View allAll Photos Tagged ANDROMEDA
Although I've imaged the Andromeda galaxy every year for the past 4 years I felt I'd never really done it justice, so this year I decided to try and get a 'poster quality' image. This image includes data added to the image from August (flic.kr/p/2nHVN3M) over 4 sessions between August and September 2022, including 5 hours of Hydrogen Alpha data to highlight those pink star forming regions in the spiral arms of the galaxy, The dust lanes in the galaxy show up nicely so I'm happy with this result. On to other objects when the lousy weather allows!
Equipment: Redcat 51, ASI1600MM with LRGB filters, ZWO EAF, Ioptron GEM28 mount
- 45 x 200s Luminance,
- 35 x 200s each of RGB,
- 30 x 600s Ha
at -15degC cooled camera, processed in APP, StarTools and Gimp.
Presenting an M31 Andromeda Galaxy “beginner equipment” side-project. I wanted to capture a deep space object with what is representative of relatively “beginner” equipment and modest exposure times as a sort of “you don’t need to spend heaps of money to make a good image” demonstration. And Andromeda seems like the perfect target for this sort of thing. Something I can share when people argue a basic camera can’t make a nice image, or get caught up feeling as though spending thousands of dollars is the right solution to solve frustrations they are encountering learning this challenging hobby.
As Ed Ting quipped (paraphrased), “You end up spending a lot of money to find out you didn’t need to spend a lot of money.”
Or maybe it’s mainly a “for better or for worse” reminder that experience, process, and (especially) post-processing knowledge and software are valuable parts of the formula. Expensive equipment does not offer an escape from this. Not to say the right sort of equipment (e.g. an interchangeable lens camera with a decent sensor and a tracking mount) doesn’t play a vital role in what is possible.
Hopefully this is helpful.
And in the spirit of this goal, I also spent some time documenting, in detail, the post-processing steps and thought process behind the edits involved. For this I used PixInsight and Adobe Photoshop.
Full Post-Processing Notes
Olympus E-M1 Mk.II M43 Camera
Olympus 40-150 f/2.8 Pro (150mm)
iOptron SkyGuider Pro
Vello Intervalometer
ASIAir Pro, ZWO 30mm Guide Scope, 2x ASI120MM (one as a dummy camera)
Lights RGB 100x90s ƒ/2.8 ISO1000
Calibrated with Darks, Flats, Flat Darks
Antelope Island, Utah, USA (Bortle 4)
Lights Hα 24x300s ISO3200
RedCat 51 & Astronomik 12nm Hα
I wanted to show that a color, stock sensor doesn’t mean Hydrogen-alpha can’t be accented. But had to use the RedCat 51 for this as, unlike a basic Canon DSLR, I don’t have a good means of using a Hydrogen-alpha filter with this Olympus.
Taken from the remote observatory 'Deep Sky West' in Rowe, New Mexico, USA. Using an FSQ-106 and Software Bisque MyT mount, as well as a QSI-683WSG CCD camera. This superb data comprises the following exposures:
Astrodon B: 16x900" bin 1x1
Astrodon G: 28x900" bin 1x1
Astrodon L: 8x120" bin 1x1
Astrodon L: 8x300" bin 1x1
Astrodon L: 16x900" bin 1x1
Astrodon R: 24x900" bin 1x1
Processing by myself, this being a surprisingly difficult target to extract all the nice details from
if you like this photograph, feel free to purchase many types of prints from my smugmug store here - simonwaters.smugmug.com/Astrophotos/
My first somewhat decent photograph of a galaxy.
I struggled in many ways to capture this. First was my light-polluted location of a NYC suburb, plus in my excitement of clear skies, I forgot to use my light pollution filter. The night before I shorted out my dew zapper controller so this night I had to make do with hand warmers attached to my lens. It literally took me hours to find the galaxy in my 560mm focal view. It's so frustrating trying to blindly navigate the night sky. The resulting stacked photograph had a huge magenta color cast on half the image. I will continue to practice astrophotography so I am prepared for a more suitable location.
46 images stacked with Nebulosity. 560mm, f8, iso 400, 90s.
Dark, flat, and bias frames were also used in the processing.
Nube estelar en la galaxia de Andrómeda
Const.: Andromeda
Distanc.: ≈ 2.5 million light years
Magnitud.: 12.8
Shots: LHaRGB
Drive the image in the direction YOU want. The way you enjoy YOUR picture the most.
