The Andromeda Galaxy M31

[celeron787]

The Andromeda Galaxy - not the best image but a first for me.
Walking noise plagued this image, had to do quite a heavy noise reduction.
I will be attempting this again once it gets higher into the sky. think I have to look into manual dithering next.

View plate-solved version here: http://nova.astrometry.net/annotated_full/4460128

The Andromeda Galaxy, also known as M31, is a barred spiral galaxy approximately 2.5 million light-years from Earth and the nearest major galaxy to the Milky Way.

With an apparent magnitude of 3.4, the Andromeda Galaxy is among the brightest of the Messier objects, making it visible to the naked eye from Earth on moonless nights, even when viewed from areas with moderate light pollution. The brightest satellite galaxies near M31 are M32 and M110.

Sony A6000
Samyang 135mm F2.0
Sky-Watcher Star Adventurer
Tripod

Bortle 8
ISO400
Light frames - 186 x 10secs
Dark Frames - 30 x 10secs
Flat Frames - 35
Bias Frames - 50

Deep Sky Stacker
StarTools - 50% Bin, Autodev, Crop, Wipe, Life, Contrast, Color, Denoise
Lightroom - Curves, Noise reduction

[hhzhang]

Nice shot! The outer spiral arms are difficult to capture under the bright sky glow in Singapore.

[celeron787]

Nice shot! The outer spiral arms are difficult to capture under the bright sky glow in Singapore.

Thanks! Actually I can pull out the spiral arms with more stretching but that makes the background too noisy and mottled. I think more integration time will definitely help. Also I took this image when it was still low, so there was a nasty gradient to it, I think attempting it again when it's higher will improve the image. Pretty optimistic about it.

[celeron787]

re-edit, managed to pull out abit more details of the outer spiral arms. I think it's a good compromise between details and noise.
Adjusted white balance for a more cooler tone.