M31 (My first Pixinsight)

limeyx

Member
I had been "stuck" with dreadful processing until someone recommended Pixinsight. Not sure if I am allowed to link the tutorial I used but it really got me going, starting with manual calibration and stacking, right through post-processing. Took me about 15-20 hours but the result is light-years ahead of what I was getting before

Equipment: iOptron Skyguider Pro, Nikon D5300 and 70-300mm kit lens @ 200mm
Data: 57 lights at 60 seconds (ISO 200), 100 Bias, 20 dark and 20 flats (flats were taken retrospectively as my originals were very bad)

Given the above, I am super happy with the results. Hopefully this looks OK with the small size of upload.

_2020_08_25_M31_small.jpg
 
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Nice image @limeyx!! Congratulations. I believe you could get even more details on the galaxy's core with HDRMultiscaleTransform. Also I guess you can also pull more colors out of it. (Try Curves/Saturation, for example?)
Hope that helps, Cheers!
 
Nice image @limeyx!! Congratulations. I believe you could get even more details on the galaxy's core with HDRMultiscaleTransform. Also I guess you can also pull more colors out of it. (Try Curves/Saturation, for example?)
Hope that helps, Cheers!

Thank you so much for your reply. I did do a little HDR but I am still new (this is basically my first astro photograph) and so I may have done some things wrong ( I was following a tutorial on Light vortex)

I did actually have quite a bit of blue / purple in originally which I thought was a mistake and I lowered saturation on blue a lot. Now i have seen other images I actually think I could/should put some of it back.

I really appreciate your response, thank you !
 
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