I spent a long time (several years) catering my images to others and the way objects are "supposed" to look.
You have permission to process your images, your data you worked so hard to collect, in whichever way you want.
Some may not like it - but who are you doing this for?
2023 Black Forest Star Party - Saturday Night
(21) - 120sec exposures, at ISO 1600, 180mm, f4, no flats, biases or darks, stacked in Siril, final edits in Photoshop
M31, The Andromeda Galaxy, needs no introduction. Probably the most commonly imaged galaxy out there, but more beautiful than any. Home of an estimated trillion stars, large blue star forming regions which give off so much energy causing the Hydrogen gas clouds they were formed from to glow red.
I waited for two years to image this galaxy, waiting for the perfect combination of clear skies, no moon, and decent seeing. That came Nov.7/8. I dedicated one night to Ha and the following night to LRGB before the weather turned again.
I then spent several days off and on processing over and over again to do this beautiful galaxy the justice it deserved. I wanted to emphasize 4 items from my processing and I am hoping I hit them. I wanted to emphasize overall galactic structure, new star formations (blue), Red brilliant Ha regions, and dark dust structure.
Imaging telescope: SkyWatcher Esprit 80ED Super APO Triplet
Imaging camera: ZWO ASI1600MM-Pro
Mount: SkyWatcher EQ6-R Pro
Dates:Nov. 7, 2020 , Nov. 8, 2020
Frames:
Optolong B 36mm: 30x120" (gain: 139.00) -20C bin 1x1
Optolong G 36mm: 34x120" (gain: 139.00) -20C bin 1x1
Antlia Ha 3.5nm 36mm: 43x600" (gain: 139.00) -20C bin 1x1
Optolong L 36mm: 90x120" (gain: 139.00) -20C bin 1x1
Optolong R 36mm: 32x120" (gain: 139.00) -20C bin 1x1
Integration: 13.4 hours
- Mass Effect: Andromeda
- Camera tools by Hattiwatti
- Post processing done in Reshade and Photoshop
- Hotsampling using SRWE
Might not be my strongest composition but I really dig the colors in this one. LUT stacking FTW.
Custom Shape by Atypical Shapes
Catwa head, Truth hair, .Mila eyes and lashes, WarPaint eyeliner, The Horror! highlighter
After my last attempt I have spent a bit of time watching YouTube videos on how to process these images, this was also taken using a telescope and tracker
Skywatcher 72ED
Canon6D
Skywatcher EQM35
Processed in DSS, lightroom, photoshop and NIK
43 x 2 minute stacked images with 10 x dark frames
This is a re-edit from data I photographed in 2013.
For original look here: www.flickr.com/photos/astro-tanja/9776984696/
A year has passed and my Pix Insight editing techniques improved slightly.
Image details:
105min (21x 300sec) @ISO800
Image acquired over 2 nights, 2 locations
2 September 2013, Iowa (11x 300sec)
5 September 2013, Nevada (10x300sec)
Image setup:
Officina Stellare HiperAPO105
Canon 60Da
Celestron Advanced VX
Guiding: SSAG & PHD
Acquisition: Nebulosity
Processing: PixInsight and PhotoShop
This is my first image with my new TMB-92 telescope. I performed 90% of the processing of this image for the first time in pixinsight. I'm impressed with the capabilities of this software.
Telescope: TMB-92
Camera: QSI-583ws
Mount: NEQ-6 with OAG
Exposures:
19x300s L
3x300s B
9x300s R,G
9x900s Ha
Total: 5,6 hours
Camera – Fujifilm X-T20.
Lens – Jupiter 37A.
Mount – Sky-Watcher Star Adventurer Mini.
ISO – 3200.
Stack of 108 lights 30" each.
30 darks.
30 biases.
------
Stacking in DeepSkyStacker.
Editing in SiriL and Adobe Photoshop.
Andromeda Galaxy -- taken September 23, 2022
Nikon D850
Svbony 503 OTA w 0.8X field flattner
about 40 of 30 sec exposures;
stacked with Sequetor
TIFF edited with photoshop.
