M31 Attempt

[mike_777]

Hi All

This is the first half successfull image I have produced. It is approx 3 hours of data made up of 5min exposures. 2 hours of the data was washed out by the full moon and I think this is why I have had to over process to get an half decent result. I didnt take any darks or flats and the equipment used was:

cannon 1000d

WOZS70 with MkII 0.8 flattner

Nexstar6se and QHY5 for autoguiding

HEQ5 pro Mount

I did have trouble guiding and PHD was having to make an unsual amount of corrections. Do you think this may be due to bad polar alignment?

any comments will be appreciated.

thanks

Mike

[oldfruit]

Only 1 comment, great picture and lots of lovely detail.

[mike_777]

thankyou

[JonH]

Looks good to me too, well done.

[HappySachs]

Beautiful

[MartinB]

Mike, there is far more right with that pic than wrong. The dim outer areas have been well captured. The 3 hours has paid off since you have pretty good signal to noise ratio. Your field flatness also looks pretty good. Some very nice work on the processing with the core not being burnt out but still looking natural.

Unless you have mega hours you will usually hit the noise ceiling when processing M31. The key is recognising where the ceiling is an not pushing beyond it. Seems you've sussed that out pretty well although you could probably hold back a bit more on the histogram stretch

[russ]

Beautiful image, looks wonderful.

[mike_777]

Thanks for the comments guys, Its these sorts of coments that make you want to do more! (shame about the terrible skys we have). Martin you mention streching the histogram, you will have to excuse me but im a complete novice at processing, what is streching the histogram?

regards

mike

[MartinB]

The graph thing that comes up when you use levels

[Beyond_Vision]

A great result considering it was near to full Moon

Regards

Kevin

[mike_777]

Martin

I know what the histogram is, Just wondered how it looks when its streched?

regards

mike

[MartinB]

Martin

I know what the histogram is, Just wondered how it looks when its streched?

regards

mike

Ooops sorry. If you look at the histogram before you have used levels and curves it is usually a skinny thing way over to the left. Using levels and curves broadens the histogram by pulling it over to the R. By the time you've finished it will be fatter but still predominantly over to the left. You know the pips are being squeeked if it starts to break up into a tooth comb pattern

[Dangerous-Dave]

Good shot! I never produce anything decent of this target, it's my nemesis!

[mike_777]

I get you, thanks Martin

[Ouroboros]

blumming lovely, that!!! I'd be more than chuffed with that image.

Do you have quite dark skies? I can't go for more than about 1 minute without light pollution taking over.

And did you have to reject many subs? I usually find i have to reject a few.

[mike_777]

Thanks Ouroboros,

I dont have dark skies but I use a Light pollution filter and i was able to keep all my subs.

thanks

mike

[ollypenrice]

I agree with Martin and might just drop the brightness a tad and also the contrast to keep it subtle. I only say this because it is so pleasing a result that getting the best out of it is to be desired.

Olly

[mike_777]

Hi Olly

Have tweaked a little as per your comments, whats your thoughts?

mike

[Doug]

My thoughts is Picture of the month , it's lovely

Doug

Essex

[mike_777]

Thanks Doug

[adamsp123]

That is a lot more than a half decent image Mike, excellent work.

[mike_777]

Thanks pete much appreciated

[Luke]

Well done, Mike, it's amazing to look at pics of this galaxy and wonder what goes on there!

[celestron8g8]

I think it's a great piece of work !

[mike_777]

Thanks guys