First light - Lodestar-Cx2

nytecam · August 20, 2014

Here's a montage for colourful planetaries etc to test the new camera on in single 20s exposures from last night. All to same scale except the enlarged 'Bowtie' NGC 40. Used the main scope eg Meade 12" SCT @ f/3.6 eg 1100mm fl [see pic inset] and SX capture s/ware for the high colour saturation I like. Tweaked in PaintShopPro before posting.

The new camera has a noticeable extra turn of speed over the old Lodestar-C and images are remarkably clean and free from artefacts and raw M57 below shows pixel grid before colour conversion . Hot pixels are far fewer and although dark and flat frames were captured they was not used. The NGC 40 "Bowtie" field gets down to mag 19 in 1x60s exposure - my faintest yet so I'm very happy :grin:

I think I'm going to enjoy this :cool:

HiloDon · August 20, 2014

Since I couldn't be the first to get results with the new Lodestar X2C, let me be the first to say, well done, Nytecam! Great results! I can't wait to try it out now. Did you try using it with Lodestar Live?

Don

nytecam · August 20, 2014

Since I couldn't be the first to get results with the new Lodestar X2C, let me be the first to say, well done, Nytecam! Great results! I can't wait to try it out now. Did you try using it with Lodestar Live?
Don

Thanks Don and sorry about that - just the luck of the draw ! Here's my video gallery @ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=worQJ6y9CtA

No - haven't tried LL on Cx2 yet - wanted the high colour satuartion that I get from SX s/ware and ease of auto-colour balancing this time. Have fun with the new camera - I'm sure you will. Keep us posted soon - you've excelled with the Mx2 and will do even better with the Cx2 - good luck :grin:

DuaneS · August 21, 2014

What is your process flow for using the SX software for colour images? For example capture a 30 second image, darken background, stretch, darken background again, etc. Just curious how the SX software is used for near live viewing with a bit of image processing. I would like to know more about the SX software and how to effectively use it. Thanks!

cheers

Duane

HiloDon · August 22, 2014

I got a chance the last couple of days to test the Lodestar X2C during the day. I found some interesting things and have some questions about it. Thanks, Nytecam for all of your prior work with the color Lodestar and your tips about using it. I have a 50mm f1.4 Nikon lens that I adapted to the Lodestar. I like to use a Mac, but as Nytcam found, the Lodestar Live s/w produces muted color, so I had to drag out the old PC with Vista to use the supplied SX s/w. The results were very good. Here is the first image I captured in my office.

I think the color is vivid and accurate. Also, the sharpening tool works well. Here's the image sharpened.

Using Lodestar Live produced muted color. There also appears to be horizontal lines in the image that are not present in the SX s/w. Here is an image using LL v0.10.

I stretched the histogram as much as i could in LL and the above image is what I got. I tried to enhance the image in a photo program, and this was the best I could do.

Perhaps Paul can comment on these images. Is there more I can do? Am I doing things correctly? I was also wondering what format is the best to save the images using the SX s/w. I wanted to get the SX images on my Mac, so I saved them in the TIFF format. The SX s/w appears to have limited save formats. I tried the FITS format, but can't get my Mac to read them even though I downloaded the read program. The TIFF seems to work well.

I think Duane has a good question regarding the ability to have near real time viewing with the X2C using the SX s/w. You can do the NRTV in mono and then stop, hold the image and convert it to color. I think that would be fine with me, but some might say it's post processed imaging. Is there some way to get LL to produce more vivid color?

That's about all I can think of right now. Hopefully, more will come out in discussion. I would appreciate any input. The Lodestar X2C looks like a winner.

Don

nytecam · August 22, 2014

Very nice test results Don with the Lodestar-Cx2 - your SX s/ware results are very similar to mine. Paul can advise but were your LL pics shot @ 20ms - 100ms range? If so then LL is using some form of pixel binning. In daylight the exposure is usually very brief and camera aperture in the f/16 range due to the camera 'speed'. LL min exp = 20ms binned ; SX min exp = 1ms full frame:-)

HiloDon · August 22, 2014

Very nice test results Don with the Lodestar-Cx2 - your SX s/ware results are very similar to mine. Paul can advise but were your LL pics shot @ 20ms - 100ms range? If so then LL is using some form of pixel binning. In daylight the exposure is usually very brief and camera aperture in the f/16 range due to the camera 'speed'. LL min exp = 20ms binned ; SX min exp = 1ms full frame:-)

Thanks, Nytecam. Yes, the exposure was 20ms and the lens was stopped down to about f11. The room was not lighted and the shades were drawn, so it shows the super sensitivity of the X2C. It makes sense about the binning, because LL downloads the image immediately, whereas SX has a significant delay at the same exposure.

I'm in the observatory now and just got my first shot with the X2C. it was M27. The clouds just rolled in and I had to shut down. I should have switched to LL to get a comparison. Here's the shot I got with the SX s/w.

Martin Meredith · August 22, 2014

Great images from both of you. For comparison, here's M27 from earlier this year with the Lodestar-C and LodestarLive. Obviously they're difficult to compare due to different scopes, but its really more to get an idea of the colour saturation with LodestarLive (this is before Paul released the stacking version).

