Messier 31 - The Andromeda galaxy (Flemming Kristensen)

Messier 31 - The Andromeda galaxy

M31 is a must for an aspiring astrophotographer, almost a kind of rite of passage. At a distance of approx. 2.5 million LY it is the most distant object visible to the naked human eye. If you have a really dark sky and know where to look you may pick up the brightest central parts as a faint patch of light. I did this a week ago when I was in a dark part of the country, and by using averted vision I could convince myself that there was really something there.

I’ve seen many pictures of M31 where the outer spiral arms are really blue, indicating the presence of many young blue stars, but I can’t see those in my own data, and as I have read that there is not much star formation going on in M31 I suspect that much of the blue color is due to the post processing, especially in the faint outer reaches of the disk.

I may need to add some Hα data next time the sky is clear.

Galaxy editing is difficult. I invite your comments and suggestions.

Original
B
C
D
Final
E

B

Title: M31 - More data, more color

Description: I have added another night of data and used all of my subs from the first night for this revision. I have also gone a bit (experi)mental with the colors.

Uploaded: ...

C

Description: Showing the satellite galaxies a bit more love.

Uploaded: ...

D

Description: Incorporated 3hrs 50min of Hα instead of the red channel of the RGB image. Getting it to look reasonable in the editing was the hard part.

Uploaded: ...

E

Description: A bit more power maybe?

Uploaded: ...

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	6281419
PixInsight job	LEQIUQGTALX1ZE3GNODFSY8D4CBYDN3I
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	00h42m29s.32
RA (top/left)	00h46m09s.12
RA (top/right)	00h49m06s.48
RA (bottom/right)	00h38m38s.19
RA (bottom/left)	00h36m07s.81

Dec (center)	+41°12′15″.10
Dec (top/left)	+39°34′01″.4
Dec (top/right)	+42°29′30″.10
Dec (bottom/right)	+42°50′12″.7
Dec (bottom/left)	+39°53′47″.5

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