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Tzetze

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Everything posted by Tzetze

  1. Thank you MathMog, Geof and Noddy. Muchly appreciated. =]
  2. That helps immensely in making the decision, thanks.
  3. Many thanks Olly! I've been giving some consideration to purchasing an Ha filter. It's on the cards but am torn between Ha filter or more superior grade mirrors as next upgrade. Not sure which option would give me the greater result.
  4. It can be so hard to trust my own eyes when processing. Thanks again for kind comments. There are a couple of issues that I feel let this image down. There's some slight dark ringing introduced at the deconvolution stage which I've found extremely difficult to remove entirely. I also think that the range mask I used should have been smoothed/fuzzed out quite a bit more. The faint stretched outer arm is too pronounced, in my opinioin. A more fuzzy/smoothed out range mask would have softened this area. I hope to have another go at processing this over the weekend to improve on these areas.
  5. Thanks. On other images, I had issues with LRGB combination ending up looking very washed out but, thanks to some tips, have been working on avoiding that with more careful stretching/curves before and after combination. I think I've managed to avoid a washed out look here but perhaps it's something that requires more attention.
  6. Thank you Mark. I'm pleased with how the colour and saturation turned out. Thank you Adrian. The high sub count on the luminance really helped in this regard.
  7. Hi. This data was captured over 4 nights in the last week of March. Image is comprised of ; 50x Lum, 1x1 900s 15x ea. RGB, 2x2 225s 10" Newt f4.7, EQ8, Atik 460ex with Astrodon LRGB. Thanks for looking. =]
  8. Tzetze

    M106

    Thank you all very much for the kind comments. James, I struggled over how to frame the target and considered a few options. I tend to prefer a North-mostly-up orientation and try to work something with that aspect. The oblique angles, unorthodox leaning/framing seems to work for me. =]
  9. Tzetze

