OK Apricot

@ollypenrice thank you for this. I will install these tools as soon as there's some money spare - I'm not even there yet and Vegas is taking my money 😂. As far as colour balance, I used the eyedropper at the start to find and balance the white and black points as best I could - I possibly lost sight of this throughout the process. I need to develop a consistent work flow. @Elp your take looks a lot sharper than mine! There was no noise reduction applied, just curves really and a bit of star reduction. I really appreciate you posting your work flow - I'll refer back to this in the coming days and see if I can get things to improve. I am planning on some Ha with this soon - I've done the same with andromeda and love the red bits popping out! @Paul M another nice and sharp take. I look forward to using some photoshop actions here as it looks like they can make a big difference in a more simple way. Could make learning and fine tuning a bit easier if it takes the load off, as it were. @scitmon so I'm assuming here that there is some uneven colour in my background? This was shot UV/IR under Bortle 5 with street lights nearby - would this explain it? @DaveS a lot of big words 😂. What's the reason for splitting RGB? Again very nice take. Having seen a few of your efforts, I feel like there needs to be more data, maybe some longer exposures to try to reach those fainter parts of the arms and bring some more dust out?

Hi guys, Just wondered if I could borrow your expert help and advice. For the last few weeks I've been getting by with GIMP, but felt like the images I saw on the screen during processing were waaayyy different to the ones I saw once saved, uploaded to FB etc. I decided to download Photoshop to help give me some more tools, techniques and control over my images. This is my M33 from friday. It was shot with the Evostar 80ED and ASI533MC-Pro with UV/IR filter from Bortle 5 sky, moon around 35% illuminated. The transparency and seeing was only "OK" by my reckoning. I've been playing with this for several hours this evening to try to spit out something resembling a respectable astro image, but I feel like it's very soft, very bland. I've watched a couple tutorials on balancing colour levels, masking parts of the core to bring up brightness around it etc. I just wanted to see what you guys think really, and see if you could improve on this if I posted the 16bit RGB file. Any tips and criticism greatly received! Autosave16bitRGB.tif

Can't have it all 🤷. They'll know my sky was clear when I turn up scruffy and tired from being out all night 😂

You know what, I'm being a complete fruit cake. My FOV doesn't really extend out to the arms so there isn't a lot of colour to be had anyway. I did the same stacking process with M33 and M45 and they were fine. I will post the stacks of M31 though, both the RGB and Ha, but will be later on tonight. Thanks for the tutorial videos - will take a look as soon as I can.

Hi guys, I'm probably having a brain fart moment or could be missing something, but I'm not getting any colour out of DSS on my Andromeda data? However I am getting colour on M45 for example. I don't change any settings, just let it do its thing, but maybe I need to change something for this? I'm using 30x180s lights and a master dark if that helps. Using ASI533MC-Pro Also, I have some HaOIII data for Andromeda that I got through the zwo dual band filter. I'd like to combine this into the RGB image to add the Ha but not sure how to go about that? Sorry if a dumb question but I'm new to all this still!

USB power being limited when running on battery maybe?

Bortle 1 would be something else!

At home I plug the laptop straight into an external socket. At the DS it's mostly on battery power but I do plug it into either my van inverter or outlet on the battery to top it up.

Ever so strange this... Held onto the chance of clear skies tonight following the heavy rain and wind, and I'm very glad to have done so. I have everything connected up in exactly the same configuration. Devices to the same slots in USB ports in the hub, same slot in the laptop for the hub, same laptop, software and settings, battery, atmospheric conditions almost identical except for a few breezy gusts here and there... I'm just coming to the end of 6.5 hours worth of sequences without a single issue. Not even a hiccup. Everything working perfectly. Other than that, guiding has been a little sub par at 0.9", with a number of large spikes 3"+ which I'm putting down to wind? It's usually 0.4-0.6 but my stars are round so I'm not fussed at all. Just an observation. The only difference here is my location - the garden. I don't get it. Seriously, where are my problems coming from when I travel to my DS? Otherwise very happy to have collected lots of new data tonight!

Taken for fun really just to see what it can do. Phone is an A52S, 10s exposure under Bortle 5 skies with a little tweaking on phone editor. I feel like M33 is in there too. 3 galaxies and two clusters from a 10 second exposure with a phone. Still blows me away 😂

Please let this one be trouble free 🤞

I have some work in Wales coming up in a few weeks and being a 3.5hr drive away means a hotel stay for a couple nights. I've heard the Brecon Beacons are a decent dark sky, not quite the Bortle 3 of really rural Wales, but a lot better than home! Isn't it great when you see an email like this to confirm your booking 😊

How does an Acer Swift X look as a processing laptop?

Cheers. I'll note that down. This would be exclusively for processing. I'm ditching the laptop acquisition method and now looking into the ASIair.

That's a very nice bit of kit. Unfortunately I don't have the slightest know-how when it comes to computers and the like - I can (just about) use one let alone build one! Just to brainstorm a little... Along with the usual DSO imaging, I'm thinking I may want to get a large ish SCT in the future for planetary. Excuse my terminology here... I'm going to need USB 3.0 ports, hi-res screen, high fps (50+?), a quad core i7 sounds good? My current laptop is 2.6GHz so maybe looking for around 4GHz+? Don't know what RAM is for but throwing numbers about, 8GB? Would probably pick up an external 1TB+ hard drive, decent battery life wouldn't go amiss but not essential 🤔. Sorry for that rambling, just trying to get across my needs without really the ability to communicate them! Do any particular models on the current market pop out?

