My First Successful DSO Imaging Session - Say Hello to my M 31

[Juno16]

Awesome first image Chris!

Eons better than my first image!

[Bigzmey]

That's great! Congrats on your first astro photo Chris!

[Makuser]

Hello Chris. A very enjoyable Andromeda Galaxy (M 31) image. Congratulations on a very nice success with your first DSO capture. You achieved nice contrast and spiral arm details. Also the companions M 32 and M 110 show up well too. Thanks for sharing this fine work with us Chris and I hope that you have more sessions like this again soon.

[Gordon]

Congratulations Chris on having your "First" TSS APOD!

app.php/article/10-8-2021-tss-astrophot ... of-the-day

[chris_g]

Hi @chris_g
I and some others prefer to work on the unadjusted tiff straight out of the stacker so if you dont have that then it may be worth putting up the raw lights as you suggest. But we will need all the calibration frames too then we can take it from first principles and really see what you got. Otherwise redo the stack but save it as a 16b tiff without any adjustment and put that up.

If it's easier for you I can make a onedrive folder available and you can upload it there. Let me know.

Take care

David

I've switched to OneDrive myself to share this type of stuff, I used to use my hosting account for this. I discovered that the subs were actually 60 second and not 90. I had set up the sequence in NINA for 90 second but when it give me some issues, I switched to APT and obviously selected the wrong plan. I also went back to my original book that started me on this journey Getting Started: Long Exposure Astrophotography by Alan Hall and learned what HDR is, along with stretching and other things. I didn't realize that I was stretching in DSS, now I do... Any way, any insight you could provide would be very much appreciated, the link to the files are below...

https://1drv.ms/u/s!ArTUOFX8EnYdlVWDzXo ... a?e=XRZwHk

[John Donne]

Congratulation on the APPD Chris !

[Butterfly Maiden]

Well done Chris and congratulations on receiving the TSS APOD.

[chris_g]

Wow, thank you for APOD, was not expecting that...

[Jockinireland]

Brilliant - I totally agree with that APOD - as a first ever DSO image it is very deserving!

[Ken_nneth]

Congratulations on your first DSO. I think David covered most of the issues.
Keep going your star is great.
Thanks for sharing
Clear Skies
Kenneth

[Greenman]

Well done Chris, nice first DSO. Having mastered that,the learning curve steepness processing is fun, but a cruel mistress in my hands.

If anything there is too much advice out there on the net, and much of it is tailored to specific workflows people use. Truth is the workflow depends on the image. Following a workflow for say a Galaxy does not necessarily work for a nebula etc. Default advice get more data, keep your subs as short as you can for a specific target. Poor data is not recoverable in processing, good data is key, as the processing will be much smoother.

Congrats on the APOD .

[Jockinireland]

Hi Chris,

So i downloaded your data and took a run at it.

Disclaimers - I am far from expert and anything I say should be taken with a hefty dose of salt until others more expert put me right

Comments first,

Your flats seem to be 0.5 or 0.6s, your dark flats from 4 to 20 seconds mostly 15. I've always believed that flats and dark flats should be the same duration and ISO so I only used Bias darks and flat for calibration. Which I did in APP

When looking closely, your stars are a bit trailed, all the same direction suggesting guiding was not great. You mentioned using PHD2 - do you have the guide log for that night then we could see whats going on there.

You 60s is a bit on the short side and the 30 minutes total is very little and means that noise is indeed an issue longer subs and more of them - as you said yourself, is the way to go.

On the plus side, all things considered the noise is not that bad - you have a bit of canon banding but that can be dealt with and its not as bas as my old 1100D

To processing;

I made a first effort in Photoshop as I know that what you use - but I'm quite rusty so I'm sure you could do better. I got this;

This was
Crop,
Levels and curves to balance background and start stretching the image
GradtientXterminator Plug-in to remove gradients (which were not that bad really)
Some carbonis actions for noise, contrast
Camera raw filter to boost colour and some background noise reduction
Final levels and curves

Its not great, partly because I'm so rusty in PS but the exposure and short integration made it difficult. But at least it gives an idea whats in the data.

