Any ideas/tips?

[martin_h]

Been having a go at M31 and have got so far but cant seem to do anything about the bottom 1/3 of the galaxy. I don' know if this can be drawn out anymore or if I should take some more frames but with that part closer to the centre of the FOV and attempt to do a cut and shut job.

The story so far:-

20 x 5 min subs + 20 x 10 min subs combined in DSS with calibration frames.

Shot using a Skywatcher Evostar 100ED DS-Pro and QHY8 CCD.

Any ideas/hints would help a lot.......Thanks

Martin

[roundycat]

try:

Duplicate layer, Image-Adjustments-Threshold

Adjust slider to pick up stars and not the galaxy centre, clean up with Quick Mask.

Select Magic Wand, tolerance about 4 and click on the black background.

Invert selection and expand 3, Feather 1.

Ctrl J for a star layer.

Duplicate the background layer again

Set blend mode to Overlay

Apply High Pass filter to the dupe background at between 10 and 20 pixels.

Examine carefully by switching on/off the star layer and the high pass layer.

The dust lanes should be enhanced but can be improved more by using Image-Adjustments-Selective Colour and playing with the Yellow and Red.

You can shrink the stars on their own layer with Filter-Minimum 1 pix and immediately Edit-Fade 50%.

Flatten

You have a great start.

Dennis

[martin_h]

Thanks for your very detailed reply roundycat, I don't have a clue what half of that does but will give it a bash over the next couple of days. I grabbed a few more subs last night and hope to get some more tonight, so will throw them into the mix and see what emerges.

Once again thanks.

[Cloudwatcher]

Or.......... you could just play around with the colour balance,hue/saturation,etc.......... lots of fun and infinite variations.