Astrophoto: Triangulum Galaxy
The Triangulum Galaxy – A picture stacked out of exposures from a single evening. Some stumbling was mandatory …
It took me two tries or two evenings to get the exposures needed for the Triangulum Galaxy, Triangulum Nebula or Messier 33. The weather forecast told something about Sahara Dust around February 24th and we had close to full Moon. But just beginner like, i had to test it and shoot M33.
At first i processed the data in PixInsight. After some weeks i started using Affinity Photo, stacked and post-processed the data again. Here the old original astrophoto from 2021:
High resolution in Flickr:
This is a reprocessed version, based on the same data from 2021. Reprocessed in september 2023.
Lessons Learned
But since problems never come alone, I also had a problem on my exposures from february 28th:
The spot was on any of my lights i took that evening. Always in exactly the same position. A reproduction of it in daylight was not possible. Not even on FLATS! Therefore I tried to do exactly nothing, not to fiddle on my telescope or the camera and just go for another deep sky object. And well, the spot was away. Possibly it was an early insect or anything else. In this case i had to use an ordinary paint-clone or whatever tool to fix my M33 picture. That spot never came back again.
End of february, M33 comes closer to the horizon in the west. There is our city of Koblenz, which is makes a problem on my photos.
Technical Details
| Telescope | VIXEN ED80sf |
| Focal Length | 600mm |
| Aperture ratio | 7.5 |
| Erecting Lense | – |
| Filter | – |
| Mount | Skywatcher HEQ-5 |
| Goto-Control | Cartes du Ciel |
| Mount Control | ASCOM |
| Guiding Scope Focal Length | 162 mm |
| Guiding Camera Chip | 4.8mm x 3.6mm, 8bit |
| Guiding Camera Resolution | 1280×960 |
| Guiding Software | PHD2, ASCOM Pulse |
| Dithering | – (first time 12th, April 21) |
| Camera | CANON EOS M100 |
| Method | focal projection |
| Camera angle | 0° |
| Camera Control | iOS App CC&C |
| Photography Date | 02/28/2021 |
| Moon | 97% |
| Exposure-Time Lights | 33x120s |
| Sensitivity | ISO 800 |
| Calibrationframes | Flats, Darks, Bias |
| Post Processing Date | 05/17/2021 |
| Reprocessed Date | 09/12/2023 |
| 2021 Stacking, Integration | Affinity Photo |
| 2021 Post Processing | Affinity Photo und SiriL |
| 2023 Reprocessing | PixInsight |
| Image Editing | Affinity Photo |
| Capture Place | Koblenz, Deutschland |
| Lightpollution | Bortle 5 |
| Scattered light | strong |
