Gina

Goodness knows when it might be with the current dreadful weather forecast but I'm thinking the next thing I might image is the linking frame from IC405/410 to Simeis 147 with the camera rotated around 90 degrees and later in the night, with this orientation I can cover the Orion area from Flame to M42. Here is a screenshot of CdC showing the area concerned and the rectangle representing the sensor FOV. Part of IC405 plus the whole of IC410 is in the bottom corner and part of Simeis147 in the top corner close to the star Beta Taurus.

Yes, that's been suggested before I do seem to be good at posting threads that don't really fit anywhere exactly

Hmmm... Been through the forum list and it seems to "fall between two stools" - Imaging Equipment. So it falls within the Equipment group but not into any forum within this group. Guess I'll put it in this forum (Imaging Discussion) as another thread then admin/mod could move it if they think it belongs somewhere else. I'm posting it here :- Computer for Image Capture

I was having problems again with the astro laptop and running both SharpCap and APT - needed a cold boot, a remote reboot didn't do the trick. I don't think the laptop likes the environment in the scope room and it's stopped working with the longer USB cables from the warm room (including on cable and USB hub at the mount). I'm thinking of having another go at the Beeline mini PC box but I'm trying to decide where discussion of this belongs now that this thread is supposed to be about imaging ideas etc. I don't think it's "DIY Astronomer" related exactly either. Must go through the forums here and see which it would fit into...

Just been out and shut down - closed roof. Extreme dew tonight - wet everywhere except on the camera lens so my home made dew shield plus some warmth from the gear kept the dew off the lens I expected to find I would need a dew heater but seems not. Switched the dehumidifier on to remove the damp from the air and equipment surfaces.

No joy Think tonight's run is useless but I'll have another look at the subs. Clouded over now so that's that for tonight.

Trying a different reference frame.

Hmm... into the registration stage and it's throwing up a lot of errors - can't match stars... Or not enough matches.

Put tonights subs through Blink and dumped clouded out frames leaving 99 which I'm now processing in BPP.

The sky now seems crystal clear to the eye but I can't see much of the nebulae in SII. Quite good clarity and seeing earlier when I set up focus too. Here's a 60s g600 t-30C sub. Still nice tight stars but little sign of the nebulosity. Just have to see what integrating 100 odd subs will give.

Trying some imaging tonight as it's reasonably clear ATM. It was misty earlier but the mist seems to have descended to lower levels and we are above it here. I can see it lying in the valley below. Trying to capture the Heart and Soul in SII as I'm lacking that data.

I once had a mobile phone that took pictures - I took quite a lot and transferred them to my PC alright but in the end I filled up the memory and couldn't find out how to delete them I also tried texting once but couldn't get on with it. I gave up and bought a simpler and smaller phone for emergencies only but that's not much use round here as there are far more "not spots" than "hot spots" !!! Computers I can handle - mostly - but mobile phones are double dutch to me.

Absolutely - too good by far!!

From a Hubble thread and relevant here :- Thank you Paddy - I'll try that So much simpler that the process I used in Photoshop but yet to produce as good a result but I'm sure that's mainly a matter of getting the best formulae. I never really understood what I was doing in Photoshop - just followed a manual process. I understand the colour mix process here

Don't know when I shall see any clear night skies - fog, fog and more fog!! Possibly Sunday night if the forecast is anything to go by. Meanwhile, still oodles of data to process... except that I need a rest from it So I'm looking at the next mods to the rig - see the other thread.

I would like to thank the admin/mod who moved this thread to the Imaging - Discussion forum which is where it now belongs. I have forked off another thread in the DIY Astronomer forum to cover the DIY aspects of my imaging rig called "Mountings and Controls For Widefield Imaging Rig". This thread will now cover imaging aspects only.

PNG version.

Post processing in Photoshop. Screenshot of image plus histogram. Getting the histograms matched for best image was tricky. I'll post the full resolution and image depth shortly.

Blummin' marvellous... watching ASC I noticed that the sky had half cleared where I wanted to image so went out and slackened and removed focus gear, slackened mount and rotated camera back to H&S orientation, reclamped mount and put focussing gear back on. Removed lens hood and replaced it with the dew shield. Then I opened the roof only to find thin cloud covering the moon and all the rest of the sky!!!

Yes indeed and here it is - just as screenshot in PI.

No good - comes out all pink and green OK magenta actually.

Think I might try a different set of formulae in PixelMath. This one uses less SII so might be better.

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.