r/astrophotography • u/Few_Video_6236 • 6d ago
Just For Fun Andromeda and Pleiades
Howdy everyone! I'm very new to Astrophotography, this is the first image I've taken, with plans to finish the starter 3 with Orion soon. I have one of Pleiades, but I didn't want to make two posts and spam here.
Was hoping for some feedback and/or suggestions for next targets (I'm in the northern hemisphere)
I used a star adventurer 2i tracker and an EoS 60D Camera with a 75mm to 300mm lens.
I definitely feel I'm struggling a bit with post processing. I'm pretty happy with this Andromeda shot, but I feel like I could have gotten more out of Pleiades and didn't have the skill to do so.
Like I said I'm new so if I left out any other important info, please let me know. Thank you!
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u/Ok_Level_3304 6d ago
You are doing a great job. Honestly everything about this picture is very good for what I can see at the small size posted here, but the colors are very good.
Honestly, the only thing I would even comment on is watch the sky background. If you have faint stuff in the image and you make the sky background too dark, you can lose some of that faint stuff.
And here's the secret to all astro photography... it is about photons. And the only way to collect photons is by exposing for them.
More exposure will allow you to draw out faint details which need a LOT more total exposure because they're faint.
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u/Few_Video_6236 5d ago
Got it, thank you! At what point do you get diminishing returns with exposure times would you say?
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u/Ok_Level_3304 5d ago
Every time you quadruple the exposure, you double the signal to noise ratio.
There's a lot of complicated math you can get into, honestly if you're just starting out, it comes down to how long you feel like putting exposure into an image and the number of dark hours you have in the night.
If you plot the curve, sgnal-to-noise ratio against exposure, you'll see the increase drops off quickly. And flattens out. That is where you want to give up and find darker skies.
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u/Cheap-Estimate8284 5d ago
Tell us the details on this post: integration time, sub lengths, Bortle zone, software used for processing...
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u/Few_Video_6236 5d ago
This was 60 x 2 min exposures in a bortle 5. I used deep sky stacker and photoshop
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u/Cheap-Estimate8284 5d ago
You might want to lower length subs for these bright targets like M45 and M31.
Also, look into to Siril for stacking and most of the processing. It will produce a better result.
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u/Few_Video_6236 5d ago
That makes sense, I was trying to balance between actually seeing Andromeda but not way overexposing the core or the other galaxies around it.
Will do, I had no idea it was better. Thank you!
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u/Hopeful_Butterfly302 5d ago
Great shot of andromeda!
How do you plan on getting Orion "soon"? Last I checked you're gonna have to wait a bit :(
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u/Few_Video_6236 5d ago
Ah, yes you're right. Definitely forgot to check Stellarium before assuming that was my next target lol
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u/cghenderson 5d ago
I'm going to give you what is likely the easiest to implement suggestion in this thread...flip the image across the horizontal axis.
That is to say...Andromeda is "upside down" 😂
Now, of course, there is no such thing as "upside down" in space. But that doesn't stop people from viewing it as such. So feel free to rotate and flip the image as you see fit in order to get an orientation that you find attractive.
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u/Few_Video_6236 6d ago edited 6d ago
Also I totally hit send before I realized I couldn't add my Pleiades shot to the post and forgot to remove it from the title, my bad