So I think I'm in need of a new laptop. I currently have a refurbished Lenovo Thinkpad T430 which is decent on paper, but it's got issues where it'll have a seizure and shut itself down, it's not reliable enough in the field for acquisition (so swapping to ASIair soon) but it's not really great for processing which is the main thing. The screen resolution is low, colours are weird, it'll take a while just to respond to change levels on a 9MP image. So, I'm in the market for something purely for processing. It will have to be a laptop as space in the house, and budget, doesn't really allow a large desktop. I came across the Acer swift 3 which looks to have a decent spec? What do you use for processing? Recommendations for a piece between £700-£900? Thanks 🙂

The only device I used through the hub on the 533 was the 120MM, not what I'd imagine was too demanding? Either way, same problems last night using a separate hub. It was soul destroying watching that sky go to waste. I am being pulled (strongly) toward the ASIair now.

I haven't tried that, but will give it a go next time. I'd bought the standalone hub as I read the camera hub wasn't very reliable, but two nights at the same site under similar conditions with two different hubs gave similar results.

Only two, three needed. The thing that bothers me is that this all worked really well a week ago in the garden - maybe not quite as cold or humid that night though.

PA with SharpCap was 0.07“. I calibrate PHD2 each time I use it. Was all going well with first hour of subs coming out very nicely. Hub to laptop cable is 20cm. Guide cam, imaging cam cables 2m, EQDIR 5m.

So last night was another frustrating one. Crystal clear, really great transparency. I managed one hour 15 minutes before things started to go mental again. Same location, similar conditions - 8°C with 8-9°C dew points. Differences were I was using a separate USB 3.0 hub (unpowered), had the laptop hot-spotted to phone for WiFi and it was nestled in an old blue bin with cables coming through a few holes in the back. As the night went on it was clear the blue bin had really settled the dew issue on the laptop, it was dry whereas before it was... Wet. First part of the night was fine, guiding maybe a little questionable but had round stars so not to worry. Started a sequence on the second target and the mount stopped tracking, had disconnected from NINA but EQMOD still showed it as tracking sidereal. My kit would keep disconnecting, PHD2 would keep prompting "star lost - low HFD" etc. When it would "guide" for a couple minutes I was getting 60' of error, huge spikes in RA. My subs would have stars as clear cross shapes. I had zero issues a week prior in the garden using it all the same as last night. I don't know what else really. I brought the laptop inside the van and warmed everything up, plugged it all in again running cables through the window and tried again but was still giving the same issues. I don't get it - it was fine, then it wasn't. It got worse as the night went on so thought temp and humidity were the killer but sitting the laptop in a balmy 20°C van didn't change anything. Laptop? Mount? USB hub? I'm struggling to pinpoint what is causing the trouble. Focus was good, dew straps doing their job (sigh). Any ideas? It's got to be related to the weather conditions 🤔

Dylan Odonnell is another excellent channel. Very knowledgeable and great sense of humour.

Hi guys, want sure where to put this so mods please move as appropriate 👍 I'm all geared up with 12v dew straps and a controller with a good power supply so dew during an imaging session isn't an issue in itself. My question is more along the lines of packing everything away. I go to a dark site (DS) which obviously means transporting my equipment in purpose made bags and cases. When I'm done I pack everything up and go home. I'm not sure how I feel about packing up cold and dewy kit into cases, which then get warmed up as I warm myself up in the van, spend half an hour driving, before unpacking everything when I'm home. Last time at the DS was probably as bad as it could get dew-wise - temps dropped to the dew point and everything was soaked. I toweled everything down as best I could but I feel like I'm not doing things in the best interest of my kit. Should I throw a load of Silica packets in my cases? Lens caps on or off (in the case)? Focuser tube cap off? What do my fellow travelling imagers do?

Thank you both. Everyone was right - it was so worth the pain and stress getting the podium built now I've got some images 😁

These images are from my most recent night out where I got to the bottom of my issues a week ago regarding NINA and EQMOD randomly stopping tracking, disconnecting from camera etc. They were also taken from my garden on my still "almost finished" astro podium, so it was nice to really settle in for the night. Due to the relatively bright moon I chose a couple of targets in Cygnus. I was set up by 2100 so while I was waiting for my targets to cross the meridian, I slewed over to M31 to pass the time and make sure I was focused, guiding was working, but I was also curious as to what a broadband target would look like through a dual narrowband filter. I gathered around an hour's worth of 180s subs, stacked them today and really liked how it picked out the nebulousity in the galaxy. I'd love to get some more broadband data on this and see where it goes. Anyway, the targets were now there for the taking so I set my sequence and sat back. Bortle 5, thin-moderate high cloud, slight breeze, moon rising around 2300 lighting up the high cloud. EQ6-R Pro, Evostar 80ED/0.85X FF/FR, ASI533MC-Pro w/ZWO Duo-band filter, guiding with Evoguide 50ED and ASI120MM-Mini, processed in GIMP. Cygnus Wall 24x240s @ -15c, Veil 12x300s @ -15c. The Veil was a bit tricky to process really, and I'm not 100% on this so will add data and reprocess in the near future. The Wall however was quite fun. It does seem like I have some coma particularly in the top left corners? I'm not sure this is spacing as the aberrations would mirror each other on opposite sides, right? Is this tilt? Imperfect FF? Am I expecting too much and this normal? Anyways, thanks for reading if you got this far, looking, and I'd appreciate any feedback and criticism