M31 from my backyard

[Ant0nio (Tony)]

I managed to stitch together about 4hrs of data on M31. By adding a pier ext. to my Eq6-r I am just able to grab a glimpse of it for about 2hrs on a clear night above my neighbors roof, it reaches 21deg. at transition.
I used my old Zenithstar 70 to fit it in the frame. The Z70 shows a bit of false colour which is evident but overall I'm reasonably pleased with the result.
17x600 sec & 12x300sec exp. SBIG 8300c, acquired & stacked in Nebulosity IV, guiding with PHD. processed with PS CS2. Grateful for any feedback & thanks for looking.
Cheers,
Tony

[Mickoid (Michael)]

And so you should be pleased with your result Tony. There's plenty of detail and the quality of M31's coming through this site taken from south of the Tropic of Capricorn equals some taken north of the equator. A little colour adjustment and that's one to hang on the wall for sure. I'm envious of your northern location for this one. Great capture!

[Startrek (Martin)]

Lovely image Tony
Lots of detail and definition plus nice star colours
It’s great you can even see it , both my sites only have views to the south above 30 degrees therefore I’ll never Image M31 plus other objects below 30 degrees unless I travel to a remote site up nice and high
Well done !!

[xelasnave]

Excellent image there Tony and for what it is worth I like the colour. The detail is most impressive.
You have done a wonderful job.
Alex

[casstony]

You've set the pace with that image Tony. I'll have to blow a gasket to try and catch up - maybe if I get a few more clear nights

[Ant0nio (Tony)]

Originally Posted by Mickoid

And so you should be pleased with your result Tony. There's plenty of detail and the quality of M31's coming through this site taken from south of the Tropic of Capricorn equals some taken north of the equator. A little colour adjustment and that's one to hang on the wall for sure. I'm envious of your northern location for this one. Great capture!

Thank you Michael, I'm glad I made the effort to get some data on this target now. A comment you made on your M31 thread motivated me also. BTW any suggestions on improving the colour? Thanks again,
Tony

Originally Posted by Startrek

Lovely image Tony
Lots of detail and definition plus nice star colours
It’s great you can even see it , both my sites only have views to the south above 30 degrees therefore I’ll never Image M31 plus other objects below 30 degrees unless I travel to a remote site up nice and high
Well done !!

Thanks Martin, I appreciate your encouraging feedback as always & consider myself lucky to be able to snag this one from my backyard.
Cheers,
Tony

Originally Posted by xelasnave

Excellent image there Tony and for what it is worth I like the colour. The detail is most impressive.
You have done a wonderful job.
Alex

Thanks Alex, the little Zenithstar did well I reckon considering it's a fast doublet with (I think) only FK61 glass. Thanks again for your kind words,
Tony

Originally Posted by casstony

You've set the pace with that image Tony. I'll have to blow a gasket to try and catch up - maybe if I get a few more clear nights

Thanks Tony, I think I might have blown a head gasket processing this one in fact Lookin forward to your M31 & I hope you get clear skies too, Qld is covered in cloud ATM.
Cheers,
Tony

[ChrisV (Chris)]

Excellent Tony! We are getting a nice Andromeda collection going here. Agree with Alex - best detail so far

[Mickoid (Michael)]

Tony, I downloaded your picture and had a play with it in PS. I adjusted the Levels and then did a Hue, Desaturate and Selective colour adjustment, mainly to the Yellow channel (CMYK) or if you prefer in RGB, the Blue Channel. I think it's cleaned it up nicely but as I have said before, colour is very subjective and you may feel it has not improved it.

[Ant0nio (Tony)]

Originally Posted by ChrisV

Excellent Tony! We are getting a nice Andromeda collection going here. Agree with Alex - best detail so far

Thank you Chris, I'm very humbled

Originally Posted by Mickoid

Tony, I downloaded your picture and had a play with it in PS. I adjusted the Levels and then did a Hue, Desaturate and Selective colour adjustment, mainly to the Yellow channel (CMYK) or if you prefer in RGB, the Blue Channel. I think it's cleaned it up nicely but as I have said before, colour is very subjective and you may feel it has not improved it.

Crikey Mick, the colour is definately an improvement on the original to my mind & with the crappy Jpeg as well. I'll try to replicate what you did with my original tiff. Thanks for taking the time to do this.
Tony

[Ant0nio (Tony)]

Originally Posted by Ant0nio

Thank you Chris, I'm very humbled



Crikey Mick, the colour is definately an improvement on the original to my mind & with the crappy Jpeg as well. I'll try to replicate what you did with my original tiff. Thanks for taking the time to do this.
Tony

I reprocessed this using CYMK Mick, what a revelation, thanks very much for the heads up on this . I thought we were confined to RGB ( shows how much of a noob I am ) It's a subtle difference but I think it's an improvement.
Cheers,
Tony

[Mickoid (Michael)]

That does look better Tony. There's nothing wrong in correcting colour in RGB, I just prefer CMYK because I can get my head around at what I'm doing to the colour easier. I used to work in the printing industry and of course the colour printing presses used CMYK inks, similar to your colour desktop printer, if you own one. These days most pictures aren't printed on paper and are just viewed on RGB screens and monitors. The point I was trying to make is that you can use either to correct the colour. I don't change my RGB files to CMYK. In fact, if you save your file as a CMYK file, your monitor just displays it in RGB so you can view it.

Basically they're the same thing, RGB are primary additives ( you add the three primaries to get white light ) and CMY are primary subtractives ( you start with white paper and the primary inks/dyes subtract the primary additives from the reflected white paper ). The 'K' part is the keyline and was a black ink that supplemented the print to improve shadow density and detail to the final picture. A bit of colour theory there, you can wake up now!