M31 Andromeda Galaxy from Qld Astrofest

[RobF]

M31 is surprisingly fickle to hunt from Astrofest. Moon, fog, cloud and the odd tree made collecting data only possible on a handful of nights. This year I decided to try the wider field of the 80mm refractor (Zenithstar II) to see what I could get.

This is LRGB 60:70:60:60 (all 10min unbinned subs).
QHY9/MPCC through WO Zenithstar II

Alternative title, "Fuzzy Disk Shaped Thingy in Andromeda (http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/showthread.php?t=47894&highlight=big+fuzzy+thing)" Mark II :)

[DavidTrap]

One of the better southern hemisphere M31 shots I've seen!!!

DT

[peter_4059]

Very impressive Rob. The details, colours and processing are great.

[jjjnettie]

Very very nice image Rob. Lovely detail and star colour!! So jealous.

[h0ughy]

how good is that!!!

[strongmanmike]

I agree, a fine mid southern hemisphere example of this galaxy, nice work Rob!

Mike

[CapturingTheNight]

Wonderful image Rob :thumbsup: I'm desperate to try and image this object myself one day but it's a hard target to get from my southern NSW locality. Road trip one night is in order I think. What focal length is that 80mm scope if I may ask? I fear that my 10" F/4 newt might be a bit too long to get this field of view

[Octane]

Well done, Rob. :)

A few more hours and you'll land a winner.

My image had about 20-odd hours of data (yet to finish processing with the hydrogen alpha data I also nabbed). Might grab some more data this season.

H

[davewaldo]

Great work Rob, would love to see a larger version :)

[RobF]

Thanks for encouragement and checking it out everyone!
I had planned to vary between the ZS80 and 8" Newt at AF, but when I saw these subs after the first night decided I'd stick to that focal length. I was actually a little disappointed when it came time to put it all together (at how challenging it was to bring out detail, keep the noise down and get some colour). Humayun is right to say even a bright (just naked eye) galaxy like this really needs >10hrs. It just wasn't possible, even with an entire week of nights at my disposal, but who knows what future opportunities might present, and it was fun!

Actually H, how the heck did you ever get that much M31 data from Canberra latitudes anyway!?

Dave, there's not much point going in much closer with the quality of optics, amount of data and small pixels on the QHY9. I'll try and get one up on Picasa or Astrobin though :)

[multiweb]

Top shot Rob. Real smooth. :thumbsup:

[ozstronomer]

Very Nice Rob, colour and detail are great. Well done :)

[firstlight]

Very nice work Rob, good to see the "Curse of the Fog When Pointing North" failed to materialise occasionaly :lol:

[Regulus]

Rob, that is really impressive. Can I use it as my desktop for a week or two? :-)
How high is M31 in the north from where you took the pic? Way to low here in Tas to bother trying to fotograf.

Well done.

Trevor

[RobF]

Thanks Marc. I was thinking of you - I ended up with a clumsy side-by-side arrangement with the QHY9 on the ZS80 and the 450D through the Pentax 200mm lens. I haven't had a chance to process more than this one yet, but on many nights I had the 200mm/DSLR combo clicking away "wide'ish field" shots in same direction as the 80mm. Will be interesting to see if any are worthwhile. Did shoot some Milky Way Ha at 200mm for a few hours one night just to say I'd had the CCD on the lens. Just slightly wider FOV than Rick's FSQ106/STL11000 combo as it turns out :sadeyes: :)



Thanks Geoff - and thanks again for rescuing my scopes during that brief but scary shower!



Heh he Tony - it was certainly looking like there might be an M31 curse early in the week :)
I should've been up with Rick et al Sat night and Tue night too if I was REALLY committed!



Sure - glad you liked it Trevor and nice to hear its getting used. M31 doesn't get much above 20 degrees high here, so you really need to be further north. There really hard part at that altitude is finding clear dark skies to the north free of trees (and fog!). Sept through Nov are probably the best months, but usually the weather starts to let us down regularly from Nov/Dec onwards, which makes it tough getting more data.

[RickS]

Great work, Rob. That's very nice! Ten Chain Hill has a good northern horizon if you're looking to add some more data ;)

Cheers,
Rick.

[sjastro]

A very fine image.

M31 barely rises above the misty horizon from my site.:(

Clear skies

Steven

[RobF]

Hmmmmm......:question: :D



Thanks Steven.
I reckon the earth needs a 30 degree wobble once every few years so we get a go at the Northern hemisphere too :mad2: :P

[alan meehan]

Stunning image good to see you got results through the fog and trees

[alpal]

Very nice pic Rob.

Can you please tell me what your gain & offset value you used for this pic?
I have a new QHY9 & I'm just wondering what other's are using.
It has been suggested that a gain of 11 & the offset 112 in EZYcap is a good starting point
but what would that be in MaximDL where the gain is expressed in percentage?

[Ross G]

Hi Rob,

A great photo of a great object.

You have captured some amazing detail and some nice colours.

Ross.

[RB]

Very nice image of M31 Rob.

:thumbsup:

[venus]

Wow!

[RobF]

Thanks Alan. All part of the AF fun :D



Hi - I shoot with 10 and 100 for unbinned with my camera. My dynamic range doesn't go all the way out to 65535, but with 16bit resolution it doesn't seem to matter too much. Tracking, noise, etc usually an order of magnitude more important ;)




Thanks Ross. I'm an M31 "tragic" must confess



Thanks Andrew!



