COMMENTS
Andromeda can be an object very easy to photograph if you're looking for an average image of the galaxy. But to do one that stands from the pack, even if just a little bit, can become a daunting task. My goal this time was to do a better-than-average Andromeda, and to do that I focused mainly in three areas:

• Getting as much detail from the core as possible.
• Trying to nicely capture the H-Alpha and possibly the blue star forming regions.
• Get good colors!

For the first goal, first I worked with several different exposure times at different ISO settings. I had to take some trial and error shots until I found the balance with sessions of two minutes exposures at both ISO 800 and ISO 400. Then, of course, during processing, wavelet processing and overlay of these short-exposure sessions over the longer-exposed image came to the rescue.

To enhance the H-Alpha (red) and blue star forming regions I used a chromatic mask and worked the curves and saturation of only those chromatic areas.

Finally, capturing a color that would make me happy was truly a trial-and-error process.

Having said that, I did notice a few terrible mistakes made during processing. First of all, the NR I applied did wash out some of the detail in the galaxy, unfortunately. Also, at some point in the processing I think I "killed" some stars by leaving them excessively flat. And last, it looks like during stacking, the blue channel wasn't properly aligned in the top-left corner, as it can be seen in the stars in that corner. This by the way is not the first time DSS (the software I used to do the stacking) does this to me.

But in general I am very happy with the results. Sure I had data there to come up with a better final image, but that's always true for any astrophoto. About 10 hours went into processing this image!

PS: The current version is a post-processing done on November 31st from the last processed image

COMMENTS
I knew the North American nebula was big, but I was surprised when I noticed I couldn't make it fit completely in the image at a 432mm focal length! And this is with the default 2.4" focuser from the NP101-is (no adapters reducing it to 2" or anything like that) and the Canon CMOS chip which isn't small.

In any case, this nebula is not one of my favorites for imaging, and during processing I wasn't sure what to do with it, so the processing is indeed very basic. It was however my first "official" image with the 0.8x focal reducer from TeleVue, so that should make it memorable :-)

COMMENTS
The idea was to take a photo of M45 and the Moon, as these last two nights they were rather close. So on Monday night, around 2:30am, while here in Sunnyvale the sky was overcast with low clouds, I decided to drive up to a place near Skyline and Montebello, at around 2,500~2,600 feet, hoping the fog wasn't that high.

As I was driving up, at around 1,350 feet I started to drive in fog. Ok... And I was a very happy fellow when the fog dissapeared at around 1700 feet. So I kept driving up until I reached my destination, and there they were (the moon and M45) but the blanket of fog over the valley was so outstanding (much darker than what you see in the photo below) that I decided to take several shots and make up a small mosaic that'd include the fog and my original target (m45 and the moon). I had to photograph my targets using a much larger FOV than what I was originally planning, but in the end I didn't regret.

Also, since the "astro" part of the photo is nothing out of this world and the mosaic was leaving the upper-right corner of the image empty, I decided to spice up the image and compose an "educational" photo with a closeup of M45 reusing the image I took from the Pleiades a couple of weeks ago, covering the black spot the mosaic had left :-)

COMMENTS
I went to Coe the night of August 12th to take some widefield and hope that some Perseids make into the FOV. But when I was done setting up my equipment, the Pleyades looked at me in a funny way, and I changed my plans,

However, since it was already very late and I was very tired, I didn't want to stay there until sunrise, so I ended up doing only 3 shots, 17 minutes each. Yeah, that would put the Canon to the limit but I really wanted to see how much data I could gather without breaking the camera :-), so I went to the longest single exposure I've ever done (17 minutes). With that, some canned darks (15 minutes darks though) and over 5hours processing, I've got this picture.

The image is rather noisy, but considering I had only a handful of frames, I think this is probably the best work I've done as far as applying the noise reduction - it's often hard to find the best point where the image isn't too noisy neither too blurry. Also, the nebulosity surrounding M45 wasn't that blue at first, and I admit pushing the level a bit too much to the blue side.

In any case, I am very happy with this image for several reasons. First, I conquered an amount of detail and depth I wasn't expecting - the data was there in the picture, but the processing was crucial here. Second, this was the first time I took single exposures over 15 minutes and the guiding came out pretty good - although of course this field has plenty of bright stars to use as guides :-) And third, the Pleyades was one of my very first astrophotography targets back in December 2007, and it was very nice to compare the old version with the new one.

In any case, here's an object that I will most definitely revisit later on, but with more shots, exposure, and definitely more coffee :-)

COMMENTS
Third attempt with the Powermate x4. The nebula came up nice - at least the emission part of it - but for obvious reasons (only 12x8 minutes shots with a f/21.6 focal ratio through a 4" scope) all the detail surrounding the nebula is missing. Just look at the resulting image from the calibration + stacking and you'll see how much I had to stretch this one. In fact, in order to bring the nebula out of the background I had to prepare some custom flats, otherwise when stratching the histogram, the whole background was coming up at a similar intensity as the nebula itself. It would have been nice to get a bit more reflection nebula, but again, at this focal ratio and with an DSLR (in a very warm night I may add) I should be happy with the results.

That's of course until you notice how terrible the stars in the corners look. Or more accurately, the stars all over the field, getting worst as we approach the corners. I don't think it's caused by the default optics of the Powermate (it didn't happen with the previous two shots of the Lagoon and the Bubble nebulas). I'm betting it could be that when connecting the Powermate, the camera might move off the optic axis, causing this unwelcoming effect.

COMMENTS
This was my second experiment with the Powermate x4. Unfortunately, at f/21.6 the more than 4 hours of exposure I gave to this image wasn't enough, and I had to force the image in order to get some detail. From now on, I'll use the Powermate only on VERY BRIGHT objects!