nephilim

Thank you. I'm also pretty new to all this & I took advice from someone a lot more experienced than me, they take no time at all to do. If I get time I might re process without the bias & see if theres a noticeable difference.

Thanks Mike. I think I've done all I can with this as many of the subs were below par & i've had to spend a heck of a lot of time in PI trying to correct issues. I'm leaving it now & hopefully will look back in a years time to see how (or if 🤣) i've progressed. I think next is going to be IC 405 (The Flaming Star ) in Auriga, with the Samyang it gives a very good FOV & is perfectly placed in my garden for the next few months. I'm obviously very keen to try M42 as i'll also be able to get the Horsehead & Flame Nebula in there as well. That will have to wait a while before it clears my roof.

After many hours of faff with the imaging & the processing I think i'm finished with this for now. Only my second image & still much to learn (dont think i'll ever be 100% happy with it 😂) but i'm happy with this considering I've only been at it for a few months. 306 x 180s 30 x flats 30 x Darks 200 x Bias Gear used as per my signature Calibration, Processing etc in PI Thanks for looking Steve

@Mike73 Cheers mate, Crescent it is then (I hate making decisions 😂) It also passes the Meridian soon so I wont have to bother with that faff.

Gutted, its still a cracking image & plenty of time to put more hours into it. I had a similar issue with my Crescent Nebula the other month. Had 10hrs on it & ended up been ruthless with SubFrame Selector in PI & lost around 7hrs. I was really happy with the end result but those extra hours would have made a big difference. I'm a bit torn today, its forecast clear for around 7hrs & I want to have a crack at NGC 7000 but I'd also like to add more to the Crescent as that 6/ 7hrs would make a big difference.😬 I'm 50/50 on what to do so I think you should make that decision for me 😂

Really nice image there Mike, well worth the hours put in.

Big improvement, good job.

Absolutely stunning, great job.

Pretty much that ^^

I'd personally say PI is definitely worth investing both time & money in. Give the 45 day free trial a go, its the full version with nothing left out. This hobby can be very expensive but @£220 (ish) PI is the cost of a half decent filter so in the grand scheme of things pretty cheap in my opinion. Yes, its a steep learning curve but isn't the entire hobby a steep learning curve? There are countless very good YouTube tutorials that you can easily follow step by step to produce a very good image from your data (assuming your data is good). I've been developing my own workflow & I'll never go back to PS which for some reason I found harder to get my head around. I've been using it for around 3 months now & IMO PI is the best post processing software out there & its made my life so much easier. PI is constantly been updated & all updates are always free. Give the free trial ago & I'm sure you wont look back. On a side note, I still use PS for the odd tweak. This was my second image processed in PI, not great but I'm getting there. Steve

@Mike73 Really nice image there mate. I had 4hrs on this the other night but for some reason the Eastern Veil completely blew out around the edges, couldn't fix it in PI for love nor money so I binned it (Meaning 'in the bin' not 1,2 or 3xbin 😂)

I had the same with Sadr mate.

So, while waiting patiently for the constant grey cover to clear one day soon, I thought I'd have a go at reworking my first image taken a few months ago. I posted a Hubble Palette version of it a while back so heres the RGB version. My PixInsight skills are very slowly improving & with this I separated the channels combined the G & B channel to 'create' OIII & used Red as Ha. Then combined the 2 in LRGBCombination, populating L & R as HA & G & B as OIII (if that makes sense?) The image is rather noisy even after using EZ Denoise & Vignetting is apparent due to the fact it was my first image & I hadn't taken any flats. All this is good practise & I 'think' i'm slowly seeing progress with the processing side of things, just need some clear skies to get better with the actual imaging part of it. Thanks for looking Steve

Its a cracking lens mate.

Nice one mate. That target was also my first ever image a couple of months back using exactly the same video.

@Mike73 Hi Mike, I'm good cheers. I've had this data for around a month & only just got round to processing it due to work which is thankfully slowing a little now. PI is great, I recently bought the full license & i'm really liking it but theres so much to learn its easy to get lost. I'm using several bits from several workflows & just slowly putting together a workflow of my own. And yes, PixelMath is a whole world of 'What on earth.......' 🤣

@RobST Stick at it mate, you'll get there in the end. I spend 95% of my AP time banging my head against the garden wall 🤣

I wasnt happy at all with the image I posted above last night & after a bit of research & coming across a great tutorial by Cuiv, The Lazy Geek on YouTube using NormalizeScaleGradient in PI to choose a best reference frame I had another crack at it working into the very early hours of this morning 😒. I ended up loosing over 7hrs of data but realised that it was garbage so was never going to be any good in the stack. I also used deconvolution to make the stars slightly better, this has resulted in some ringing if you go pixel peeping even though I adjusted parameters for it. I'm much, much happier with this & kept it in its normal colours rather than the Hubble Palette. As usual a JPEG doesn't do it justice. Steve

I wasnt going to bother processing this one (NGC6888) as i've been struggling with focus, the stars aren't great & PA looks slightly out. I decided to get more practise in with PI which i'm loving & its still a maybe passable image. I'm using the L-eXtreme filter at the moment & have seen a couple of tips on focus with this filter, upping gain etc so i'll have another crack this evening if the forecasted clear couple of hours emerges later. Ive still a very long way to go but loving the journey so far despite the many frustrations. 207x 180sec 30x Darks 30x Flats 200x Bias Calibrated & Processed in PI Bortle 4 SQ 21.66 Using equipment as per my signature Thanks for looking Steve

I would also say OSC, this at least hopefully gives you time to get a full image together if the clouds roll in, imagine collecting some really good R & G data, then the cloud rolls in, you get back to London & can never finish it off. Steve

If he lives in London & he's imaging in Australia this could be an issue 😏

Thanks. I really enjoyed the free trial & spent a lot of time with YouTube tutorials so I can now perform the basics. I'm looking forward to using it & I think it'll be an ongoing learning experience. Steve

@newbie alert After finishing my PixInsight 45 day free trial & this afternoon purchasing the full license of PI, I can well imagine how expensive it would be 😬

Aged around 8yr old. I grew up on a farm in the Yorkshire Dales (very dark skies back then in the late 70's but as the surrounding towns have grown in size & horrible LP those jet black skies are sadly not as jet black) & used to sit in the bottom fields on clear nights gazing up & listening to War of the Worlds on my 'ghetto blaster' 😂 My best mate got a 75mm Tasco Refractor a year or so later & we were both hooked. We then went to Jodrell Bank for my 16th birthday & its pretty much continued ever since apart from a few breaks here & there thanks to life generally getting in the way. It was only when I joined this forum back in 2012 that I bought my first scope & to cut a long story short, I slowly upgraded scope sizes until eventually turning to the dark side about year ago after moving to a tiny village with no street lights at the foot of the Northern Pennines. I've been skint but very happy ever since 😃 Steve

Thank you, it was much better than I had expected my first image to be, it took hours of banging my head against a wall trying to learn the basics of PI but i'm glad that I persevered. I do understand the ASIair isnt a cheap option considering NINA is free & as i'd mentioned previously, I did have a look at NINA to start with but there was so much to already learn that trying to also get my head round NINA would have resulted in a broken brain 😬. Its taken me a year of solid saving (Plus many hours of overtime) & buying AP gear bit by bit to get to where I am now. Your also right about the camera, although it does support several Canon & Nikon models. The Pro version is discontinued now though as the new ASIair Plus comes out in November & i'd assume that more non ZWO related cameras will also become compatible over time. Steve