M31

Other image sizes:

ANDROMEDA - SPIRAL GALAXY - MAG 3.4

M31 - THE ANDROMEDA GALAXY with M32
Three Panel Mosaic

About this Object:

One of the night sky's grandest features, the Andromeda Galaxy is one of the largest, brightest, and nearest objects outside of our own Milky Way galaxy. With the apparent size of more than six of our full moons, this object fills the eyepiece of just about any telescope and is difficult to fit on most CCD chips. It is an easy, naked eye object in even moderately bright skies shining at a magnitude of 3.4. M32, a companion, elliptical galaxy, is the round object just left M31's core. Below M31 is another eliptical galaxy known as M110, shining at 7.9 magnitude. M110 is well known because it is the last object in the Messier catalog. The dust lanes evident around the core of M31 can be seen with large aperture scopes in dark skies, as can both of its companion galaxies. Compared to many of the brighter galaxies, the Andromeda Galaxy shows less detail when observed visually, though nothing is more picturesque.

Location: Okie-Tex Star Party, 2005, and Ballauer Observatory near Azle, Texas
Date: October 7, 8 and December 5, 2005
Seeing: 1/10, 10 to 15 mph wind on average
Transparency: 5/10
Temperature: 40 degrees F on average (camera at -25c)
Scope/Mount: 12.5" RCOS RC and Paramount ME
Camera: SBIG STL-11000 astro CCD camera
Exposure Info: LRGB mosaic - 400:105:70:95 minutes over three frames (10 minute subexposures color binned)
Processing Information: Calibration/Registration of individual frames in CCDStack. RGB combine of frames and stitching master luminance in Photoshop CS. Registration/blending of mosaic, addition of large luminance, color balance, localized color manipulation, levels/curves, sharpening, and cropping in Photoshop CS. Smoothing and local contrast increase in Photoshop with Noel Carboni's Astronomy Tools Plug-in.

Exposure Notes: When the night gives you bad seeing and windy conditions and all you have is a large focal length scope, what do you do? You shoot a mosaic! While this in no way is meant to compete with other high resolution mosaics you might see, it's a good way to salvage an otherwise poor evening, or two. Shot entirely at Okie-Tex Star Party except for the blue channel of one of the frames. This was a difficult project to put together, especially since the right-most frame suffered the worse winds, which lowered the S/N significantly and bloated the stars. Color is probably not accurate by any means as I had to do some localized color correction to get everything to fit correctly. Still, not too bad of a result.

Previous Attempts:

Click the image for larger resolution (1600 x 1084)

M31 - The Andromeda Galaxy

Location: The Ballauer Observatory near Azle, Texas
Date: September 6, 2004
Temperature: 70 degrees F
Seeing: 5/10 very average
Transparency: 6/10
Scope/mount: Takahashi FSQ-106 @ f/5 and Tak NJP mount
Camera: SBIG STL-6303E, self-guided
Exposure Info: LRGB image - 180:50:30:50 minutes (5 min. subexposures, all unbinned)
Processing Info: Dark frame calibration (no flats), de-blooming, registration, and Sigma combine of all channels in MaxIm 4.0. Digital-Development in MaxIm. Blending of final data, channel cleanup, artificial flats, Levels, Curves, and color balance in Photoshop CS.

Other exposure info: Special thanks to the Three Rivers Foundations (3RF) for the use of some of the equipment used to create this image.

Location: Ballauer Observatory in Azle, Texas
Seeing: 8/10 (1.4 FWHM)
Transparency: 3/10
Date and Time: December 30, 2003 @ 11:00PM
Equipment: Tak FSQ-106 @ f/5, and Celestron CGE mount
Camera: SBIG ST-7E with CFW-8a filter wheel, SBIG standard filters
Exposure Info: LRGB image (7 x 10 min L, 3 x 5 min R, 3 x 5 min G, 7 x 5 min B)
Processing Information: MaxIm (Darks, align/combine, and digital development), Photoshop 7 (Levels, Curves, Blur/Sharpening, masking and blending, color balance)

Other exposure info: This shot was taken with a string taped over the aperture end of the scope in a cross pattern. This creates the four-point, diffraction pattern on the brighter stars in the image. It's just a personal preference.