Andromeda Galaxy

crimbfighter · Sep 7, 2019

I was mildly successful a couple nights ago in getting some imaging time on the Andromeda Galaxy. It's our closest galactic neighbor and is so large, if it were visible to the naked eye, it would be nearly four times the size of the moon in the sky. My telescope is too narrow a FOV to capture the entire galaxy in one image. The bright spot to the left is actually a second, satellite galaxy known as M32. I unfortunately under exposed my individual frames so I couldn't pull much data out of it. As a result, I converted to monochrome because the color data was pretty poor and just too noisy. I particularly like the darker gas spiraling into the core.

-Celestron 8" SCT scope (2000mm focal length)
-D800
-25 x 190sec exposures (1hr 19min total integrated exposure)
-Stacked with Deep Sky Stacker
-Finished in PS and LR

Jeff G · Sep 7, 2019

Freakin' amazing. :encouragement:

Scott Whaley · Sep 7, 2019

Awesome

TreeofLifeStairs · Sep 7, 2019

Is it naturally black and white?

crimbfighter · Sep 7, 2019

Jeff G said:
Freakin' amazing.

Thanks!

Scott Whaley said:
Awesome

Thank you!

crimbfighter · Sep 7, 2019

TreeofLifeStairs said:
Is it naturally black and white?

No, well, not really. It is comprised of many gasses, just like our own galaxy, and each type of gas produces a different wavelength of light. If you capture it in a one shot color image, like any DSLR, you will get a more true to life color image. In reality it's a lot more complicated than that, but had I properly exposed my images, i probably could have had good colors to work with.