Using Affinity for astrophotography

[LoneStar]

Hi 

Completely new to this. I'm after some help with bringing colours out in long exposure shots taken of the Andromeda galaxy. The exposures are between 90 to 120 seconds and several stacked in a image. The image attached is a stack of 10 photos. The colour data is there but i need advise how to bring it out.

[R C-R]

Type "astrophotography" (without the quotes) into the search field at the top left of the page & you will get a list of quite a few topics that discuss this. For example, this post by @James Ritson discusses some of the technical considerations.

 

Also of interest might be the Stacking: Star Trail Effect & the Pin Sharp Stars video tutorials.

[Dingdong]

Hi LoneStar

 

Ive just started out in astrophotography and been lucky enough to get some decent images. JohnRostron and others took one of my images and "tweeked" it with a 'curves' adjustment which you can also do in a 'levels' adjustment here - 

The first thing I do to my images is up the 'vibrance' all the way, 'brightness/contrast' and then a curves adjustment as suggested above. I play with all the adjustments till i'm happy with it. 

 

The images are 10x180 sec stacks all done in AP. 

 

I have to wait a few months for andromeda and only then its a few degrees above the northern horizon - I envy you

 

D

[IanSG]

36 minutes ago, Dingdong said:

I have to wait a few months for andromeda and only then its a few degrees above the northern horizon - I envy you

I was fortunate enough to see the night sky from Alice Springs a few weeks back - being able to see M31 is a poor substitute for the kind of skies you get in Australia .

[Dingdong]

1 hour ago, IanSG said:

I was fortunate enough to see the night sky from Alice Springs a few weeks back - being able to see M31 is a poor substitute for the kind of skies you get in Australia .

I've been doing visual astronomy for two years and astrophotography since January and everything I look at is pretty spectacular. I can imagine at some stage in the future I'm gonna be bored down here and want to go north to see what you are used to and be blown away once again.

 

Clear skies friend

D

[IanSG]

3 hours ago, Dingdong said:

I can imagine at some stage in the future I'm gonna be bored down here and want to go north to see what you are used to and be blown away once again.

Trust me, you won't be bored!  Here's a thought for you - half the things that are visible to an experienced observer are within 0.5 Mag of the limiting magnitude of the 'scope - you've barely started!  Enjoy!

[Jörn Reppenhagen]

It's an old thread, I know.
But maybe one day a lonely traveller from outer space on a quest for superficial wisdom stumbles upon it.

Quite often, the color channels of such photos are a bit displaced, red, blue and green channels far apart - you can spot that in the histogram.
Try to get the color channels united again (Curves, Color Balance, ...), stretch the image (google "astrophotography stretching"), then raise the saturation.

This should provide some colors.

But M31 (Andromeda) might be the wrong object to start with - although it's real large and bright (thus a nice target for guys without a telescope, but with a telephoto lens), there's a better object for taking your first steps: good old Orion, M42 and M43. Easy to find, and bursting with colors.

And you can't repeat it often enough: Use RAW files.