M31

[PKay]

It has taken half a lifetime to get to this.
Without IIS it would never have happened.

Thanks you lot.

[ChrisV]

Beautiful. I've got to give this a go !!!

[xelasnave]

And you should be proud... it is a long road.
Print it up frame it.
alex

[NorthernLight]

That's glorious. What did you take it / post processed it with?

[Atmos]

Without moving/travelling I don't think I'll ever image it. It doesn't even get above a semi-distant tree line for me :P

[raymo]

Nice job.
Unfortunately I'm in the same boat Colin.
raymo

[Saturnine]

That's a fine image of M31, you should be pleased with it, what are the details of scope , camera, filters, no. of exposures etc. Would be very interested in how you got the image because I imaged the same object from a dark site out near Crookwell last week. Only had an hours worth of subs and couldn't quite fit the whole of the galaxy in the field at 950mm focal length. Intend to try again at the next opportunity , when we get clear skies again.

[PKay]

Thanks for the replies.

Acquire info:
Atop a lonely mountain (& I slept in the Combivan).

Only had 3 hours for M31 to be higher than 10 degrees alt.
The atmosphere was very unstable and that limited subs to 30 seconds.

Of 360 subs, about 120 were unusable.
Although it was very interesting to see the colour spread of the stars. From bright blue to yellow to red.

All processing in PI.
It took my PC 6 hours to generate the first integration!

Work flow for the PI enthusiasts:

LINEAR STAGE
ABE - Automatic Background Extraction
DN - Dynamic Crop of edges.
BN - Background Neutralisation
ASS - ArcsinhStretch (instead of Color Calibration)
ATWT - AtrousWaveletTransform (noise reduction) 1 pass
RMsk - Range Mask
SMsk - Star Mask
CO - Convolution applied to masks
Masks saved as BMP files. Adjusted in Fireworks (until I get P.Shop).
ATWT with mask.

NON LINEAR STAGE
HT - Histogram Transfer
Star Mask applied.
LHE - Local Histogram Equalisation
RMsk - (getting smaller or working the galaxy core)
LHE
RMsk
LHE

CT - Curves Transformation
I only added a hint of yellow at the core, otherwise EL Naturale.

I don't think Andromeda needs any makeup :-)

With regards to scope etc. it's about time I added it to my profile (like you all do).

[sil]

Beautiful shot, I'm very jealous. I only had one nights chance to get my data and I think I can still improve.

You'll spend another half lifetime tweaking it further and collecting more data :)

[LostInSp_ce]

Wow! That's an image to aspire to. Thanks for sharing it. :thumbsup:

[RickS]

Congratulations, Peter.

[carlstronomy]

Nice work :thumbsup: