TiffsAndAstro

Been reading some interesting posts on here about using a Barlow on my 72ed with a dslr to image planets. I assumed a Barlow lens was very similar to a Tele converter/whatever canons stupid name is, and so 'bad' for astrophotography. Seems this is not the case? How would I include a Barlow in my image train to try this? Would I need a specific size/thread/adapter? If it went between focus tube and flattener my back focus would stay same? Also if it's possible, please point out any incredibly obvious potential issues I will be completely ignorant of. I'm struggling to Google Barlow dslr planets and get anything that shows how to connect it.

I think gimp will be more than enough for me. At least for the time being.

That's really interesting Ty Need to look at the (I assume) Photoshop panels you show a bit more but, Only difference I can see if the histogram further to the right but both histograms look 'valid' to me. I think I stretched/ ghs until the noise was "too much". I'm starting to see difference between just using histogram and using ghs. I made it a special big jpg just to minimise lossy compression and quick downloads for people on here but I didn't realise quite how not great jpg is. I think I put two jpg on astrobin but will use tiff in future. Pretty appalling behaviour by me, considering my user name

one last go from me. its not as good as alacants and took me slightly longer than 5 minutes but its not a bad effort. i did a gentle sharpening in astro sharp just as a test. alacant got more detail out of the fatter sprial arms, but im not a million miles away.

Just a random result from Google. No idea of it's quality

All I can go by is results, really and I'm pretty happy with my subs, and very happy with the result alacant created from them. I can merrily carry on and hope, one day, my processing skills get good enough. I have a [removed word] load of reading and videos to do

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/305300096125?chn=ps&_ul=GB&_trkparms=ispr%3D1&amdata=enc%3A1AWqcRPS4RCiJdR1lXbVEcg51&norover=1&mkevt=1&mkrid=710-134428-41853-0&mkcid=2&mkscid=101&itemid=305300096125&targetid=1647205088800&device=m&mktype=pla&googleloc=9046510&poi=&campaignid=17206177401&mkgroupid=136851690655&rlsatarget=pla-1647205088800&abcId=9300866&merchantid=138357707&gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQjwlZixBhCoARIsAIC745DE8fTmTxAILhumM663IYs0itqoO3dAoka_CYpvJJfr-SmplYSiJocaApAEEALw_wcB Maybe right thing? Biggest URL in the world sorry And don't talk to me about cables ;(

Seeing is a bit nebulous me, pardon the pun. At the moment I'm going by hfr, # of stars and median. I seem to be able to keep hfr under 3, but not by much. Is this decent? For comparison I can focus my guider to maybe under 4 before I lose the will to live No idea what the median references but I think higher is better? I think 3000 to 5000 is what I usually get. More stars = better I assume.

I'm bortle 6 and maybe have a relatively shielded back garden. I will hear hubble scream in trepidation.

I would have gone for that over the 72ed but was concerned about weight collimation and didn't like the image train hanging off the side. For a future grown up rig, a F5+ newton on a decent mount is really attractive.

I just noticed you somehow extracted *some* (not a lot, but still wow) detail in the satellite galaxy to the right of m101, NGC 5474? Wikipedia says (approx I'm on mobile) m101 is 30' x 30' (I assume it means arc seconds) about same as the moon, though Wikipedia says NGC 5474 is 5x4'. My image scale is 3 x 2 arc seconds. How is NGC 5474 more than 2 pixels in size, or maybe 4 with my drizzle shizzle? My telescopes Dawes limit is 1.6 so I don't understand how it's possible to resolve detail less than that. Admittedly it's a long, long time since I thought about this stuff. It does make me think an imx585 sensor would maybe not be totally wasted on my humble (non premium lol) 72ed

Now I need to watch some Star tools videos. It looks promising and is reasonably priced. Ty

what do you use instead of PI now then?

i have been trying to use AstroSharp-DualPSF but it either doesn't work atm, or does work but has no progress bar and takes a long time. i was trying it with drizzled images which may be too big/slow for it so ill have another go with a downsampled drizzle - as that seems to make drizzled images work with starnet++ in siril for me. astrobin is a very useful tool. i even put a couple of my images up (crap as they are) in case people found them helpful.

blurxterminator and noise reduction tools and likely more from him i guess. i don't have PI but even i recognise his name. even if i had £400 for PI and blurx, there's no way at this stage im going to pay more for software than my telescope cost. which i assume is a sentiment at lot of noobs have. in a perfect world, i'd get PI and the most useful RC tools, and learn it from scratch rather than siril. PI + RC is definately something ill get in future, im sure.

wow ok you're image is really impressive too. im a little uneasy that 3 different people can get 3 very different results from the same starting data. Hopefully, this will turn into a sense of excitement that there is a lot of freedom in how to do it, once i get better skills. More in-depth siril tutorials for me i think ty for your kind words though. i need more time under clear skies, still probably only have maybe 5 nights and 30 hours total doing stuff with my complete rig, but i think its 'dialed in' maybe a touch of back focus and not completely flat field in corners. but then its not a 'premium telescope' as someone put it to me

pp is post process right? what's RC, sorry?

i only use histrogram to stretch, the couple videos i watched on GHS didn't really make much sense to me, but then i've never really done much in the way of image processing (anything) in the past. Also i need to use 'curves' to stretch apparently, so i need to google some videos on curves now. i still really like your image Vroobel, and it was very interesting and useful for me to see it, so many thanks again

vaguely related question, if i got an uncooled osc (im thinking an imx585 based sensor) would this data i already have, taken by my dslr, still be of use in an ongoing project, or would i likely need to start from scratch?

i didn't read it as an attack and i hope vrobel didn't either. i think its another interesting and challenging part of this pass time. again, i really appreciate everyone's contribution to this thread (again) as even some quick comments i can find really useful, if only to challenge my 'default' thinking on this subject.

i'd have preferred it if you'd said the oppopsite as while both are not great, i think my aquisition skills are ok, and my processing skills are bad.

maybe i can put each on a different layer in gimp and get the best of both worlds (whorls ) ? i think i have enough to be going on with, collecting my images and then processing them (badly) without even really having thought much about the aesthetics. I showed a friend without saying which was which and they said mine had more detail and vrobels is more blurry. ill carry on adding to my m101 project in the hope that by the time i get maybe 20 hours of data my processes skills will have improved a bit more by then.

I don't quite follow, sorry. When you say "All the galaxy detail has been blurred out via using NR on it'" do you meany crap quick post process or vrobells quite amazing result from same data? I didn't (as far as I know lol) use any nr, but I'm assuming vrobel did. And I can see way more detail in his image. Way way more. Vrobel image made me sad and happy. Sad my processing skills are rubbish in comparison , but happy that someone with skills can make something that (to me) looks so incredibly better with my same limited data. I think it shows my data acquisition seems ok, but I need to work a lot more on my processing skills. ****************** ok, looking at both images again, and i can see how vrobel's is more blurred (in a way) but i think its a much, much better image than mine by quite a long way. My version looks more grainy and granular and far worse. I can tell my own post processing skills are going to need a lot of time and practice to improve, and, even if they do, my aesthetic sense of what is attractive on the eye may need even more work

that looks pretty amazing tbh maybe ill try and get pixinsight if/when i ever slightly approach your skill level with gear and processing.

its a dslr, its going to have lots of noise. i really dislike the obvious red stuff, but hopefully more total integration time will improve it. also a camera upgrade. just concerning to see two different coloured gradients across my first attempt at stacking across multiple sessions and wondered if i did something wrong.