Xiga

Hi David I owned the the Qhy163c for just under a year, but due to life getting in the way I only produced 1 broadband image, plus this one, with it before i sold it on. Maybe it was my skies (i was shooting from our new house, which has higher LP, as opposed to the old family home which has better skies, i dunno) but i didn't find the 163c to be that much of a leap over the D5300. Part of that is down to just how good the D5300 is. It's modded and has very low noise compared to the Canons, so it pushes well above it's weight. I absolutely love it and i'll never sell it. I only picked up the 163c on a whim, as it was available at a good price, but i wasn't overly impressed with the noise profile. Every camera is different though, and a lot depends on your skies too, so don't be put off by my experience at all. Some imagers get incredible results with OSC cameras. Richard Sweeney (who i think is in Cork?) is one obvious example. HTH.

Looking good Adam 👍 Crazy to think this is just 20 mins per pane, taken in bright skies. Just imagine what you'll be able to do with this come next month and the return of Astro Dark! 😀

I just checked out your website too Brendan. Very impressive may I say. I was especially drawn to your FSQ130 Seagull nebula image, which is spectacular by the way. It's an object i've always wanted to shoot (along with Rho Ophiuchi) but alas won't be happening anytime soon due to altitude and horizon views. Nice work! 👍

Hi mate Thanks for sharing! The data is good, very good in fact. I couldn't resist having a pop myself. My rough workflow (if i can remember fully, i had a few craft beers to keep me hydrated throughout 😋 ) was as follows: 1. Gradient reduction on the Oiii (using APP). I didn't bother doing it on the Ha. If there is a gradient in the Ha, i couldn't see it. 2. DDP Stretch and crop both stacks. 3. Topaz DeNoise AI ran on both stacks. Some cleanup in PS using the Spot Healing Brush. 4. Run starnet on both the DeNoised Ha and Oiii. Then stretch the Oiii a bit further. 5. Add Ha to Red, Oiii to Blue, then run Carboni's 'Synthesize Green Channel' action, all in PS. This formed the basis for the nebula itself. From here on it's too hard to list exactly what i did (i blame the 8% IPA, lol). It was basically a combination of using the Denoised Ha image as Luminance for the stars, along with a HOO version used for star colour only, plus some cosmetic correction on some of the stars on the inside of the nebula. I also used a lesser-stretched Ha layer as Luminance for some of the really big stars, and then at the very end i did a pass of star reduction in Images Plus. It was a challenging image to process, but lots of fun too, so thanks again for sharing it.

Thanks mate. Tbh i was just messing around, testing out the DeNoise AI program, and I was so surprised at what it was able to do with such rubbish data that i thought i'd share the result in case others might also want to give it a test run. Cheers! Looking forward to see how you get on with yours!

Cheers Adam. I think you're getting your Topaz Denoise programs mixed up (not your fault, they need to come up with more original names!). It sounds like you are referring to their standard DeNoise program, whereas i used Topaz DeNoise AI, which uses a machine-learning algorithm to correct for the noise. I recommend giving it a go for NB. I used it on my recent Pelican Nebula image, which only had 100 mins of Ha as Luminance, and it cleaned up the noisy dark areas amazingly well. With the right settings, it doesn't seem to cause the same smeared look that every other NR routine gives. It also has a sharpen slider, which is quite good too. One quick piece of advice though, make sure to crop your edges off first before running it, as the artefacts interfere with the algorithm and it can cause strange effects in some places.

Thanks mate. In a week's time we will have 2 hrs of Astronomical Twilight up here, which is useable, especially for NB. We just need some clear skies (what are those again?!). I use 2" mounted Baader filters. I never had any halos with my Oiii filter when i used it with my D5300, but i've started to notice them now i've made the jump to mono. I suspect the distance from the sensor is playing a part, but i need to do some testing to confirm that. Here is what the raw Ha and Oii stacks looked like, with nothing but a stretch. The Oiii one is so bad it belongs in the bin, which is exactly where i would have put it, where it not for the fact it may be years before i get another chance to shoot this target again.

