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.
First i processed the data in PixInsight. After some weeks i started using Affinity Photo, stacked and post-processed the data again.
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.
High resolution on Flickr:
Session details
| Telescope | VIXEN ED80sf |
|---|---|
| Effective focal length | 600 mm |
| Camera | Canon EOS M100 |
| Mount | Skywatcher HEQ5 Pro |
| Guiding equipment | TS-Optics 50 |
| Guiding camera | Omegon 1200b |
| Date of capture | 28 February 2021 |
| Exposure (lights) | 33 × 120 s |
| Total integration | 1 h 6 min |
| Calibration frames | FLATS, DARKS, BIAS |
| Sensitivity | ISO 800 |
| Capture setup | Carte du Ciel, CC&C |
| Processing | 17 May 2021 — PixInsight |
| Reprocessing | 13 September 2023 — PixInsight, Affinity Photo |
| Location | Koblenz |
| Focal ratio | f/7,5 |
| Image scale | 1,28 ″/px |
| Field of view | 128,0 × 85,3 ′ |
