tombardier

Thank you Luke! My favourite is number 4, hands down. It's got the best surface texture I think. It's always irked me though that my deconvolution PSF had obviously gone a bit awry, as when performing the false inversion, an edge artefact became visible all the way around! I'm going to have to dig out the original integration and fix that at some point! It's still my favourite though

Thanks again for your amazing reply! I would honestly love not to complicate anything. The convoluted procedure I took with deconvoluting and sharpening all of the colour channels was purely so I could get them registered to one another. Any subsequent processing was minimal (just an adjustment of the colour saturation and a TGVDenoise). Where I spend the most time was in trying to find a good PSF for deconvolution and also sharpening without wanting to overdo it. I think I can probably do better with this data, so I think I'll try it again. I think I'm going to be stuck with the 3x drizzled luminance channels though, as I don't have the original video any more. I do tend to think sharpening/colour saturation can be a matter of taste. I happen to think I have quite refined tastes, but I'm sure there'll be people who feel nauseous, seeing the amount of colour in my images. I must say your image is "to my taste", most definitely! Thanks again. I'll tag you, if you don't mind, with the results of my second round of processing this data! I might just start with this one panel we've been discussing.

Wow, @neil phillips, thank you for your reply! You've done a wonderful job with that sharpening! Thanks for all the effort you've put in to your replay, and playing with my image! You're quite right about me using drizzle. I used 3x drizzle on the IR-pass/luminance channels, and then went through an agonising process or deconvoluting and sharpening each of the non-drizzled colour channels to then manually align them (using PixInsight DynamicAlignment, so not exactly manual), before resampling the colour channels up to meet the (probably excessively large) luminance channel, and then convoluting them again to soften them up to avoid fringing artifacts on the craters! The PlanetarySystemLRGBAligner should avoid that entirely, but it's highly idiosyncratic, and I've got other, seemingly decent data that it just cannot deal with at all. It's also a pain because I have to load up my luminance channel, and then turn each of my colour channels in to a 16-bit RGB TIF before registering it to the luminance image, where the software decides to work with it as an 8-bit image, and then I have to load it up in PixInsight again extracting the colour channel I want, and changing the sampling format back to 32bit! It's a real pain! These 5 close-up panels haven't been taken at a high focal length, but at prime focus on my Skywatcher 254mm f/4.7 newtonian. It's just that the ASI290MM has both a small sensor and small pixels. The full moon shot is a single pane at the same focal length, but with the ASI1600MM! The two crater close-ups at the very bottom were captured using the 5x powermate (and the 290MM). The Bulisadus close-up has the colour data from the pane you've just been playing with. Try as I might, I can't find the lines you're referring to in your first image. Maybe I'm just bleary eyed right now. I've been out with my binoculars tonight! EDIT - Actually, I think I've found it. I think I'd refer to that as "banding", like the image just below? It is rather unsightly, yes! I think the TGVDenoise process in PixInsight smoothed it over in my image. I did experiment a lot to find a setting that would help with this, but not remove any detail. I'm not really sure what you mean about the frequency domain thing. Is it a tool available in Registax? I wish I'd captured the rest of the gibbous moon on that particular night! I don't think I've captured data as nice since. In compariron, and I do really love my full-ish moon image, above, but it was just one of the first images I took with my ASI1600MM Pro, on the day I bought it, and the seeing was pretty average to be quite honest! Can't wait to see what it's like on a good night! In the mean time, I think I might try a re-process of this data again! This was my attempt at a mosaic of these images. Thanks again!

Hi. I just joined SGL this week. I've managed to introduce myself in the solar forums so far, but thought it was time to introduce myself here too. These are a few of my favourite lunar images. The just-past-full-moon here was captured in the latter part of October, on my first night using a new ASI1600MM! I enjoyed being able to capture the full disc, which I hadn't been able to do with my ASI290MM! It was captured in LRGB using FireCapture, aligned with PlanetarySystemLRGBAligner (there needs to be some sort of cosmic alignment for it to actually work), and then all other processing done in PixInsight. The rest of these were all captured on one night in March. I've never had quite as nice seeing as this! They were all captured with the same equipment as above, except for it using an ASI290MM instead of the ASI1600MM, and I also used an 850nm IR-pass filter for luminance. The crater close-ups were captured in IR with a 5x powermate, and the colour data was stolen from the prime focus images. In terms of processing, I hadn't found the PlanetarySystemLRGBAligner at this point, and so everything was really painful to do in PixInsight. FFTRegistration gave me very poor results, and didn't result in images with the same geometry at all, which was awkward. I ended up doing deconvolution and sharpening, and then manual DynamicAlignment on all 20 channels. The alignment still wasn't perfect, and I ended up performing a convolution on the colour channels to avoid nasty colour fringing on craters. Now PlanetarySystemLRGBAligner worked out very nicely for my full moon image above. My attempts before discovering it all had nasty red and green fringing on the craters. The thing in general is that PlanetarySystemLRGBAligner isn't very well maintained, and it's not very reliable. Does anyone have any alternative way of aligning mono lunar images?

