M31, Andromeda Galaxy, 18 Sep 2012 (David Dearden)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Andromeda (And) · Contains: Andromeda Galaxy · M 110 · M 31 · M 32 · NGC 205 · NGC 221 · NGC 224

M31, Andromeda Galaxy, 18 Sep 2012, David Dearden

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M31, Andromeda Galaxy, 18 Sep 2012

An easy find, obviously, as M31 is a naked eye object. Lots of smoke in the air tonight. I had to play with exposures a lot to avoid blowing out the core. 300 s was too long, and eventually I settled on 180 s subframes. Guiding is so easy when imaging at this scale! But I couldn’t get dither to work because none of the settling options were large enough for guiding at this focal length with my mount. I removed the Meade IR filter from the DSI as the Baader Fringe Killer filter I was using also cuts IR. I'm waiting on a new power supply for my chiller, so it is still not working and the CCD was at about 16 °C for the run. I used a bad pixel map for this rather than dark subtraction, and I really like the result.

Date: 18 Sep 2012

Subject: M31, Andromeda Galaxy

Scope: Orion ST80 + 0.5x Antares telereducer

Filter: Baader Fringe Killer (DSI IR cut filter removed)

Mount: CG-5 (Synta motors)

Guiding: AT8IN+High Point Scientific coma corrector + DSI Ic + PHD

Camera: DSI IIc (no cooling)

Acquisition: Nebulosity 3.1.1, no dither

Exposure: 64 x 180 s

Stacking: Neb 3, bad pixel map, bias included, normalize first, trans+rot align, 1.5 SD stack

Processing: Digital development with weak sharpening, curves, power stretch, GreyCStoration (on background layer) saturation boost in Neb 3; CS6 2 layers: background layer Astronomy Tools color blotch, deep space, space noise reduction. Sharp layer was high pass filtered. Combined the two with a Gaussian blurred layer mask over the dust lanes. Star color enhance the flattened image.

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Status	Basic success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	7187023
PixInsight job	n/a
PixInsight queue size	n/a
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