The Classic Andromeda in LHRGB (Andrew)

The Classic Andromeda in LHRGB

This project started as a test of my luminance filter. I had odd vertical lines in my M 45 luminance stack, and I'm still not sure what caused them. Anyway, after seeing how great the first night of luminance looked, especially from under my bortle 7 skies (vertical lines mysteriously disappeared), I decided to make it a project. I've shot M 31 before with this exact setup, but last year I was using the ZWO LRGB set. I've since upgraded to the Astronomik L3 luminance, and Astronomik "Deep Sky" RGB filters because of blue bloat with my scope. What a difference they made to this image, as well as a much-evolved processing workflow, and different capture techniques (such as using "unity" gain with bin1 vs 0 gain at bin2 for RGB). Luckily, I was able to get a clear night while visiting my parents, who live under nice bortle 4 skies. I added about 30 mins of luminance, and about one hour each of RGB. After that, I knew I needed an Ha channel to make those intergalactic Ha emissions in M 31 shine. This is where even more luck came my way. See, at my home, there's a big oak tree so much in the way of M 31, that I can't image for more than about an hour past the meridian. With M 31 being close to the meridian by astro-dark, that's not a big window, but I got lucky with the weather again and over 4 nights in 2 weeks, I was able to get a pretty decent Ha stack to complete the project.

With the help of a couple good friends processing the data themselves and sharing their techniques, I was able to come up with a version that I'm happy with. Hopefully this does M 31 justice, because it sure is gorgeous!

Northeast Imagers
The refractors!
CMOS Imagers
Cloudy Nights
ZWO ASI2600MM Pro
Imaged with N.I.N.A.
N.I.N.A. Users
PixInsight Addicts
IOptron CEM
QHY268M/ZWO2600M Images

	Distinct awarded users	Total awarded images
Image of the day
Top picks
Top pick nominations

	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Deep sky
Solar system
Extremely wide field
Star trails
Northern lights
Noctilucent clouds
Landscape

	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Backyard
Traveller
Own remote observatory
Amateur hosting facility
Public amaeteur data
Professional, scientific grade data
Mix of multiple sources
Other
Unknown

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	6890626
PixInsight job	2J8DHSXQ16F3GI22VZNAF1X8NQ5ZK17R
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	00h42m40s.401
RA (top/left)	00h45m13s.285
RA (top/right)	00h45m12s.600
RA (bottom/right)	00h40m04s.564
RA (bottom/left)	00h40m12s.593

Dec (center)	+41°16′18″.79
Dec (top/left)	+40°32′44″.17
Dec (top/right)	+42°00′16″.90
Dec (bottom/right)	+41°59′41″.50
Dec (bottom/left)	+40°32′08″.93

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