Bronco Loco
Andromeda (x9)
M31 or more commonly known as the Andromeda galaxy is the nearest galaxy to our own Milky Way galaxy. Its’s 2.5 million light years from Earth. The galaxy is actually pretty bright and can be seen as a smudge with the naked eye if viewed from a dark sky site. In approximately 4-5 billion years Andromeda will collide with our own Milky Way and merge and form either into a giant elliptical or lenticular galaxy.
My version of this often imaged deep sky object is my second attempt at it. I first imaged this a little over a year ago when I first started down the astrophotograpy rabbit hole. At the time, I thought my first image was pretty good but looking back now, it wasn’t all that great! Fast forward to the present and after a major investment in better astrophotography equipment, accessories and software. I have my best image of Andromeda.
I shot this entirely using a Hydrogen-alpha / Oxygen III (HA/OIII) narrowband filter. I honestly didn’t know how it would turn out but as an experiment it turned out really well. This was also my most ambitious project to date as I put 22 hours into the image. This spanned 5 nights.
This was a beast to post-process. I ended up with nine Photoshop iterations of this image. I’ve been working up to this final image for the last 2 1/2 weeks. Either the colors bothered me or the image didn’t seem bright enough. In the future, I might put more hours into this image and collect the faint HA data surrounding Andromeda but 100+ hours seems pretty daunting! 🤔
Image Detail:
- 22 hours of total integration time (300 seconds, gain 100, camera cooled to 14 degrees)
Equipment:
- SVBONY SV503 80ED
- SVBONY SV220 HA/OIII dual narrowband filter
- SVBONY SV226 filter drawer
- Sky Watcher Star Adventurer GTi
- ZWO ASI 2600MC Pro
- ZWO ASIAIR Mini
- ZWO EAF
- ZWO 120MM guide camera
- ZWO guide scope
Software:
- PixInsight
- Adobe Photoshop
- RC Astro Blur Xterminator
- RC Astro Noise Xterminator
- RC Astro Star Xterminator
Andromeda (x9)
M31 or more commonly known as the Andromeda galaxy is the nearest galaxy to our own Milky Way galaxy. Its’s 2.5 million light years from Earth. The galaxy is actually pretty bright and can be seen as a smudge with the naked eye if viewed from a dark sky site. In approximately 4-5 billion years Andromeda will collide with our own Milky Way and merge and form either into a giant elliptical or lenticular galaxy.
My version of this often imaged deep sky object is my second attempt at it. I first imaged this a little over a year ago when I first started down the astrophotograpy rabbit hole. At the time, I thought my first image was pretty good but looking back now, it wasn’t all that great! Fast forward to the present and after a major investment in better astrophotography equipment, accessories and software. I have my best image of Andromeda.
I shot this entirely using a Hydrogen-alpha / Oxygen III (HA/OIII) narrowband filter. I honestly didn’t know how it would turn out but as an experiment it turned out really well. This was also my most ambitious project to date as I put 22 hours into the image. This spanned 5 nights.
This was a beast to post-process. I ended up with nine Photoshop iterations of this image. I’ve been working up to this final image for the last 2 1/2 weeks. Either the colors bothered me or the image didn’t seem bright enough. In the future, I might put more hours into this image and collect the faint HA data surrounding Andromeda but 100+ hours seems pretty daunting! 🤔
Image Detail:
- 22 hours of total integration time (300 seconds, gain 100, camera cooled to 14 degrees)
Equipment:
- SVBONY SV503 80ED
- SVBONY SV220 HA/OIII dual narrowband filter
- SVBONY SV226 filter drawer
- Sky Watcher Star Adventurer GTi
- ZWO ASI 2600MC Pro
- ZWO ASIAIR Mini
- ZWO EAF
- ZWO 120MM guide camera
- ZWO guide scope
Software:
- PixInsight
- Adobe Photoshop
- RC Astro Blur Xterminator
- RC Astro Noise Xterminator
- RC Astro Star Xterminator