Cheers Lydia :)

[RobF]

Have loaded a full size jpg image onto Astrobin at:
http://www.astrobin.com/18679/


(egad - I didn't do a final crop!)

[alpal]

Rob,


Thanks - so you are using EZYcap?
That won't allow you to dither will it?
I of course have EZYcap but I want to use MaximDL so that I can dither
& get all the other goodies.
In Maxim the gain is expressed in percentage with no conversion
table anywhere which is a nuisance.
( a percentage of what? )

[RobF]

Ummm, Maxim running QHY9 using ASCOM drivers, which in turn call the underly QHY driver I believe. 100/10 is what I have set for the unbinned section in the QHY drivers, if that makes sense?

Happy to PM some settings if that helps?

Dithering is extremely helpful, however you do lose time on each sub waiting for guiding to reacquire and stabilise. Its a worthwhile tradeoff for the reduction in noise and artefacts most would argue. I actually run Maxim via CCD Commander, and have CCDC set to only dither every 4th frame (so I dither just before the start of every LRGB sequence for example). Setting up image runs in Maxim always frustrated me, and CCDC will do auto-meridian flips and unattended imaging among other things as a bonus. Very powerful software at a decent price.

[alpal]

I found that when Maxim DL was used -
You first of all must close EZYcap -
you go to:
camera control window, expose, options , camera settings &
there you can set gain & offset but -
the gain is in percentage (offset the same as above).
The help file in MaximDL does not explain how to convert the RAW number into a percentage.


Maybe CCD commander is converting to the raw EZYcap settings for your QHY9 camera?
Isn't it better to dither every sub-frame?
That's what I used to do with a DSLR camera.
Forgive me if I sound silly but I only bought a
QHY9 a week ago & I've never used a mono camera before.
I am just trying to sort out all this stuff on my kitchen table.

[RobF]

I'll PM...

[RobF]

Sure you could dither between each L,R,G,B frame, but you're going to be stacking all the L's, R's, etc so not any point dithering on every filter change - better to do it so that each LRGB is dithered relative to last, if that makes sense? Saves having to wait for guiding to settle for 3 lots of dithering, which on a cheapish chinese mount is often around 15-20secs, if that makes sense?

[alpal]

OK - I have no trouble with my mount settling after dithering.
It's an NEQ6 & I have ADM saddle plates & parallax tube rings
with a 1.25" astro physics counter weight bar.
You can see it in my flickr photos.
That makes it much more stable.
It only takes 2 seconds to stabilise after dithering 4 pixels.
Therefore I dither every frame to cancel out hot pixels & get a smoother background.

[RobF]

Yes, probably overkill to wait that long at 550mm focal length. Things a bit fussier through the Newt at 1000mm but even then I'm probably waiting a bit too long rather than risking any unnecessary movement. Sounds like you have a quality mounting setup too though Alan compared to my minimalist investment.

[Paul Haese]

Nice work Rob. I like the silkiness of the image, colour saturation and detail. It maybe just a little too blue but there is not much in that. I particularly like the blue stars in the arms.

[RobF]

Thanks for that Paul. Yeah, I was a bit worried about a little too much blue and still haven't pulled off the creamy "yolk" centre I would have prefered, but I love the young blue stars in M31 and did work to bring them out. Somewhat "M42'ish" in that it doesn't let itself be processed easily.

[batema]

It is one impressive looking galaxy. Love the star colours and I am going to have a crack at that next year as well as trying for the full 10 days. Looks great.

[allan gould]

Great image, Rob. I really like the colour and detail. Have yet to image this and forgot to do it at Astrofest but seeing yours makes me want to have a go.

[RobF]

Thanks guys. Good friend of my wife says guys are "always better with a project". M31 is often on my list when poking above the horizon. Just be aware the hours are often even more unsavoury than this year - AF was about as late as it ever gets this year and the moon was out of the way fairly early on. You frequently find in the last 2 weeks of July the moon may still be up for much of the first 6 days by the time M31 is at a decent image height (2 to 3am). Chance of fog, sleep deprivation and alcohol affecting imaging performance increases greatly during those hours!....:lol:

[Tandum]

purple is the new brown. very nice rob :)

[naskies]

That looks superb - great work, Rob!!

[RobF]

Hmmm, actually it is a bit purple really. Its tough getting that last 10% of the image right. More reason for a Sidonio at some point :question:



Thanks Dave - appreciate that.:)

[CoolhandJo]

Nice!

[ourkind]

WOW! Spectacular :thumbsup: Love it!

[RobF]

Thanks for checking it out Paul and Carlos. Its a special sort of object that you really need a camera to do justice to - I just can't get enough of it visually or photographically.

[atalas]

Nice work Rob.

[RobF]

Thanks for checking it out Louie :)

[iceman]

Well done Rob, beautiful image. Probably a tad too blue for me but beautiful result.

Almost IOTW, just tipped out by DavidTrap :)

[earthlight]

Absolutely an amazing shot!
Definitely a target for me next year, weather permitting.

Anne-Louise

[DavidTrap]

I feel bad now... It's a very impressive M31! Sorry Rob!

DT

[RobF]

Cool - an "honourable mention" is still a thrill, especially in such esteemed company on IIS :)
Thanks Mike!



Thanks Anne-Louise - and for putting up with my poor jokes about "here comes the fog" everytime I slewed over to M31 for some more data!



No guilt at all David - I was a bit lazy with the blues, and your image is a gobsmacker!

[firstlight]

But it DID! The fog that is. :D

Cool shot, Robert... or have I already said that?:confused2: