Tried stacking 30 second exposures of the Andromeda galaxy and the core came out way too bright

I kept adding more subs trying to get detail in the dust lanes but didn't adjust my exposure length down first, so now I have to reprocess everything from scratch - has anyone else found a good balance between exposure time and total integration for bright galaxy cores?

2 comments

2 Comments

dylanwilliams1mo ago

Learned that one the hard way too with M31.

jamiesingh1mo ago

Wait, isn't that how we all learn about M31? I did the same thing my first time out, I had like 200 subs at 45 seconds each and the core was just this white burned out blob, no detail at all. It took me forever to figure out that you gotta dial down the exposure time for bright galaxies, maybe drop it to 10 or 15 seconds for the core and layer that in with longer subs for the fainter parts. I ended up reprocessing that same data like four times before I got something half decent, and it still looked like a fuzzy cotton ball with a bright center. I find that for M31, keeping individual exposures around 20 seconds and just stacking more of them works pretty well, that way you don't blow out the core but still get those faint dust lanes.