Then I ran the same file through my Pixinsight process with some final tweaks in PS to get this.

I have pushed it way further in terms of stretch and colour than the data can really handle but i really wanted to try to give you an idea of whats lurking there.

Anyway, I hope this is of some value to you and if you need more details or clarification just ask.

Take care

David

[starfield]

Congratulations. First DSO is quite a milestone and your off to a great start. As Kathy said, I bet you've got more color hiding in there with some additional post processing. Also can't quite tell if you were dithering during capture or not, but if not it's definitely worth doing to help avoid "walking noise". Dithering made a big difference for me when I first got started.

I'm not sure if it was dithering or not, N.I.N.A. new sequencer is giving me issues, so I did all set up with it then switched to APT for the actual sequence. I didn't connect anything other than the Canon in APT so I suspect no dithering was done if PHD2 doesn't do it automatically! A lot to learn!

Chris, I'm not a NINA user, but there are lots of folks in this forum that do use it. If it's like SGP, it will drive the Dithering and talk with PHD2.

[JohnP_1]

Well done on your first image. Congrats on your APOD too!

[WilliamPaolini]

I absolutely love images like this. By that I mean not over exposed and over processed to the point that they show the object like it can never appear naturally to the senses no matter how close you get to it. Your pic very much mimics how M31/M32/M110 appear to me visually at a medium dark site through my 6" Apo. Fantastic!!

[Larry 1969]

Congratulations on your 1st DSO and 1st APOD!
I won't even show you my first... I was pretty excited about it too...
Am I correct saying you use APT AND N.I.N.A?
You may be able to eliminate some confusion by using one or the other. They both kinda do the same thing. I use APT for total session control. I have APT set to control my PHD2 guiding and dithering and it works well. LMK if you need a hand setting it up.

Larry

[chris_g]

@Jockinireland , wow, those images are so much better in the detail that you brought out. I've got an even bigger learning curve to conquer with processing than I did with image acquisition. Thank you very much for showing me the steps you used in PS. Once things settle down a little, I will take a closer look at PixInsight as it's a dedicated astronomy processor.

[chris_g]

Congratulations. First DSO is quite a milestone and your off to a great start. As Kathy said, I bet you've got more color hiding in there with some additional post processing. Also can't quite tell if you were dithering during capture or not, but if not it's definitely worth doing to help avoid "walking noise". Dithering made a big difference for me when I first got started.

I'm not sure if it was dithering or not, N.I.N.A. new sequencer is giving me issues, so I did all set up with it then switched to APT for the actual sequence. I didn't connect anything other than the Canon in APT so I suspect no dithering was done if PHD2 doesn't do it automatically! A lot to learn!

Chris, I'm not a NINA user, but there are lots of folks in this forum that do use it. If it's like SGP, it will drive the Dithering and talk with PHD2.

APT wasn't dithering, it was off. I'm using NINA only for the Three Point Polar Alignment feature in the preview version. APT is supposed to start working on a Polar Alignment process as well with their next version. Looking forward to when they do.

[chris_g]

Congratulations on your 1st DSO and 1st APOD!
I won't even show you my first... I was pretty excited about it too...
Am I correct saying you use APT AND N.I.N.A?
You may be able to eliminate some confusion by using one or the other. They both kinda do the same thing. I use APT for total session control. I have APT set to control my PHD2 guiding and dithering and it works well. LMK if you need a hand setting it up.

Larry

I'm using N.I.N.A.'s preview version for the Three Point Polar Alignment feature. I was using both to decide which one I wanted to adopt. Over the last couple of sessions, I've decided to adopt APT for scope control instead of N.I.N.A., had some issues with it and I prefer APT's interface in a remote desktop session, it's cleaner and APT accomplishes everything. I've also read in APT's forums that the developer plans on starting to work on a Polar Alignment feature in their next version, I'm looking forward to it so I can use just one interface for everything.

[STEVE333]

Congratulations Chris on your first AP (astrophotography) image! I remember how excited I was when I captured my first one. Isn't it amazing what we can do with modern equipment and programs!

Look forward to watching your progress as you continue on your AP journey.

Steve