Paschalis Bartzoudis

Σχεδόν 10 χρόνια πέρασαν από τότε που φωτογράφιζα μαγεμένος τον υπέροχο γαλαξία στην Ανδρομέδα. Πάει καιρός τώρα που το μικρό μου αστεροσκοπείο ερημώνει, τα τηλεσκόπια και οι φωτογραφικές μηχανές αναπαύονται στα κουτιά τους. Επιστροφή και επανεπεξεργασία των raw files (μόνο lights). Το παιχνίδι με το Photoshop μπορεί να γίνει ατελείωτο, ελπίζω να μην το παρατράβηξα. Είχα σαν στόχο των χρωματικών αποδόσεων όλες εκείνες τις υπέροχες αστροφωτογραφίες του Μ31 από ψυχόμενα ccd που έβλεπα στο cloudynights και εδώ στο astrovox. Η προηγούμενη έκδοση είναι εδώ: /forum/album_showpage.php?pic_id=9608&sid=ec3109dc2cccbdc3c77041331b39ff2f Ακολουθούν αμετάφραστες οι σχετικές πληροφορίες (αναδημοσίευση από το 500px.com/pasbartz). Αφιερώνεται ιδιαίτερα στους αστροφίλους που ακόμα ξενυχτούν φωτογραφίζοντας αλλά και σε όλους τους ανθρώπους που κοιτάζουν πάντα μαγεμένοι τον νυχτερινό ουρανό! The Mythology: Andromeda, the stunning daughter of king Cepheus. Cassiopeia, her mother, boasted once that she is more beautiful than the Nereids, the nymph-daughters of the sea god Nereus. The queen had to be punished for her arrogance. So Poseidon sent Cetus, a sea monster, in order to ravage the coast of her kingdom Aethiopia. Apollo''s oracle to the desperate king Cepheus was to sacrifice his daughter. Andromeda was chained to a rock and waited to be devoured by the sea monster. But her fate was a romantic one. The Greek Hero Perseus killed the sea monster and finally married her. Their descendants ruled the kingdom of Mycenae in full glory. After her death, the goddess Athena placed Andromeda on the sky as a constellation, next to her beloved husband Perseus and her mother Cassiopeia. The Astronomy: The gigantic spiral galaxy of Andromeda, designated as M31 or NGC 224, lies approximately 2.5 million light-years from Earth and acquired its name from the area of the sky in which it is located, the constellation of Andromeda. M31 contains more than one trillion stars while the galaxy''s stellar disk extends for as many as 220,000 light years. Excluding the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds - which can’t be seen from northerly latitudes - the Andromeda galaxy is the most distant thing visible to the unaided eye (though this observation requires dark skies and experienced naked eyes). It wasn’t until the 20th century that astronomers were able to resolve the Andromeda spiral nebula into individual stars. This discovery lead to a controversy about whether the Andromeda spiral nebula and other spiral nebulae lie within or outside the Milky Way. In the 1920s Edwin Hubble finally put the matter to rest, when he identified Cepheid variable stars within the Andromeda galaxy to specify that it is indeed an \"island universe\" residing beyond the bounds of our Milky Way galaxy. The Astrophotography: Almost 10 years after. It took that long to play again in Photoshop with all those raw data of M31, the magnificent and glorious galaxy in Andromeda. It is the better monitor which I use nowadays and the \"old-wined\" experience in post-processing that helped to go up to this final composite. My color-guides were all those incredibly beautiful images from many great astrophotographers, who are mostly using dedicated astronomical ccd cameras. So I am quite satisfied from what my old and trusty Canon 350Da (Baader modified) gave me. Technical details are following: Camera: Canon 350Da (Baader modified) with Hutech IDAS LPS Telescope: Takahashi FSQ-106 Mount: Takahashi EM200 Temma Jr Autoguiding: Toucam 740K, PHD Guiding Software Total exposure time: 5.5 hours (19800 sec) Actual FOV = 70.3% of the original frame Exposures in detail: 24 x 122 sec , ISO 800 , 2008-07-11 8 x 241 sec , ISO 800 , 2008-07-15 4 x 361 sec , ISO 800, 2008-07-15 17 x 182 sec , ISO 800, 2008-07-30 25 x 182 sec , ISO 800 , 2008-08-04 48 x 122 sec , ISO 1600, 2009-09-18 Alignment and stacking: DeepSkyStacker (no dark neither bias frames were used) Final post-processing: Photoshop CS3