M31, M32

Last night was clear and good seeing. Had a 2 hour window of opportunity. M32 has such a large variation of brightness from the outer arms to the core that it is difficult to bring out detail over the whole galaxy. The exposures were limited to 60 seconds to prevent the core from burning out. The result shows the tiny star-like core with surrounding dust.

There was a fairly large gradient caused by the nearby gibbous Moon. Required a bit of processing in Photoshop.

AP 305F3.8 astrograph, SBIG-STL11K camera. Approximately 45 minutes total exposure, 60 second subs.

Rolando

Attached Image:

Full size crop of the core area.

Rolando

Attached Image:

Roland Christen said:

Last night was clear and good seeing. Had a 2 hour window of opportunity. M32 has such a large variation of brightness from the outer arms to the core that it is difficult to bring out detail over the whole galaxy. The exposures were limited to 60 seconds to prevent the core from burning out. The result shows the tiny star-like core with surrounding dust.

There was a fairly large gradient caused by the nearby gibbous Moon. Required a bit of processing in Photoshop.

AP 305F3.8 astrograph, SBIG-STL11K camera. Approximately 45 minutes total exposure, 60 second subs.

Rolando

Hi Roland:

I think that is a very nice result. I love the "wispiness" of the Galaxy as you have rendered it with such short subs. It's very natural looking.

Jim

Beautiful shot Roland...
Love the fine detail on the dust bands around M31's core...

Thanks for sharing!

Rolando,

I would swear some of those stars must be a single pixel wide!

Anthony.

Isn't that amazing! What a wonderful image and with minimal processing. Excellent, Roland, just excellent!

I believe my Honders arrives tomorrow by UPS. I can not be more excited!

-Tom