Martin

HiloDon · August 22, 2014

Thanks, Martin. Your image is very good, so I did more testing with LL. Nytecam was right that my initial daylight testing used exposure times that created half resolution. Paul has a big message that points this out, but I missed it any way. So, I did some testing at longer exposures and got better resolution and more color. The image was on the pink side, probably affected by IR. I tried putting on a Baader UV/IR cut filter and the color balance improved greatly. By playing around with the color histogram, I was able to get vivid and accurate color. Here's the result:

I think I can do better with more adjustment, but I am really encouraged by these results. Next step is to try it out in the night skies. Will do so ASAP.

One question I have is about the need of the IR filter. Does the SX s/w adjust for it and LL doesn't? The addition of the filter does appear to slow the exposure a bit.

Don

Paul81 · August 24, 2014

Glad to see the new CX2 working nicely!

Currently colour balancing is completely manual in LL (i.e. you need to shift the histograms around and align the peaks to balance the colour). I am looking into some extra features to help on this front, and to also make sum stacking easier to use. I also think I am going to return back to my original CYGM to RGB matrix as on test colour card images (provided by DoctorD) it gave a nicer colour than the current matrix (I dug out my old test images).

However, I am going to add a colour correction setting into the app (the user can tune the settings to their preference) to give a constant correction for each image (and then you tweak the histograms - but hopefully less so).

To get some initial values and test data can I ask a favour - can you guys take a flat field image and send me the raw FITS file? Also the raw FITS images from your tests would be handy. The flat has to be an exposure greater than 250ms and not overly saturated.

The colour will be completely out at exposures less than 250ms as only the odd field of the sensor is read (for speed). Such short exposures are not really intended for anything but focus and star hopping so I just let the colour conversion algorithm process the 'half resolution' exposure as-is and the horrid colour is the result.

Looking forward to seeing more images - these new SX cameras are really looking amazing! :grin:

shirva · August 24, 2014

congrats on the new camera Maurice. .that you giving paul more work to do..lol..never ending paul..

HiloDon · August 24, 2014

Glad to see the new CX2 working nicely!
Currently colour balancing is completely manual in LL (i.e. you need to shift the histograms around and align the peaks to balance the colour). I am looking into some extra features to help on this front, and to also make sum stacking easier to use. I also think I am going to return back to my original CYGM to RGB matrix as on test colour card images (provided by DoctorD) it gave a nicer colour than the current matrix (I dug out my old test images).
However, I am going to add a colour correction setting into the app (the user can tune the settings to their preference) to give a constant correction for each image (and then you tweak the histograms - but hopefully less so).
To get some initial values and test data can I ask a favour - can you guys take a flat field image and send me the raw FITS file? Also the raw FITS images from your tests would be handy. The flat has to be an exposure greater than 250ms and not overly saturated.
The colour will be completely out at exposures less than 250ms as only the odd field of the sensor is read (for speed). Such short exposures are not really intended for anything but focus and star hopping so I just let the colour conversion algorithm process the 'half resolution' exposure as-is and the horrid colour is the result.
Looking forward to seeing more images - these new SX cameras are really looking amazing!

Thanks for the info, Paul. I got out tonight and tried LL with the X2C. I played with the histogram and got what I thought were some good results for the first try. The summer nebulae are still in a good position. I think the UV/IR cut filter gives better balance. Your LL program is much easier to use than the SX s/w and gives near real time viewing as well. Here are the results. Let me know what you think. I think my collimation is out a little and I got some coma at the edges. I'll try to get the files you requested in the next couple of days.

HiloDon · August 24, 2014

I should also mention, Paul, that I used the sum stacking for all the images except M57. I seems to work really well.

Don

HiloDon · August 24, 2014

Hi Paul,

Attached are some flats that I took with the Lodestar X2C. I used my 50mm Nikon lens and image a neutral gray sheet. I did it with both no filter and with the Baader UV/IR cut filter. Let me know if you need more or something different. They're all in a FITS format.

Don

Image_Flat.Field_2014.8.24_11.11.51_00049.fit

Image_Flat.Field_2014.8.24_11.11.52_00050.fit

Image_Flat.Field_2014.8.24_11.11.54_00056.fit

Image_Flat.Field.1s.f8.w.UV.IR_2014.8.24_11.33.03_00063.fit

Image_Flat.Field.1s.f8.w.UV.IR_2014.8.24_11.33.02_00062.fit

Image_Flat.Field.1s.f8.w.UV.IR_2014.8.24_11.33.01_00061.fit

Image_Flat.Field.250ms.f8.w.UV.IR_2014.8.24_11.30.41_00031.fit

Image_Flat.Field.250ms.f8.w.UV.IR_2014.8.24_11.30.40_00029.fit

Image_Flat.Field.250ms.f8.w.UV.IR_2014.8.24_11.30.40_00030.fit

Image_Flat.Field.250ms.f11_2014.8.24_11.24.07_00012.fit

Image_Flat.Field.250ms.f11_2014.8.24_11.24.07_00013.fit