Photoshop.

Mel

(The core shot is a crop of the full image)

[Scott Tilley]

Hi Mel, really impressive images. Would love to know what processing you have done? Photoshop processing is something I really struggle with and for the amount of subs you have taken for this and the shortness of them, you have a very impressive result!

Scott:headbang:

[James]

I'm amazed too! Nice result.

[Beyond_Vision]

A really great result for the short exposure time nicely done Mel

Regards

Kevin

[melsky]

Hi Scott

After processing the raw files to boost the data I loaded them into a stack and manually aligned them to the base layer (just using the curser keys it only took a couple of minutes, unfortunately auto align layers doesn’t work well with stars) I then set the layer opacities to base 100%, second layer 50%, third 33% fourth 25% all the way up to the top (20th) layer at 5% to reduce the noise. Lots of Curve and Hue Saturation adjustment layers with different blending modes and masks follow, it’s time consuming but you have full control.

Mel

[Beyond_Vision]

It would be worth taking a look at Deep Sky Stacker a free program which will align and stack images automatically.

DeepSkyStacker - Free

Regards

Kevin

[mint_mark]

That's excellent. I have the same scope and flattener, but I haven't used it for M31 yet (I used a 200mm camera lens). I don't know if it's the original images or the processing, but there is not much in the way of star colour... my pictures show a lot of red stars in the area, but that might be wrong too.

So did you come to any conclusions with the flattener III? I use it at the normal spacing and found the best thing to do was to focus with a bright star in a corner of the frame. This allowed me to find a compromise shape (not round, but not elongated in either direction either). Is there a better way?