With all this bad weather heading toward Victoria this week, I made sure to get out there before it arrived. I got up early Wednesday morning and took my first shots of M31 for the season. Photographing at 37 degrees south, this will always be a challenge. There was some fog around but M31 managed to stay above the worst of it during the session.
This is the result of 29 X 1min unguided subs @ 1600 iso on an unmodded Canon 550d. The camera was hooked up to a SW Esprit 100 on a HEQ5pro mount. 30 mins is not enough integration time to capture the detail that the classic M31 shots have. I had to stretch the image a bit to reveal as much as I could before it got too noisey but it's a start and I hope to add more over the next few months.
Last edited by Mickoid; 07-08-2017 at 06:05 PM.
Reason: Colour correction
Classic image Mickoid! A winner. You have picked up nice detail in the dust lanes and your scope frames this rather large galaxy just perfectly.
Well done.
Thanks for your compliments guys, I like this galaxy a lot, it's big and they say it's structually very much like our own Milky Way. If there is life there I wonder if they're looking at our galaxy and saying the same thing. That's getting a bit deep, better stop.
Chris, the shorter subs are because I'm not guiding. I envy your 5 min subs. If I'd been able to do that on M31 the other morning I reckon I'd be posting the result on the main image forum! One day, perhaps. At least I don't need a computer to take out in the field with me. It's bad enough having to drag around all the gear I already have let alone getting more stuff to pack in the car ( and take out again ).
good luck on adding to the image, you should be able to push it much more than that image , I was able to push a nice bright low noise shot with 24min of data in my astrobin gallery. Really pleased with even getting it and spent a bit of time tweaking my processing . Going to try to get an outing to add to mine this year, fantastic target, looking forward to seeing your results.
good luck on adding to the image, you should be able to push it much more than that image , I was able to push a nice bright low noise shot with 24min of data in my astrobin gallery. Really pleased with even getting it and spent a bit of time tweaking my processing . Going to try to get an outing to add to mine this year, fantastic target, looking forward to seeing your results.
Thanks sil, it all depends on the weather down here, the last few New Moon phases have been spoilt by cloud so maybe in a couple of weeks I'll get to take advantage with clear skies. One things for sure, to get the most out this object at such a low altitude, seeing and transparency have to be better than average.
Great effort with your low noise shot taken on just a tripod! Lucky you had f2.8 to gather those extra photons, mine was shot at f5.5 but stacking 453 three second subs must have given your computer a headache, it really did get rid of the noise. Were they shot at 3200 iso or higher?
Wallaroo, never been there but at 35 degrees south it would have placed Andromeda fairly low for you as well. I'm actually surprised this object doesn't get photographed more often by our members living in Queensland. I'd love to shoot it from there, especially the northern part.
Fortunately, being in the north, the Melbourne glow is behind me so the scope is pointing into basically dark skies.
It was certainly a challenge for me iso3200 is probably right, I wasnt concerned with noise, I'd found from home I had no line of site to possible get it and never thought I'd have a chance. But someone offered me transport for an outing and we found a property gate back from a road in a rural area with little traffic and clear enough view. m31 transits at 13deg for me so to me it was my one and only chance for it, so i used worse settings than I normally do just in the hope of getting anything at all! I found the location using google street view, just looking outside of town across paddocks making sure clear of hills and trees. I've sounded him out about maybe another trip this year and I'll be using my regular settings plus the camera now has a light pollution filter installed . only problem is its a decent dark site for me and there is a whole sky of stuff i can get better shots of from there, its so distracting and hard to stay on mission. more cameras i suspect is the answer.
Yeah I need a better computer or several as I use tons of shots to help make up for not being able to use a tracking system, my main computer and laptop at home are both chugging away on data right now. I'm constantly testing the limits of my gear, software and skills in pursuit of a better image result in the end never stop learning.
great effort mickoid! there is a little bit of chromatic noise there that could be reduced a smidge.
a good way to reduce the chromatic noise is (if using photoshop), duplicating the file a couple of times.
on the first one give the image a slight gaussian blur.
then on the next image convert to greyscale under mode. select all, and copy, then paste over the slightly blurred colour image.
select from the drop down box Luminance (blend). works pretty nicely.
its a good method to crank vibrancy of colours as well whilst keeping the chromatic noise down a bit (some people also sharpen the greyscale luminance as well).
great work, i hope to capture it at some stage as well!
Great tips there Russell, thanks. I'll try that out and see what it does. I sometimes get a little heavy on the saturation in DSS and PS to gain star colour which will accentuate the chromatic noise around the brighter stars, so your suggestion should help tone it down a bit.
never stop learning.
