Monday, September 28, 2009

Transition from Summer to Fall skies...M31

Fall and winter seem to be the best times to view M31 since it's getting higher in the sky after sunset and gets better as the night goes on. The last few days of our long summer gave a few more clear nights and still warm temperatures, but that seems to have come to an end now with cold weather, rain, clouds, and snow possible above 4,000 feet now. Bleah.
This image of M31 Andromeda was taken over two nights. I think I'm finally happy with a shot of this thing now. My plans for a long time were to get an image good enough to make into a nice, big 16x20 print that I can put on the wall. I still have a way to go on this one, hopefully getting more images to stack over the next few months for the ultimate M31 from a light polluted location! This one is a combination of 24 frames stacked over 2 nights. Each exposure was 5 minutes at 800 ISO and I carefully went through Jerry Lodriguss' CD book to as a processing guide. More to come....
(click on image for full size)

2 comments:

Dave said...

Tom,

I can see you are answering all my questions in blog form. ;-)

Thanks!

- Rocketman

Tom said...

Cool! My blog is working then and I'm not just posting things out into nothing. You know how it is, "In space, nobody can hear you scream!" (but your blog may still be heard) :-)

Tom