Thanks Adrian. I'm not sure how useful it will prove to be on Broadband data, but when it comes to NB (especially so with low amounts of it) it seems to work wonders. It has a fully functional free 30 day trial, so nothing to lose giving it a shot.

With no imaging possible at the moment (the weather has been awful lately, nevermind the lack of Astro Dark), i thought it would be fun to re-visit this data set and have another go at it, as i couldn't achieve anything even approaching decent with it this time last year. Long story short, this is easily the worst data set i've ever had to work with, and i'm used to not having much even at the best of times. This is 80 mins in total, consisting of 12 x 300s of Ha, and 4 x 300s of Oiii, shot with an OSC camera, under terrible conditions (bright sky and intermittent clouds). The Oiii subs were especially bad, but at least it allowed me to get a bit of blue towards the centre. SW 80ED; HEQ5-Pro, Qhy163c I've been playing around with Topaz DeNoise AI in PS lately, and have been impressed with what it can do in certain circumstances, so i thought this data set might make for a good torture test. Both versions below are crops, the first just to crop off some of the noisy sky background that didn't have any nebulosity, and the second a tighter 1:1 crop to show the pillars in the vertical position. I've also linked to the original version from last year as well 😳 CS!

Hi Richard Another option worth considering is the IDAS-NBX. It won't be out until August, but it looks very promising. 10nm bandpass at both Ha and Oiii, but importantly they are quoted as working as far down as F2. https://digiborg.wordpress.com/

Hi guys I decided to make one final adjustment to this, before finally putting it to bed. The dark dust lanes, although not clipped anywhere, were indeed still very dark in places. There was some faint dust hiding in the shadows, so i decided to bring them up in this final version. I think it looks a bit more natural now, so i'm finally calling this one done! 🤪

Yep i totally agree Martin. The reason i wasn't sure which one i preferred was purely down to aesthetics, which of course is subjective. I think i just needed to step away for a few days in order to see things more clearly. Luckily, work and family life makes that all too easy, lol. Your point about people liking overly saturated images is absolutely true. Looking back over my AB images, the ones that were the most popular were the ones that i now definitely think were over-processed!

Wise words indeed Brendan. Moderation is indeed key. I've only just looked at these again for the first time since the weekend, and i'm now comfortable with the new version's lower sharpening & contrast. Thanks for the feedback and sage advice

Really great M101 Ian! If i didn't already know it i would have guessed this was 2 or 3 times the integration. For me the synthetic Lum version has added a lot. The sharpening looks spot on. 👍

I had a bit of feedback that the Pelican's beak was over-sharpened, and (if i'm being honest) this only confirmed what i think i already knew deep-down. Luckily i always make a point of saving my images with lots of layers in PS, so i was able to revert back to before i went a bit overboard on the sharpness & contrast. So for this version i kept the same colour but went the complete opposite way in terms of the Luminosity and applied hardly any sharpening and contrast adjustments. I've come to realise i may be something of a contrast junky 🤪 (mid-year's resolution to rectify that) so part of me still feels like this is lacking a bit of punch, but then again, there are elements i prefer. I think the stars inside the nebulosity look better for instance. Interested to hear what the good SGL folk think. Better? Worse?

Simply breathtaking. This should come with a health warning. You could get lost in this for hours!

Looks good Adam 👍 Think you were right to dial back the contrast. After 6 or so craft beers I think I went a bit overboard last night 🤪

🤣 The problem with that Adam is i would end up trying to crank the slider to 150% I actually didn't do any NR on the jpg at all. I think what you are seeing is just the noise being more hidden due to the lower overall brightness. In fact, about 75% of the impact came from just a simple s curve adjustment. This brought down the brightness in the lower-left of the image, and allowed the wall to stand out more. After that it was just a few tweaks - a touch of the clarity slider in camera raw, one of Annie's Actions to reduce star bloat, some selective colour adjustments to add back in more green, some de-saturation (to all colours except green, as there wasn't much to begin with), and finally a bit of Topaz Detail in just the wall itself.

