Five Nights of Andromeda

Image comparison slider: A picture of Andromeda: one night of imaging, 47 mins exposure time versus A picture of Andromeda: five nights of imaging, 411 mins exposure time

This is my attempt at isolating one variable and directly comparing results. The only difference (hopefully) here is imaging time. Also, I’m really proud to share the first images from my new camera!

Astrophotography is all about signal-to-noise: the light coming from fantastically faraway galaxies is faint; Seattle light pollution and my camera sensor noise are very strong. The best way to deal with this is to increase imaging time, but I didn’t really know what that meant. Hence this experiment!

I processed the images using the exact same settings, so although the final images aren’t completely polished, they should clearly illustrate the difference additional observation time makes.

Image comparison slider: The core of Andromeda: one night of imaging, 47 mins exposure time versus The core of Andromeda: five nights of imaging, 411 mins exposure time

My takeaway from this: there are obvious gains to be had from more time under the stars. However, I need to spend some time learning how to process the data so the resulting image isn’t “blown out”–I want to somehow preserve the detail of the bright parts of the image while reducing noise in the faint areas. I’m pretty sure that’s possible, but please let me know if you have hints!