I am presenting this, processed with the intent of a somewhat contrarian view from the typical.  I hope that I successfully convey M31 here as might be seen by the human intergalactic space traveler as they are roughly 1/10th of their way from earth to our neighbor, M31.  As such, the ship is well beyond even the halo stars of the Milky Way, especially because the route takes them rather abruptly above the Milky Way disk plane, rather than through the outer galactic arms.  Because of this, the field of view is devoid of the myriad of close stars, which in my opinion makes for a "nice" and colorful view of M31, but also seriously detracts from the wonders of our nearest neighbor.  Instead, we are left with only M31 and the many distant galaxies that can be seen as weak, almost stellar companions.  Within M31, there are some isolated, or "apparently" isolated stars.  These are the blue, red and other supergiants that are large enough to be seen as isolated stars.  Many of these "stars" may also be small clusters of bright stars or globular clusters, of which there are over 500 around M3.  The presence of these point sources in M31 adds greatly to the perception of structure and depth, especially when isolated from the confounding foreground stars.  I am presenting this image in maybe the less preferred orientation.  Why?  Well, in the travelers view, there is no preferred orientation!  (However, flipping is a no no!)  The ship has a nice picture window right at the front (like the tourist SpaceX version of their capsule), and the traveler has a better understanding of the structure when viewed this way.  To me, I believe that the dust clouds just nearby NGC206, the brightish starfield to the left of center, seems to show them actually rising as delicate filaments above the plane of the galaxy.  Some of  the other dust clouds appear to also appear to hang above the plane as well.  This may well be an optical illusion, but it is nice to enjoy this illusion, if it is!  When the ship gets to a position directly in line with this warped disk, I will post a picture from that locale to confirm!  I also love the three parallel cloud streaks just below NGC206 that extend from the mid-proto ring to the outer major ring on the left side of the image.  The hydrogen alpha regions are delicate and detailed in this OSC image. And they are contrasted with the colorful stars that reside with these regions.  I have found many nebular features during the very detailed processing of this.  I am sure if we lived in M31 we would have a nice selection to image, however, I believe we should be happy with the Milky Way because M31 has only 1/3-1/5 of the star forming activity of our home galaxy.  So in fact, the dearth of these locales seen with M31 likely represents that state of relative inactivity.  In addition, M31 is considered to have a stellar population age that is rather old, hence, the color seen here may again represent reality.  Once thought to be the superior galaxy within the local group (by mass and star number), the most recent assessments suggest that M31 is similar in size, mass and star numbers as the Milky Way.  Maybe even smaller.  The experts keep changing their minds.  And they keep complaining about how hard it is to figure out such a thing.  But currently, both are at just below 100 billion solar masses.  Recall that more than 90% of stars are dwarf or smaller, so you do the math.

Yes, this image is much less colorful than is typically presented.  However, it is SPCC color calibrated.  Only stretched, including some contrast curving.  No touching the color saturation or any specific color slider bars.  No masking of the galaxy core was done.  There is more to be had in that area, but this is intended to represent reality and not be a technical dissection.  This image is an integration of 5hrs worth of subs collected early September with my WO Z61.  Dithered every sub and drizzled at 2X.  (Yes, dithering and drizzling made a very very clear improvemet in the result.)  I had hoped to add to this data, but an early fall weather pattern descended upon us here in Oregon.  So with nothing else to do, I decided to see what I got with M31.  It was the last one I was expecting very much good from.  Expected to get partway and then stall, to wait for another clear night to collect more data.  I'll call this one done!

The idea to process as seen here (see the revision for an intermediate version of the full-star version) came about during the processing since I took the image early into a starless stage to work on deconvolution, NR, etc.  I was very happy with the detail that I got with my 61mm aperature scope and C-sized sensor.  And then the idea occurred to me as I was staring at the many, pretty large stars (yes, one detraction from that 61mm aperature).  What if I could mask or otherwise add back the stars that I knew (or guessed) were most likely just M31 stars?  I did so with a small region of the galaxy near NGC206 and noticed how this dramatically improved the appearance in all aspects.  And then it occurred to me, "well, what good are the foreground stars anyway!"  I tried to do the job with masking, but got nowhere.  Too many conflicting issues.  This was a manual labor of love.  Certainly this is a contrived image in many regards, given the limited information I have (and time).  I certainly have no proof that every item added back is not a foreground star.  However, rest assured that all the objects added to the starless image are faithfully located, sized, shaped and faithful in their intensity and color.  There are a fair number of small galaxies, and likely globular clusters.  While not specifically done for this image, since it is somewhat pointless from an aesthetic point of view is that I could have added back all the faint background fuzzies (galaxies) that are too numerous to count.  I did a bit of that here and there.  The isolated galaxies that you see in the voids are the survivors of SXT.  During this processing, I learned that SXT still is not doing well with separating these fuzzies from stars.  But this is expected since it probably will never be able to do that given the similarities.  But even a little improvement would be nice.  I love SXT, but also learned at this time that it can also have a negative impact on image detail at the fine scale.  And with a 61mm aperature, I want all I can get.  But who am I to complain.  Without these brilliant tools, I would have never conceived of this project.

Appologies for the full scale version at 35MB in size.  I tried to halve the size but the jpeg had ugly stars.  Best not to view this under the full resolution page, unless you want to see the fuzzy details!