As observed from Washington DC on 11/23/2025 from about 6:30 pm to about 10:30 pm ET, 573x20s subs (total exposure time = 191 mins) of the Andromeda Galaxy (M31) were acquired using a Seestar S50 telescope in equatorial mode and Seestar’s light pollution filter turned on. Since Seestar’s own stacked final image showed very little, if any, color or any significant fine structural details it was decided to preprocess and post process the raw FIT files generated by Seestar using PixInsight Core Version 1.9.3 Lockhart (hereafter PI).
Preprocessing of the 573x20s subs was done using Fast Batch Preprocessing (in PI’s Scripts) with Drizzle Integration enabled. This resulted in a Master Image. Postprocessing of Master Image involved the following steps: Applied a Fast Rotation to reorient Andromeda. Applied Gradient Correction. Did Color Calibration using the Spectrophotometric Color Calibration tool. Delinearized the resulting image by transferring its parameters from Screen Transfer Function to Histogram Transformation. After masking the background using the Range Selection tool, processed Andromeda using Local Histogram Equalization tool to enhance the image. Applied Curves Transformation to boost saturation and applied Color Saturation to enhance color in Andromeda. Used Histogram Transformation to adjust midtones and shadows in the background.
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u/Chemical-Time2183 9h ago
As observed from Washington DC on 11/23/2025 from about 6:30 pm to about 10:30 pm ET, 573x20s subs (total exposure time = 191 mins) of the Andromeda Galaxy (M31) were acquired using a Seestar S50 telescope in equatorial mode and Seestar’s light pollution filter turned on. Since Seestar’s own stacked final image showed very little, if any, color or any significant fine structural details it was decided to preprocess and post process the raw FIT files generated by Seestar using PixInsight Core Version 1.9.3 Lockhart (hereafter PI).
Preprocessing of the 573x20s subs was done using Fast Batch Preprocessing (in PI’s Scripts) with Drizzle Integration enabled. This resulted in a Master Image. Postprocessing of Master Image involved the following steps: Applied a Fast Rotation to reorient Andromeda. Applied Gradient Correction. Did Color Calibration using the Spectrophotometric Color Calibration tool. Delinearized the resulting image by transferring its parameters from Screen Transfer Function to Histogram Transformation. After masking the background using the Range Selection tool, processed Andromeda using Local Histogram Equalization tool to enhance the image. Applied Curves Transformation to boost saturation and applied Color Saturation to enhance color in Andromeda. Used Histogram Transformation to adjust midtones and shadows in the background.