9-23-22_AG-D850-OTA
www.instagram.com/stevenrobinsonpictures
The Andromeda Galaxy
I was very interested to make another picture of the Andromeda Galaxy after my last quick attempt were I was admittedly just beginning to find my feet on this well photographed night sky target. Here is my second attempt at the Andromeda Galaxy, and in this one a much closer view than I have shown before. Learning all the time, and being very interested in for the most part, realism of the night sky (including colour accuracy) I processed this to try and show the natural colour of Andromeda. The final result is admittedly subdued compared with typical images we see of the Andromeda Galaxy. Often many of the images we see online of this target involve usage of things like colour balance tools, overuse of saturation and selective colour in photoshop (there are other culprates which mangle natural colour also). I have avoided using any of these tools and processed with a carefully colour managed workflow. Why have I done this? I think there are too many false colour images of the night sky out there and I believe that the universe deserves a chance to be represented a bit more accurately. Everyone will have their own opinion on this and are free to do what they wish with their own images. Is this image perfect? Of course not. Like everyone I continue to learn day by day...
If you look carefully into this one, you can observe hints of the the irregularly shaped faint halo extending well beyond the elliptical galaxy. NASA has already confirmed this extends out a phenomenal distance from the galaxy. We see it here as a glow around Andromeda. The smaller 'fuzzy' satellite galaxy below Andromeda in this image, called NGC 205, is warping the outer disc of Andromeda (I checked this from a NASA scientific paper!). In this picture we can almost faintly see the tidal gravitiational force acting between them via the faint glow seen.
Image taken in my backyard in Perthshire, Scotland.
Explored on Flickr 1st February 2023.
Decided to bust out the old telescope last night and do some deep space imaging, been a while since I used it and my bigger mount. Of course I'm on call at work which means I can't travel far, have to stay within cell range and be able to get in to work within an hour. So I headed up to my fallback shooting location, Rockport Reservoir. Got up there, spent an hour setting everything up, went to start up my tablet and begin alignment and then I noticed...I was missing the bluetooth dongle for my wireless keyboard and mouse. The stupid tablet touchscreen keyboard won't allow you to use specific key commands in combination, commands I need to do the alignment and get my target in the field of view. So I spent another hour looking for the dongle, realizing it wasn't going to be found, and trying everything I knew to get the alignment to work. No dice, almost decided to pack it up, but instead I did the sharpcap polar alignment and decided to give doing a fully manual mount alignment using a laser pointer. Chose Andromeda because I could actually see it, used the laser pointer and nailed the alignment first try. I just laughed when the first image popped up on the tablet.
I wasted so much time with all that crap so I only got about 100 minutes worth of data. This is stack of 16 exposures, each 7 minutes at ISO 800 with my Nikon D7000 and Astrotech AT65EDQ on a Sirius EQ-G tracking mount. Not the best, but given all the crap I had to go through to get it....I'll take it.
Well, this is not great but the best I've got so far of the Andromeda Galaxy. I was going to take about 10 exposures to stack and the first one hadn't even finished when the clouds rolled in. However, I tweaked it and stretched it and, for the first time for me, I can see the dust rings.
2024-10-27
Harney, MD
This is my first attempt to use two panels to capture a celestial object. I used Photometric Mosaic to merge the panels in Pixinsight.
Camera: ZWO ASI2600MC
Guide Camera: QHY5III462
Telescope: Vixen ED80SF f/7.5
Mount: Losmandy G11
Integration:
107x120s (3.56 hrs) Panel 1
92x120s (3.06 hrs) Panel 2
No filters
Capture: NINA
Processing: Pixinsight, Affinity
- Mass Effect: Andromeda
- Camera tools by Hattiwatti
- Post processing done in Reshade and Photoshop
- Hotsampling using SRWE
Canon 6D & Canon 70-200mm F/4L USM
Skywatcher Star Adventurer 2i & Lacerta MGEN-II
47x60s ISO3200 F/7.1 15 dark 15 flat
2022 07 26 2:00-3:00
The Andromeda Galaxy (sometimes also known by the old name Great Andromeda Nebula or with the catalog names M 31 and NGC 224 ), is a giant spiral galaxy that is about 2.538 million light years from Earth in the direction of the constellation of Andromeda , from which it takes its name. This is the largest galaxy closest to ours, the Milky Way ; it is also visible to the naked eye and is among the most distant objects visible without the aid of tools.
The Andromeda Galaxy is the largest of the Local Group , a group of galaxies which also includes the Milky Way and the Triangle Galaxy , plus about fifty other minor galaxies, many of which are satellites of the major ones.
According to studies published in the 2000s , derived from the observations of the Spitzer Space Telescope , it would contain about one billion stars (one thousand billion), a number far greater than that of the Milky Way. However, there are conflicting opinions on the mass and number of stars: some studies indicate a mass value for the Milky Way equal to 80% of that of Andromeda, while according to others the two galaxies would have similar dimensions. However, some studies suggest that the Milky Way contains more dark matter and could thus be the one with the largest mass.
With an apparent magnitude of 3.4, the Andromeda Galaxy is one of the brightest objects in Messier's catalog
==
Dates: 7 August, 11-13-14 September 2020
Telescope: William Optics GT-81 with 6AIII Flattener / 0.8x reducer (382 mm focal length)
Mount: Celestron CGEM-DX
Imaging Camera: ASI1600MM-Cool
Guidescope: Omegon 60mm / 240mm FL
Guide Camera: ASI290MM
==
Baader UV/IR Cut - 300 x 60 sec
Baader Red 82 x 90 sec
Baader Green 80 x 90 sec
Baader Blue 80 x 90 sec
Baader H-alpha 140 x 120 sec
Total Integration Time: 15:43 Hours
Taken from my backyard (Bortle 7)
86 lights, 24 darks, ca. 1h integration time.
Camera: Canon 550D (stock), Mount: Star Adventurer.
Finally I got some hours of clear skies last night and I was able to get my Star Adventurer to work after having some difficulties in the past. I was waiting to shoot Andromeda with my TS72 which I bought a year ago and had no opportunity to shoot M31 since then. I am quite happy with the result. I will try to collect more lights and I will update this image when I have more data.
La Grande Nébuleuse Andromède
51x120sec
800 Iso
Lunette TS triplet 80/480
Canon 450D défiltré
Correcteur/réducteur WO x0.8
Filtre CLS
EQ6
- Mass Effect: Andromeda
- Camera tools by Hattiwatti
- Post processing done in Reshade and Photoshop
- Hotsampling using SRWE
I went up to Mount Shasta on Friday specifically to try to create this image. Inspired by a picture I saw (that I will link to in the comments) and thanks to a suggestion from a friend, I figured out I could get Andromeda rising from behind Mount Shasta and decided to give it a go.
This picture took everything I have learned in 12 years of photography. I used an equatorial tracker to find and stay locked on Andromeda starting from when it was still behind the volcano. As the tracker slowly turned, I kept watching the LCD on the camera to see if and where Andromeda would show up. At 10:56pm on Friday night, it peaked out from behind Shasta, right on schedule. I was literally dancing!
I kept tracking Andromeda for another 35 minutes to get enough exposures to bring out the details in it's spiral arms and to bring out M110 and M32, Andromeda's sister galaxies.
I then rotated the tracker back to center Shasta and took several images of it without the motion of the tracker. All of these images were stacked in Nebulosity4 and composited in Photoshop. The relative size and placement of Andromeda is exactly as it appeared. I did not enlarge Andromeda to make it stand out. Andromeda is actually 6X wider than our moon, but so faint that the human eye can barely see it.
Sony A7Rii, Canon 70-200mm f/2.8, 180mm, f/3.2, ISO1600. Approximately 60 images total
Taken at Clark Botanic Garden is a 12-acre botanical garden and park located in Roslyn Heights, in Nassau County, on Long Island, in New York, United States.
Pieris japonica, the Japanese andromeda or Japanese pieris, is a species of flowering plant in the heath family Ericaceae. It is native to eastern China, Taiwan, and Japan, where it grows in mountain thickets. This medium-sized evergreen shrub or tree is widely cultivated in gardens.
Around 120, tracked, 60 second exposures of the Andromeda Galaxy (M31), stacked in Deep Sky Stacker and processed in Adobe Photoshop.
Still very much a beginner at astrophotography, and honestly, it's the hardest thing I've ever done in photography.
Another go at the data captured in early September. Used the Ha data as Luminance but not overly enthusiastic about the result. Will have a new go at all the subs taken. Location Stockholm, bortle 9, ASI294MM PRO. Subs ranging from 30s to 180s. Mount AZEQ6GT.
Processed and stacked in Pixinsight, adapted in PS. WO Magrez90 refractor.