    M106

    Thank you all, muchly appreciated. =]
  10. Tzetze

    M106

    With a lucky streak in the weather lately, was able to complete a few datasets. One of which was M106, started back in January. I've learned quite a bit more about this LRGB processing (particularly, the LRGB combination stage) from some tips kindly provided here following my last processing attempts a few months ago. These pointers have helped immensely in processing this image. I'm sure this image can be further improved and would be very glad to receive any pointers. The (Pixinsight) processing steps performed so far, after stacking and performing DBE on the separate LRGB images; Lum: Deconvolution, Multiscale Linear Transform (mainly detail enhancement with minor noise reduction), Histogram Transformation, HDR Multiscale Transform, Local Histogram Equalisation, (slight) Curves Transformation. RGB: Channel Combination, Colour Calibration, SCNR, Multiscale Linear Transform (heavy noise reduction), Histogram Transformation. LRGB Combination, Crop, multiple Curves Transformation iterations. Image is composed of; Lum: 22x 900s 1x1 RGB: 15x ea. 225s 2x2 Taken through a 10" Newt on EQ8 mount with Atik 460ex and Astrodon LRGB 1.25" E-series filters.
  11. Thank you Danny. All the best with your own data!
  12. Thanks very much Mars. I hadn't taken into account the effects of poor seeing. :facepalm:
  13. So, I've reworked LRGB combination and things have improved somewhat. Certainly a less washed out appearance.
  14. Ahh, thank you Wim. This is valuable information. Quality link too, wasn't aware of this resource. You've made something click into place.
  15. I guess there's always something new to learn. I'll make it a priority.
  16. Thanks both. I'll try easing back on the lum processing for another run through. PS advice taken on board although I'll admit am reluctant to use more than one processing application. It feels like enough to be trying to get a handle on Pixinsight for now. I'll look further into what's involved with Photoshop.
  17. Hi Olly. I used the Pixinsight LRGB Combination process, leaving the lightness, saturation and chrominance noise reduction sliders at their default. I've reworked the image some. On the RGB image, I ran through the colour calibration process again but this really only needed a very fine adjustment. I performed a much heavier noise reduction using Multiscale Linear Transform on 6 layers beginning with a threshold of 8 for 6 iterations and finishing with a threshold of 1 for 1 iteration. After a light histogram stretch, I ran through the LRGB combination process with a heavier leaning towards both lightness and saturation. Then some further RGB/K, L and Saturation curves adjustments while keeping the background well masked. I may tweak the curves further, but for now I'm very pleased with what I was able to get out of this with such poor RGB subs. Of course, I'm more than happy to receive any pointers on the areas I've missed.
  18. Thank you Ian. I maybe should leave this image as luminance only until I get a decent set of RGB but couldn't resist trying to do something with it. Going to give the colour processing another shot tonight. I did blur the RGB before combination but certainly could have been more careful with the LRGB blending. I'll try a heavier noise reduction and take more care on the combination. Here's a full res of how the luminance turned out. Edit: Well, I can see now with a fresh pair of eyes that there is a faint satellite trail still present. There's some considerable noise in the lum here too which would benefit from some further reduction. I'll have to go back to the integration stage on this..
  19. Happy hangover day, everyone! I got some decent luminance data on NGC2403 on Christmas eve while the clear forecast held out. Unfortunately, some thin cloud rolled in while gathering RGB subs. Of course, once I'd completed for the night the skies cleared up again. I thought I'd make do with what I'd managed for now and will hopefully acquire fresh RGB subs at a later stage. The RGB channels turned out very noisy but just about usable. I'm not overly happy with the colour calibration this time around and will have another go at it so am considering this to be a work in progress for now. Star bloat is quite a problem (0.7776" image scale). I'm thinking I may be able to control this more with the use of masked stretching and elliptical masks. Plenty to improve on here. Spent a lot of time trying to nail the deconvolution and I think it eventually paid off in this case. Lum: 23x, 900s, 1x1 RGB: 9x ea, 225s, 2x2 10" Newt at f4.7, EQ8, Atik 460ex, Astrodon LRGB filters.
  20. Thank you, Danny. I can only speak for Pixinsight processing. Once separate L, R, G and B images have been stacked they need to be registered to each other using the StarAlignment process. A reference image is selected which the other images will be aligned/registered to. If the reference image is 1x1 and the other images are 2x2, the process will automatically upscale the 2x2s to match the reference image. Thanks Tony. That sounds much like my own experience with deconvolution. Raccoon eyes and noise are very troublesome to control.
  21. Thanks Olly, I appreciate your input. I'm trying to get to grips with deconvolution. It's not proving to be easy, to say the least, but will keep plugging away at it. Thank you Neil.
  22. Apologies for late reply, very busy time at work for a while. This does indeed help a lot. I lately did some work on my collimation and thought I had improved things quite a bit but it looks like the misalignment is still present. Maybe not quite as pronounced as in the M51 image but this is something to work on. I wonder if this is something that can be further improved with collimation. I guess this comes down to optics and OTA quality. I'm curious to see how much improvement can be made through pre-processing though. Roll on Christmas and some free time!
  23. I worked a HDR process into the image, albeit at a very late stage and added to the original post. I would rather add the HDR to just the luminance layer and soften the effect in blending during LRGB combination. Again, a decent starmask would have smoothed out the core better than this result.
  24. Thank you Alan. Those are some great pointers to work on. I skipped the HDR process completely as applying to a range mask, while improving the core, was not improving the whole image. Now that I think of it in hindsight, this was a wide range mask, if I were to use a narrower range mask (with subtracted starmask) I should get better results. However, I do like your tip on applying to preview selection only. I wasn't familiar with that script, sounds very useful indeed. I hadn't noticed the red misalignment and to be honest I still can't see it but this is either due to a slight red/green blindness on my part or I don't know what I'm looking for. I'll use your recommended settings in future though. Thanks again, that's very helpful.
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