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.

Full size crop of the core area

Rolando

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Full frame at 1/2 size

Rolando

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Fantastic!!!!!

Howdy Uncle Rolando.

Wow, just beautiful! These images that you take, and that I have seen you take in the past are truly something! Crazy stuff, like sitting next to you one night out at an astrofest, watching you download images on the fly of things like the little galaxy near M-57. And under semi light polluted kankakee skies to boot.

To think that not that many years back, to achieve such results, one was using glass plates on massive professional instruments on some mountaintop.

We've truly come a long way, haven't we?! Thanks again for the beautiful image! Mark D.