M31 Andromeda

[stemlett]

I think I'm finally getting to understand my star tracker a little bit I only manged to get 21 images to stack but pretty chuffed with the results.

 

[Unframed Dave]

Brilliant. Well done.

 

[Richard A]

Wow. That's excellent. What star tracker do you have? What lens and camera settings were you using?

 

[stemlett]

Wow. That's excellent. What star tracker do you have? What lens and camera settings were you using?

I'm using a ZWO AM5 with an Asiair and a guide camera. For the imaging camera I'm using my A7RIVA with 300mm F2.8 and 1.4 teleconverter. 30 second exposures at ISO4000. I'm sure there's better settings but at the moment I get excited when I get the galaxy appear in the preview window I've then been faffing around getting guiding / tracking going leaving me not much time to actually do some imaging. I think I've got a workflow now which should allow me to get up and running quicker...

 

[FowlersFreeTime]

Truly amazing results!

 

[evacguy]

I'm using a ZWO AM5 with an Asiair and a guide camera. For the imaging camera I'm using my A7RIVA with 300mm F2.8 and 1.4 teleconverter. 30 second exposures at ISO4000. I'm sure there's better settings but at the moment I get excited when I get the galaxy appear in the preview window I've then been faffing around getting guiding / tracking going leaving me not much time to actually do some imaging. I think I've got a workflow now which should allow me to get up and running quicker...

Great stuff, very impressive.

 

[Richard A]

Thanks for the info @stemlett. Now for the next question. How do you process it all once you have got the images in your camera?

 

[stemlett]

Thanks for the info @stemlett. Now for the next question. How do you process it all once you have got the images in your camera?

Pull up a chair....

The images are captured and stored on the ASIAIR.
Use PixInsight Weighted Batch Process to stack the files and then I used the following processes with PixInsight:
Automatic Dynamic Background Extraction
Spectromatic Colour Calibration
BlurXTerminator
NoiseXTerminator
Apply stretch to the linear image.
StarXTerminator to separate stars from background
Apply curves and histogram transformations.
Use PixelMatch process to re-integrate the stars and background.

 

[evacguy]

I noted that there is a green tinge to Andromeda. Is that an artifact from the post processing?

 

[stemlett]

I noted that there is a green tinge to Andromeda. Is that an artifact from the post processing?

Yes, quite probably. AIUI using a mirrorless camera you get 2 x green pixels, 1 x red, 1 x blue and there are specific processes to reduce the green.