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20211021 - Complete reprocessing to try and remove a subtle background gradient that was still in the original image. Toned down the saturation of the stars, boosted more of the rgb in the outer edges of the galaxy.
Image quality issues I’m still stuck with: Although this is 3 hours of rgb data, there’s hardly any colour in the galaxy. Trying to over-boost this through the saturation, would give a pinkish hue to the galaxy (not done in this revision), which would mean there’s an imbalance between blue/red and green, which I don’t yet know where it came from or how to correct. Apparently the core has gotten a little donut through the HDR and boosting the rgb. Although I much more prefer a small core, there seems to be a general tendency amongst astrophotographers to make the core more prominent. Not sure which is better
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I wasn’t fully satisfied with my previous version of M31. It lacked a lot of colour, in spite of having 3 hours of rgb, which I had tried to compensate by oversaturating the image, causing all kinds of side-effects: a subtle gradient in the background, neon-like stars with halos 😵💫 and a flat coloured M31 with a pinkish hue that wasn’t at all what it supposed to be. I was happy with the detail of the image, but it looked more like a luminance image, It couldn’t be that the data was all that bad … something must’ve gone missing 🤔
Checking out some workflow tutorials, I came to realise something was wrong in the way I processed my lrgb. I reprocessed my image of M31 from September 8th, 2021 (lrgb with my TS140/ASI2600MM), and managed to come to a better, more decent result: flat starfield (at least to my eyes), a nice golden colour of M31 and stars that didn’t look like they jumped out of an Andy Warhol painting … and a core … well, that’s debatable. I like a smaller core with more detail in the dark gas clouds around it 🤨
Before posting my new/old M31, I first tested the new found skills and logic, by also re-processing some of my previous images: Iris Nebula, Fireworks Galaxy, M33, etc … and came to similar improvements, which I already posted.
Weary of the wrath of astrophotographers abound on how the perfect M31 should look, I’ve tried to do the data a bit more justice and I’m releasing this image into the “public” again … 👍
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