I certainly take your point with the shot taken from the 290MM. I can't tell which is which! The shots in my original post are all a bit mediocre anyway, what with the focus issues and what not, so I guess they're not good examples to use. I think on my next imaging session, I'll certainly try binning. I might even try 3x3 and see how that looks! Thanks for all your help and advice!

Of course, it could just be that I'm getting more than 10x the frame rate with the 290MM!

Yes. I think this is the last image I took with this system, using the 290MM.

And sorry, yes, it's a Quark, so the 1600MM in the AR102 with the Quark is at a focal length of 2850mm

I'm using an Explore Scientific AR102 102mm achromat, at f/6.5. The 290MM has much smaller pixels than my 1600MM, and it produces much nicer fine detail, although it possibly was a little more suited to my 80mm f/7 ED doublet, thinking about it. It samples at 0.21"/px in the AR102! I chose the 290MM over the 174MM originally because of the read noise, and because I was only interested in planetary imaging at the time, so the sensor size was of no concern.

I can easily get frame rates like that, and more with my ASI290MM, but the ASI1600MM has a much larger sensor. I love being able to fit the full disc of the moon on the sensor in my 254mm f/4.7 newtonian, but the frame rate just dives off a cliff! To get 100FPS, I think I'd only be using a small fraction of the sensor! Ideally I'd have an ASI174MM too, haha!

Thanks @vlaiv, for the comprehensive reply. I'm going to give your suggestions a try, especially the bench-test, haha! I took the images above at unity gain of 139, and 4ms exposure time. I think I've already set the high speed mode, and tried upping the USB readout, but I will double check that again, because every time I've tried to tweak it in the past, I've been squinting in sunlight, and I probably haven't been rigorous! I do have Sharpcap installed, but I've not used it at all! I think I started using 12-bit mode because I noticed banding in the colours on my lunar images, especially on the smoother looking maria. I'll do some testing, but I'd certainly be happy with the performance boost if I could use 8-bit mode! With my 1600MM, 1x1 binning, through the quark, I'm sampling at 0.28"/px. I started using Windows on an older laptop recently, after having been using my main linux machine for capturing. I only started using it at all because I bought an old ATIK filter wheel for £75 ( a really old one with a separate control box), and ATIK decided to abrubtly drop support for it in Linux! I was quite pleased to find that in addition to being able to use the filter wheel, I got a literal doubling of my frame rate (with my ASI290MM)! I gather ZWO rely on some misuse of the USB system in Windows to get maximum performance, and the Linux kernel is too pedantic to allow it because it violates the USB specification! I'll report back with my findings. Thanks again!

I'll think about this Once I get the binoviewer, I might be overdue a bit of a re-shuffle of my eyepiece collection anyway; not that I've got loads, but of those I do, I only use a handful!

The seeing was wonderful yesterday lunch time. The air was cold and crisp. I thought the seeing was so fantastic at the eyepiece, that I'd get the camera out and try to capture some images. There actually wasn't much going on at all. I'm not sure you'd have seen more than a couple of tiny black dots if you were looking in white light, but in Ha it was still captivating. Now, I've got to say, I haven't been blown away with these captures and I think I could see more at the eyepiece (albeit without the same contrast and so on!). After getting a bit disheartened with the first couple, I just applied the same Deconvolution, MultiscaleLinearTransform (sharpening), and TGVDenoise (very low strength) settings to all of them (in PixInsight). There are a couple of problems. Firstly, I haven't sorted out my little issue, chronicled here: https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/387166-only-solar-imagers-know-this-struggle/, and I didn't even get the towel out (mistake), and so I don't think I managed to achieve perfect focus. The second thing is that in there captures, I've only taken 100 frames when previously I've always gone for 500 frames. On my ASI290MM it would take 6-7 seconds to capture 100 frames at 80FPS in 12-bit mode. Since I bought an ASI1600MM, using 12-bit mode, with an ROI that excludes the vignetting from the Quark, I can only get 7FPS. The previous images I've produced with the ASI1600MM have been much better, even with 500 frames taking over a minute to capture, so I might go back to that. I do wonder why my FPS is so low though. I'm using Firecapture, in USB 3 mode. I've upgraded my cable to a Lindy Chromo-line, which is really thick, and has stopped me ever seeing glitchy half-frames or lags, but hasn't changed my frame rate at all. I'm sure I should be able to get 14FPS at full resolution in 12-bit mode! I might go back to capturing more frames anyway. Not sure if anyone here has a rule of thumb for how long you can capture before details start to visibly change in the chromosphere? I think I should have got my 290MM out too, because the small pixels really do pick up huge amounts of detail, and I think it's easier to focus with it too! Anyway, on to the images!

I'd have to look through nice dedicated Ha scope to know what it is you're referring to! I'd better not though. If I look through a 100mm double-stacked Lunt, I'll probably end up broke, on the streets, and clutching my precious solar scope like Gollum! I used to have a PST, but it was a bit like looking through a straw. Not an immersive or relaxing view at all, with that tiny blocking filter. All my extra aperture with the Quark now means they're just not comparable systems! I do see the spicule "fur" around the edge. I'm amazed by how much detail I see all across the surface really. Certainly less defined detail available at the limb, and I guess that's because there's more photosphere at that kind of angle?

Cheers! Please can explain this a bit more? I think in this instance, the camera was rotated purely so the USB cable was able to hang at a natural angle, not putting any strain on the port. I don't actually use this EQ6 now, but an AZ-EQ6 (in AZ mode), so the diagonal generally won't ever need to be rotated, however, I have this sketchy arrangement where my tilt adapter plus the focuser slop combine to eliminate my newton rings, so I do introduce my own axial tilt, just to assist that a bit!

Cheers! I've been out there over lunch time today, and the seeing was really wonderful. I seemed to have great perception of depth in the contrasty areas. I've only been observing the sun since August, and what I can see just seems to keep on getting better and better. I can't wait to see what it's going to be like with two eyes!

It seems like the azimuth knobs are not actually being tightened against the 'thingy'. Are the threads clean? If you remove the mount head from the tripod, can you tighten the az bolts further?

Just to add to this. I'd originally contacted Russ because I wanted to buy a filter drawer and A45 OCS to pair with a second-hand Binotron from ENS. Well, in the end, it ended up being significantly cheaper to just buy everything brand new!

Just thought I'd follow up. I've been doing a lot of research (also known as procrastinating and agonising!). I had a long conversation with Russ Lederman of Denkmeier yesterday, and I've ordered a Binotron 27, with the A45 OCS (for my newtonian), 32mm 3d-eyepieces (with a second 'neutral' eyepiece for my normal binoviewing pair), and a filter drawer. How'd that happen?! Well, I'm pretty happy about having made a decision. I really like the idea of the 0.66x focal reduction available with the power switch device. Russ has an 80mm f/7 doublet like me, and says he gets full disc views using this with a Quark, which I'm quite excited by! I usually use my AR102, and the 80mm gets used for narrowband imaging, but I might swap them around and see how I like the full disc 'thing'. I'm really looking forward to trying some lunar viewing in my 254mm f/4.7 newtonian too! Cheers for all your advice!

Thank you all. Some good ideas for me. I'll report back with what I decide on. I'm going to be observing over my lunch break today, if the sky stays pristine. I probably won't image, but I might think about it!

That's exceedingly cheap, cheers! Iit's a very popular thing to misuse Ikea tables as 3d-printer enclosures too!

My wife took this, and put it on Facebook, saying something like "My husband has lost the plot"! In all seriousness. My laptop screen has absolutely awful contrast. I only use it for this one purpose really, that and lunar imaging. What do people use to make this easier? Other than a towel!

Thank you all, I appreciate it! I will get around to posting a few shots in the DSO, lunar and planetary forums too. Having said that, the planetary images will just illustrate my pleas for help! @vineyard The ones you mention were all captured in the same session! Very nice seeing. I tend to prioritise observing, and only when I've had enough of that will I decide to do some imaging, so I'm not hugely productive, but that suits me fine. That particular day gave me more than enough sunshine to do both!

Hi, I just joined the forum, and so I thought I'd introduce myself with some of the images I've captured and processed from the last couple of months. They have all been captured using a Daystar Quark, and an Explore Scientific AR102 f/6.5 achromat. The close-up one was captured with an ASI290MM, and the others with an ASI1600MM. They have all been pre-processed with AutoStakkert, and then post-processed with PixInsight. In all cases, I experimented with Deconvolution and MultiscaleLinearTransform settings, and then combined with LRGBCombination, and applied false colour with CurvesTransformation, including some false inversion and actual inversion in one case. I may have applied TGVDenoise too, but only with a very light touch. I love solar imaging. You can do it in sunlight for a start! Each capture only takes a handful of seconds, it's quick to pre-process, the SNR is fantastic. It's different every day too!

Thanks for your thoughts and experiences. It's all adding to my deliberation! I think I'm almost certain to buy a binoviewer soon. I'll keep on mulling over the pros and cons of the various different ones for a bit though, I think! Also, I thought I'd post some of my solar images, just for the hell of it, seeing as this is my first post! Mostly acquired with my ES AR102 achromat and an ASI1600MM, but the close-up was using my ASI290MM.