This image, I think, is one of the best images I have produced. It’s absolutely incredible to me the vastness of this object — it would take light 200,000 years to cross this galaxy. 26 hours of pure data from a bortle 1 site were used to create the incredibly deep astrograph. The faint shell around the bright galaxy was most likely created by past gravitational interactions with other galaxies.
Image:
Equipment:
- Nikon D90
- Sigma 300mm prime lens
- Sky-Watcher Star Adventurer
- Star Adventurer Tripod
- Bahnitov Mask
- Intervalometer
- DIY diffraction spikes
- Stellarium
- All Sky Plate Solver
- Nina
Acquisition
- ISO 800
- F/4.0
- Bortle 1
- Left panel (7.05 hours)
- 9/7/2021
- 141 x 3′ lights
- 50 flats
- 22 darks
- 9/7/2021
- Center panel (12.2 hours)
- 9/2/2021
- 120 x 3′ lights
- 50 flats
- 200 bias
- 12 darks
- 9/4/2021
- 124 x 3′ lights
- 50 flats
- 14 darks
- 9/2/2021
- Right panel (6.85 hours)
- 9/11/2021
- 123 x 3′ lights
- 50 flats
- 8 darks
- 9/11/2021
Processing
- Stacked with WBPP
- merged with photometric mosiac
- integer resample
- DBE
- color calibration
- EZ soft stretch
- enhance nebula with starnet and exponetial transform
- multiscale processing with MMT, curves, LHE, colorsaturation
- curves transformation
- MLT denoise
- ACDNR denoise
- curves transformation
Annotated Image:
3 thoughts on “The ghostly shell of Andromeda”
from the usual suspects group
Amazing!
I’m new to the blog but this image is incredible! Congratulations! How can we get more people to notice your work? Keep the fascinations coming. Karen