Gina

Been looking back through this thread and I see I decided at the time that the SII subs were useless Not sure whether these were taken with a gain of 440 or 500 - don't seem to have noted that down. I think my best bet would be to try again next time we get some clear night sky with a gain of 600. This seems the best gain for faint nebulosity.

The SII is poor and I think dragging the result down. I need either to be more selective in the SII images or just go for bi-colour. Ideally I want more SII subs. Maybe I should turn the camera back to this orientation and take more SII H&S subs before these DSOs get too far west. I have some 240s SII subs which I haven't used. Maybe I should pop out and cover the lens and take some matching darks. I tried to drag something out in Photoshop but I think I'm scuppered by inadequate starting image.

Here's the result. Bit wishy-washy and needs some tweaking. I know I should process in PixInsight which I will later but for now I'm going into Photoshop where I know what I'm doing.

Trying this mix :-

Done that now to combine colours Colour-Combining with PixelMath

Think I might try combining the three integrated images into a colour version. Starting here.

Photoshopped.

SII subs Blink'd and 95 60s g440 -30C fed through BPP. Auto-stretched in PI. Screenshot.

And now after post processing in Photoshop.

I actually used 301 OIII subs in BPP - here's the result, screenshot of the auto-stretched image in PI.

I ordered the ZWO adapter to allow me to use the 45mm lens but since the delivery time is 10 to 20 working days, I've been looking into using my 35-105mm zoom lens with M42 mount. This is as heavy or heavier than the 45mm medium format lens and more tricky to support - not much space to fit a bracket. It would be nice to have remote zoom control as well as focus but this would involve more hardware and more software writing - probably won't bother - I can just set it to whatever FL I want by hand.

Still going... I'll let it run overnight.

Been through the OIIIs again and pruned drastically - now have 373 which I'm feeding into BPP.

Ah yes I remember now

Thanks Ken Here is a "preview" from Photoshop after applying levels and "Enhance DSO and Reduce Stars" plus cropping the borders.

It needs the DBE treatment but here is just levels applies in Photoshop. (I really should see how I do this in PI). I shall need to remove the uneven borders resulting from registration but might as well leave this until after I register the different wavelengths.

Yes, I've been reckoning on around 300 subs and that's mainly what I've been doing. Finished and result is much better. Here is an unstretched screenshot. 278 subs integrated. I'll post process in Photoshop but I think it only needs a slight "lift" in levels.

I think I'm better off limiting capture to just a hundred or two - or even fewer. Otherwise processing takes an inordinate amount of time. I need a super-computer

Still going...

Curses - PI has dropped out!

Now been all through the Ha subs and towards the end there was definitely thin cloud going through so I've dumped all those. 279 subs left which all seem very good. I make that 140 dumped. Now I'll run ImageIntegration again...

I think I'll have to Blink all those Ha subs again but I thought I'd dumped all the poorer subs. Now I have calibrated and registered frames I guess it's best to use Blink on those rather than the originals. I'll do that...

Well... the result of integrating 419 Ha subs of the Heart and Soul is absolute RUBBISH!!! The result from the other night with just 35 subs was very much better!

Been processing the Ha data. BPP crashed at the integration stage so I'm running ImageIntegration separately on the calibrated and registered frames - all 419 of them - it's taking hours!! On the last phase of pixel integration now. I looked that the OIIIs too after collecting them all together - don't know how I managed to capture so many - the total is around 1200!!! Quite a percentage of these are dud, unusable due to bad framing or just poor. With so many there's no point in using any but the best. I've been through several hundred in Blink and dumped a lot. There's still more to do.

Been sorting out all my data - I think I now have it organised. I'm putting source files on my USB3 2TB external drive except those found to be poor or duff in Blink - they get deleted. Now processing the Heart and Soul in Ha - I find I have 419 lights of 60s with gain of 440 and mostly -30C. The data looks good so I should have a good Ha result. Nearly 7 hours of data