M31 - Andromeda Galaxy

Using a basic astro setup. No triplets, CCDs, or heavy mounts here, just a trusty 80ED doublet and a DSLR.

 

Orion ED80 with x0.85 reducer and GSO focuser

Advanced VX mount

Nikon D5300 h-alpha modded

ST80 with QHY5L-II for phd guiding

Sharpcap polar alignment

 

21 dithered subs @ 200 iso x 300s = 1h 45min total

10 darks

30 bias

30 flats

 

Bortle 2 skies at Nirvana (Irvine Lake Airstrip near Bon Echo Provincial Park, ON)

Image scale is at 1.58px

Guiding RMS was around 0.5 for DEC and 1 for RA

 

Transparency average

Seeing good

 

Imaged using BackyardNikon, Stacked in DSS, processing in Pixinsight and Photoshop for fast mask edits.

 

Dynamic crop (just edges)

DBE (abe sucks at m31)

PCC

SCNR Green

Luminence mask

MLT noise reduction on background

Histrogram transformation

M31 mask with stars mask subtracted for:

- MLT sharpening

- LocalHistogramEq

Histogram adjustment

Cuves

ACDNR on galaxy parts

MLT Chrominance

Color saturation adjustment

Curves adjustment

Morphological transformation for star reduction

Dark structure enhance

 

All the tasks were done with very tiny adjustments, its easy to overcook this with so many processing steps.

Done