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Lovejoy and the start of my processing challenge


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This image was taken on the 24th using my manual barn door 60 seconds ISO 800 55mm vintage lens 1100d and is a jpeg that I mashed in Paintshop Pro and resized to share, I have 20 lights and 5 darks and 14 bias.

Tomorrow I will see what DSS will make of these and have a go at making a presentable final image.

post-28282-0-74831600-1422571126_thumb.p

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Thank you :)

DSS processed it with no hickups just got to find a bit of time to try processing, the plan is to do the autosaved FITS file in Startools and a saved TIF in Paintshop Pro and see which I get better results with for the quality of data I can provide.

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This is certainly a bumpy learning curve.

The tail has much more inforation in the DSS stack where I selected comet only.

I can see in StarTools on using autodevelop that there is quite a bit of tail but getting it to show and clean up the image is beyond me at the moment.

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I am off to YouTube to watch some tutorial videos so I get past the click and see what happens stage to try and have some actual knowledge on what I am trying to do.

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Tonight I have rattled off a loads of flats, I am hoping these will lead to a better image, tomorrow I will test this out and restack.

Having found someone's raw stack data and downloaded and used that in StarTools I can see a big difference in how that data behaved and my data.

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Today the lesson is flats are not optional, what a difference on first looking at the stacked data, hope I can now get something meaningful from the images I took.

This is a quick crop and auto dev as before and look how much flater the image is.

I need to run the stack again but on the comet I think see if the tail is better.

post-28282-0-35979200-1422969743_thumb.p

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I have bought a Baader Neodymium filter to help with the sky glow. When it arrives I will do a before and after test image.

Still plugging away and trying different DSS versions and StarTools, there is evidence of a fair tail just the overall background keeps mucking up. Still you don't learn unless you get stuck in and try.

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My light pollution filter will hopefully arrive tomorrow or Thursday but realistically probably might be too late for the comet and the weather.

So far StarTools has been not happy with my data and I have failed to get anything out of it I am happy with.

Both of the following were created from DSS and then saved as a Tiff and in Paintshop Pro gradient exterminator followed by levels then several curves and a colour boost all managed through adjustment layers. PSP cannot open fits files. All images with plenty darks, flats and bias files.

The image of 20 lights with 60 second length created better stars and I could create a nice star mask for, this was when the comet was much higher up.

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The second was 48 lights but only 30 seconds as the comet was lower and in the murk. I was unable to create a useable star mask with this image, though there is more tail but no fork shows in it.

post-28282-0-56532500-1423604326_thumb.p

Why is it that the source files show much promise but the final images feels a bit of a disappointment.

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  • 2 weeks later...

The filter has now arrived and is looking quite promising.

The first night of use had horrible high level cloud that the camera really saw.

All images are 30 seconds.

This is with no filter.

post-28282-0-49506400-1424611802_thumb.j

this was with the fitler fitted.

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This was last night with much clearer skies.

post-28282-0-99061200-1424612158_thumb.j

So I am hopeful it will pay off with my local conditions.

All ISO 800

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 had the same problem, stacked images didn't show any more tail than a single exposure

That's normally the expected outcome - what you see in a single frame is usually what you are going to get - but smoother after stacking.

 Stacking just reduces the speckle (i.e. random)  noise that you see in a single image to get you that smoother background. You will get more tail by increasing the exposure length - that's if you can do this when considering sky brightness and how good your tracking is. 

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Currently running different options in DSS and seeing what the affect is on the tail strength.          

What options are you trying?

Note that the "Comet + Stars" stacking mode is just not worth it as it composites the comet aligned and star aligned images for you and does it very badly most of the time with loss of comet tail and often streaking artefacts.

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Pleased with the filter.
Slightly digress but this was a quick single frame from above stacked with the darks, bias and saved flats and first time the background did not cause issues with selecting stars.
post-28282-0-72676200-1424626512_thumb.p

Now on to processing lovejoy from last night. I am going to stop trying to process my earlier attempts for now, onwards and all that.

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  • 2 weeks later...

The Baader Neodymium filter has made quite a difference to the images taken in a positive way.

The difference is very obvious when I compare images taken without to now, the difference is which the background colour it is much easier to process/fiddle with to look OK where as the previous images with my knowledge the background always still looks burnt orange and spotty.

Today I had a go at processing the images I took last night and managed to produce 3 that look quite different.

This image I processed in Paintshop Pro and managed to create a mask for the stars and used gradien exterminator and then levels once and then used curves tiny adjustments but quite a few time. I like that the number of stars is pulled out but I don't like that when you zoom in the noise is horendous and then the overall colour is rather brown. I think the level of noise on pixel peeping is probably due to over use of lots of level layers.

Though on a optomistic side perhaps that is the milky way.

post-28282-0-33900400-1425417085.png

This one was started in StarTools and then finished in Paintshop Pro. I quite like the lack of brown colour but I dislike that I could not pull out all the star and comet colour.

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The last one I did mainly in StarTools and then finally in Paintshop Pro did a curves tweak.

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What I learnt today was how to not lose what ever tail I had managed to capture.

That there are so many different ways to fiddle with an image.

That it is hard and somewhat hairpulling.

That creating a star mask is easier in StarTools and the grow blob function is neat.

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  • 2 weeks later...

After seeing another Lovejoy image I went to check the stuff I took on the 4th and i look like I got the Owl cluster as well. My old Helios 135mm lens (I forgot it got CA so had not stopped it down enough) 10 seconds ISO800 and rather a lot with darks and bias. I couldn't get longer the position too low and I was just not steady enough in cranking the handle.

Very quick fiddle in StarTools and resized for here. There is a slight tail but I lost it in this fiddle.

post-28282-0-83510500-1426110281.png

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