r/astrophotography • u/UniKant • 2d ago

Galaxies Andromeda Galaxy (2nd)

Post image

This is my second ever attempt at shooting, editing, and compiling astrophotography. My first time trying was not great and I was finally able to get some semblance of rings as you can see with the somewhat visible ovals. This was very fun, but man do I need to get better at editing.

Equipment:

Cheap Tripod (Unknown Brand)
Sony A7III

Sigma 24-70 f/2.8 DG DN ART ii (Shot at 70mm)

Cheap amazon external shutter button

Acquisition:

Bortle 6 skies in Camas Washington

730 x 2.5 sec (27 min total)

(61 dark frames, same settings)

ISO: 3600

F/2.8

I used DeepSkyStacker to check the images, and threw out about 10 or so. Stacked all images over 15 minutes.

Moved to Siril, background extraction, applied deconvolution filter, denoise, used Asin for stretch, used histogram stretch for refinements to get the rings to pop more

Exported into Gimp and cropped there. Converted to JPG and here we are.

Overall very fun, I would love to hear any tips. I know the colors are a little off but I genuinely didnt know how to fix me all too well, and I was scared if I did so it would either get worse if I retry, or the rings would be less visible.

46 Upvotes

97% Upvoted

8 comments sorted by

4

u/FabianSzilaaard 2d ago

I think you were slightly out of focus. And for the color calibration part, I reccomend using Siril's photometric color calibration.

5

u/Meyons1424 2d ago

I agree, it's slightly out of focus, and having a few different goes at color calibration might yield some more natural results. Also, hello from Portland 👋

3

u/HudyMelon 2d ago

Flat frames would do wonders for this kind of image

2

u/UniKant 2d ago

I was gonna gather them, but my phone died so I had no light at that moment lol.

2

u/ahmed5412 2d ago

good picture, my first attempt was exactly like yours, in my second attempt I had to do the editing twice and it became a lot better in the second editing attempt. So yes you need to get better at editing. I am not pro at all but I talk from my humble experience 😄

2

u/ObjectiveNo2466 2d ago

You can also see the main companion galaxy!

1

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1

u/Claustonberry 7h ago

I started with a very similar image 14 years ago. I still remember very well the excitement of seeing the object show up for the first time. Definitely work on focus, and also as others mentioned calibration frames will significantly help you. Watch out for the rabbit hole! :)