M31 - Andromeda Galaxy

I added another hour and a half or so of integration time to Andromeda. I wanted a bit more color and contrast in the image, so I tried some new processing techniques. Unfortunately, I think I blew out the core a little bit and there seems to be a good amount of noise in the color data, but I do prefer the look of the dust lanes on the outer part of the galaxy. I’ll need to keep revisiting this to see if I can get a better result through better processing. At this point, I should have enough amount of data for a good image.

I added another 2 hours of integration time to my earlier data with some slightly longer exposures to see if I could better capture the dust in the outer part of the galaxy. I also learned some better techniques for color balancing and the results speak for themselves. There still seems to be a bit of green cast to this image, so I’ll need to keep practicing. Overall, it is quite the improvement over the previous image.

We all start somewhere. My first image of Andromeda. I got just shy of 2 hours of integration time on it. It’s clear that I still need some practice with processing the data, but hey, there’s still an image! The color is a bit green/blue cast, which apparently is typical with mirrorless/DSLR cameras in astrophotography. I’ll see if I can figure out how to better color balance in the future. I will probably continue to use Andromeda as a testing ground for various techniques since it is such a large, bright object, and is so commonly imaged that there is lots of reference material out there.