I also couldn't resist it either Adam. If i get banned too at least myself and Brendan can keep each other company 😋 My style is definitely closer to the 'over-processed' end of the scale though 😬

Really nice Adam, great work! It has a subtlety to it, something i should try and aim for myself (i definitely allow myself to get carried away all to easily!). I wouldn't say it's too soft. Perhaps in places it could take a tad more contrast maybe? On removing the stars, one added bonus of not removing them (as you have done here) is that you end up with some star colour. I really like the star colours you've got here, if it were me i would much prefer these over just plain white ones. But if you do use Starnet and end up with white stars, you can always add the colour later. Just do another blend as you have done here, and run it through Starnet as well. Then layer the 2 in PS and set the Blend Mode to Difference or Subtract. This will leave you with just the stars, which you can then save and use as a mask later, to only allow through the colour of the stars.

Thanks Mars. Thanks Brendan Cheers Mark Thanks Martin. It was very tempting to up the brightness. I had to restrain myself from doing so right at the end. Hopefully I made the right call.

Thanks Adam. I totally agree on it adding depth. Although some of it is also probably just down to me taking a more considered, and less bright, approach to processing this time. I have a simple TS-Optics filter drawer attached directly to the camera, which is quick to use and much lighter than a filter wheel. For NB work though i will probably only be doing 1 filter per night (perhaps, on occasion, two in the long winter nights) so filter changing won't be much of an issue, so if mounting them at the front of the FF shows an improvement then i will probably just stick with that going forward and replace the filter drawer with a simple spacer. Another thought i've had, is to try putting the IDAS-D1 at the front of the FF and keep the NB filters in the filter drawer. I suspect that the IDAS has superior coatings to the Baaders, which might cut down on the Halos. If so, then i could retain the ability to swap out the NB filters easily. Although in my case the D1 filter line cuts off before the Sii line, so this would only work with Oiii. If it did work though, i'd probably sell the D1 and get a P2 instead. I don't think losing a few percent of lightpass from stacking filters would make that much of a difference either. ps - The Atik383l+ arrived this week (woop-woop!). Been too busy with work to even plug it in yet, lol, hoping to to that this weekend. So i need to get you your Qhy9 back soon. Thanks again for the lend, i may never have made the jump without it! 🙏

For reference, here was the Ha-Oii Bi-Colour version i had done the week before:

I finally got around to adding in some Sii to the Bi-Colour version i had previously processed last week. As it turned out, this was actually First Light for the 2" Baader Sii filter i bought last year. Now that i am using a mono camera, i am suddenly noticing halos around bright stars with the Oiii filter, and also the Sii filter. I used a Qhy9 for this image, whereas previously i was just using a DSLR (Nikon D5300), but halos were never a problem. When i used the D5300, i mounted the filters at the front of the FF, so they were always a good distance from the sensor. Now with the mono camera, they are as close as can be, so i am wondering if it is the distance that is the main culprit rather than the filters, or could it simply be a DSLR vs Mono camera issue? I hope to do a few Summer night tests comparing results with the Oiii filter in both positions with the mono camera to get to the bottom of it. Having previously done quite a lot of Bi-Colour imaging (albeit with a DSLR), i was interested on how much of an impact adding some Sii would make. Once i realised i needed to dial back the Oiii stretch i had used in the Bi-Colour image, and use a more evenly-balanced stretch for all 3 channels, i then started to see the impact more clearly. I consciously decided to leave some green and magenta in the image, to add depth and give the eye more to explore. Not everyone's cup of tea i know! 😄 All in, this is 100 mins in all 3 channels, so 5 hrs in total using 20 mins subs with a SW80ED on a HEQ5-Pro. Stacked in APP and processed in PS. Starnet++ was used for star removal early on in the process. Then much later on, Images Plus was used for a bit of star reduction. I've been processing this for the last 2 nights, and have spent far too long looking at it. So if you feel i have lost the plot somewhere along the way please do tell me, as i may have gone blind to it! CS and stay safe folks.

Very nice Carole! If you aren't sure how to get Starnet++ working, have a look at post #13 here: