Thank you very much for gold! And thank you very much for the wonderful feedback!
I've uploaded the full res files, both cropped and uncropped for any use you'd like (wallpaper, background, etc). Feel free to check out more astrophotography here. Thank you.
After doing my first Andromeda photo back in July in a fairly light polluted area, I decided to do it again at a very dark sight. This is taken at Calabogie, Ontario, Canada. Andromeda galaxy is roughly 2.537 million light years away, and it's our neighbour. The two other fuzzies below and above the galaxy are dwarf galaxies to Andromeda. M32 and M110 respectively. It's theorized that M32 was a bigger galaxy that Andromeda ate, and part of that old galaxy is thought to be in the outer arms of Andromeda.
Gear:
Olympus OMD EM-5 Micro 4/3 camera Skywatcher Star Adventurer Astro package with ball mount (unguided) Olympus 40-150mm F2.8 lens Home made dew heater Made with nichrome wire wrapped in duct tape, which is powered by a lipo battery and controlled with a potentiometer.
Acquisition & Environment:
123x1 minute exposures (3.75 hours) 1600 iso @ 150mm (300 equivalent) F2.8 70 flat frames 44 dark frames 65 bias frames Taken: September 13, 2018 New moon Clear night, temperature: 8-10 degrees Celsius Transparency: 4/5 with winds up to 10km/h Bortle 3 zone
Processing:
Images processed in DeepSkyStacker 2x drizzle, Kappa-Sigma clipping for lights with per channel background calibration Median Kappa-Sigma clipping for darks, flats, and Bias Automatic alignment and output in 16 bit TIFF Brought saturation to 17 and matched all the rgb levels. Photoshop adjustments: Cropped to remove stacking errors and to fit the galaxy in the center frame Adjust Levels to bring histogram to the front and Curves to bring out some more nebulosity Used RC-Astro's Gradient xterminator to remove the gradient the flats couldn't fix Used Colour balance to adjust background colour to be neutral in all RGB. Background tends to be green and magenta heavy. Used Deep sky colors HLVG tool to remove any unnecessary greens in the photo Adjust background colour again to bring the background back to neutral as HLVG tends to bring out purple too much. Used Astronomy tools to bring out local contrast And then ran the "make stars smaller" tool As well as running the "deep space noise reduction" tool Increased the Saturation Reduced highlights a touch Lightroom adjustments: Decreased highlights to -17, and increased clarity to +15 Cropped and exported into jpeg Image resolution: [5551x4101]
Karate_Prom on September 23rd, 2018 at 00:18 UTC »
It's pretty neat that we're likely staring at another intelligent civilization but we lack the tech to zoom in well enough. Freakier still is that civilization could have perished by the time we took the pic. Or maybe they tuned into floating clouds of energy. Then it'd be even harder to tell!
Beautiful shot. Whenever I see a shot of the Andromeda Galaxy like this, I always have to remind myself that the thousands of stars in this photo are in FRONT of the Andromeda galaxy, and that the galaxy is basically being seen behind this "curtain" of stars. It's a weird sensation.
Chris9712 on September 23rd, 2018 at 00:09 UTC »
Thank you very much for gold! And thank you very much for the wonderful feedback!
I've uploaded the full res files, both cropped and uncropped for any use you'd like (wallpaper, background, etc). Feel free to check out more astrophotography here. Thank you.
Uncropped: https://ufile.io/0u1k4 & https://ufile.io/3fumf (largest resolution)
Cropped (This image): https://ufile.io/jiym9 & https://ufile.io/h3c2m (largest resolution)
After doing my first Andromeda photo back in July in a fairly light polluted area, I decided to do it again at a very dark sight. This is taken at Calabogie, Ontario, Canada. Andromeda galaxy is roughly 2.537 million light years away, and it's our neighbour. The two other fuzzies below and above the galaxy are dwarf galaxies to Andromeda. M32 and M110 respectively. It's theorized that M32 was a bigger galaxy that Andromeda ate, and part of that old galaxy is thought to be in the outer arms of Andromeda.
Gear:
Olympus OMD EM-5 Micro 4/3 camera Skywatcher Star Adventurer Astro package with ball mount (unguided) Olympus 40-150mm F2.8 lens Home made dew heater Made with nichrome wire wrapped in duct tape, which is powered by a lipo battery and controlled with a potentiometer.Acquisition & Environment:
123x1 minute exposures (3.75 hours) 1600 iso @ 150mm (300 equivalent) F2.8 70 flat frames 44 dark frames 65 bias frames Taken: September 13, 2018 New moon Clear night, temperature: 8-10 degrees Celsius Transparency: 4/5 with winds up to 10km/h Bortle 3 zoneProcessing:
Images processed in DeepSkyStacker 2x drizzle, Kappa-Sigma clipping for lights with per channel background calibration Median Kappa-Sigma clipping for darks, flats, and Bias Automatic alignment and output in 16 bit TIFF Brought saturation to 17 and matched all the rgb levels. Photoshop adjustments: Cropped to remove stacking errors and to fit the galaxy in the center frame Adjust Levels to bring histogram to the front and Curves to bring out some more nebulosity Used RC-Astro's Gradient xterminator to remove the gradient the flats couldn't fix Used Colour balance to adjust background colour to be neutral in all RGB. Background tends to be green and magenta heavy. Used Deep sky colors HLVG tool to remove any unnecessary greens in the photo Adjust background colour again to bring the background back to neutral as HLVG tends to bring out purple too much. Used Astronomy tools to bring out local contrast And then ran the "make stars smaller" tool As well as running the "deep space noise reduction" tool Increased the Saturation Reduced highlights a touch Lightroom adjustments: Decreased highlights to -17, and increased clarity to +15 Cropped and exported into jpeg Image resolution: [5551x4101]Here is the old photo from the more light polluted area: https://imgur.com/a/25ew7ZF
Thank you for viewing!
Karate_Prom on September 23rd, 2018 at 00:18 UTC »
It's pretty neat that we're likely staring at another intelligent civilization but we lack the tech to zoom in well enough. Freakier still is that civilization could have perished by the time we took the pic. Or maybe they tuned into floating clouds of energy. Then it'd be even harder to tell!
canadave_nyc on September 23rd, 2018 at 01:33 UTC »
Beautiful shot. Whenever I see a shot of the Andromeda Galaxy like this, I always have to remind myself that the thousands of stars in this photo are in FRONT of the Andromeda galaxy, and that the galaxy is basically being seen behind this "curtain" of stars. It's a weird sensation.