September M31

[Kaptain Klevtsov]

Being a teacher's pet, I went out tonight to get an image of M31 as per this month's challenge. The forecast was for fog and I wasn't let down, but the fog was actually high cloud. Along with the moon being just after full, this made for a nasty looking sky. Very few stars were visible unaided, just enough to line up the goto on. Quite warm out tonight but none of the dew problems of recent days fortunately.

SC3 webcam with a 135mm T mount el-cheapo camera lens screwed on the front.

66 frames at 30 second subs.

I'll post a better one when its available (when the moon has stayed in bed.

The "telescope" worked fine, quite surprising for how much it cost.

Captain Chaos

[GordonCopestake]

Good image CC given the instrument!

[OXO]

Excellent Image given the conditions and setup well done CC 8)

[MartinB]

Good choice of kit for M31 CC. I reckon you will get a great result when the sky clears a little. Shaping up well.

[qcdougn]

CC,

VG go at this one with your SC3 and 135mm Lens...

Doug

[Kaptain Klevtsov]

Had another bash at this one, same setup but added an Antares ALP filter

20 subs at 3 minutes each.

Captain Chaos

[Caz]

You have captured some detail CC, nice one!

Still can't give myself credit for finding the M31 yet....

[Kain]

Looking good CC!

Given the conditions and all that.

I might invest in a laptop and webcam at some point.

Kain

[Jamie]

I see you captured the dust lanes as clear as day this time.

Well done CC.

[MartinB]

Fantastic CC. You've given it plenty of a decent bit of time. Technically great re focus and tracking. Well balanced - getting the dust lanes but not overdoing the core. I especially like the way you have avoided the temptation to make the background too black.

ImagesPlus has a tool called edge extraction. This does what it says on the tin in that it pulls out the edges from an image. This can then be used as a mask to apply changes specifically to the edges. It works very well when used with something called Image math to apply a subtraction. This has the effect of improving definition of the edges and reducing star bloat. Sounds a bit complicated but it is pretty easy in practice. If you over do it you start to get halos - these are just starting to appear on my re - edit. What do you think?

[Kaptain Klevtsov]

Had a nother bash last night, this time I turned the camera gain up to about 25%, seems to have made a difference.

Same kit as last time, 35 subs at 25 seconds, registaxed to stack and double the size, duplicated and patched in CS2 to keep the centre down, median filter at 2 pixels applied, smart sharpened and converted to JPG format for your viewing pleasure.

If this little beauty keeps it up I might only need a micro shed (joking).

BTW is the disc assymetric? It looks to kind of hang down at the bottom of this picture, or is that perhaps a kind of vignetting / camera tilt thing?

Captain Chaos

[Ant]

Lovely image CC, very hard subject to image M31 - the core can be a real pig!

You haven't over done the core but you've got some arm / dust lane detail. Well done matey.

I find thar M31 often looks better smaller. Resize it 50% and see what you think. I also have found that you can puch the processing a little further if you resize.

Ant