Xiga

Thanks for clarifying Olly. I was trying to visualise this in my head, but had forgotten about the Lighten blend mode. It makes perfect sense now, thanks! That looks splendid now Sir. Mine's an IPA thanks 😋 🤣 Once you see it, it's hard to unsee! It really does resemble a face with a closed eyelid. And is that a nightcap he/she is wearing? 😄

Richard, can you elaborate on this a little please? So you layer on the 'with stars' image in blend mode lighten on top of the starless one. This adds back the stars at their original size. So do you do an adjustment to this layer as well? Such as a downwards Curve adjustment to reduce their size, or something else? And then do you flatten (or do a Stamp Visible, same thing) and then layer this back on top of the 'with stars' image, and then reduce the opacity gradually until any dark halos around the stars start to disappear. Is that the general idea? So far I have very limited experience in doing this myself, but up to now I've only ever added the stars back simply in a Blend Mode Lighten layer. It sounds like you do it in 2 stages. Is that right?

Very nice Olly. I love this area of the sky. Probably because i have trees stopping me from capturing it from home (we always want what we can't have, right? 😋 ) ps - Don't know if it's just my monitor, but is the sky background a little on the blue side?

Thanks Richard 👍 This was my first NB image in some time, and i really should have heeded the sage advice i i once heard you mention.......rather than post late at night, leave it to the next day before finalising and posting. It's amazing how often you clearly see things you couldn't the night before!

Wow, talk about an optics test! Never mind the conditions, this still looks great in my eyes. The sheer number of stars is remarkable. When viewed at 100%, virtually every single one is resolved perfectly. The Tak & 2600 is looking like a nice combo Richard! ps - Maybe it's my SW80ED eyes talking, but i'm not seeing any issue in the corners. And in fact, i'm not completely sure I want to have it pointed out to me, lol. In this hobby, ignorance (if not quite bliss) is certainly easier on the wallet! 😄

Stunning image Alex. I've long wanted to do a mega mosaic of this area myself. I'd be chuffed with something half as good as this. Congrats!

Had a bit of a re-think and decided this was too garish, plus i think i processed the Ha Lum layer too aggressively, so i had another go and dialed back the contrast and colour a fair bit, and re-worked the Ha to tease out some more fine detail. Too tired to add in the Sii tonight. Will hopefully get to that in the next couple of days. It feels good to be doing NB again. My last NB data was from Nov 2018! 🤦‍♂️

As luck would have it, the skies unexpectedly cleared tonight, so i am currently in the process of shooting 5 x 1200s of Sii subs. This is the Sii filter's first light, so i'm looking forward to re-processing this with the full Hubble Palette. In the meantime, i thought i'd share a gif showing just how much i had to stretch the Oiii to bring it to the fore in the image above. I first took a basic DDP stretch and removed the stars with Starnett, then ran Topaz Denoise AI, and then finally did some Curve adjustments. Even though the data had been through the ringer, i was surprised just how much detail was left over. I only used it for creating the colour map, none of it went into the Lum. I think when i come to do a full re-process, i will try and include a small amount of the Oiii and Sii with the Ha when creating the master Lum layer.

Thanks! Yes I can just about make them out. I'm hoping to capture a lot more (and better quality) subs of this come Autumn time. Will be interesting to see how resolved they will be at just 2.2" but with more exposure time.

Thanks Adam! I have been trialling the Topaz Denoise AI plugin. I need to evaluate it some more, but early indications are very promising. I used it on this and it did an amazing job of cleaning up the noise without creating the usual smeared look that traditional NR routines do. I'm still working out how best to use it, so more work needed. I definitely recommend downloading the 30 day free trial. I'll post up a rough workflow for what i did later tonight. I'll also show how the Oiii evolved from Raw to Processed.

Thanks Steven. It's funny you should say that, as i actually wasn't really that happy with the stars. I think i may have accidentally sharpened them somewhere along the way. The good thing about this target though, is that it is most often portrayed Oiii-heavy, so you can dial the Ha way down, which reduces your star sizes. But you will need to remove the stars from the Oiii in order to stretch it sufficiently. I really need to look into trying Deconvolution now that i'm doing Mono. I'm going to give the versions in Siril and Images Plus a whirl at some point.

Thanks Richard. I wanted to go for the electric blue that you often see with this target, which meant having to dial back the Ha a lot, whilst also stretching the Oiii quite hard before combining them. Normally I wouldn't have bothered processing such a small amount of data, but there's a very real possibility we might lose Nautical Dark now before the next clear night. I'm excited to try a proper deep stack on this now come the Autumn.

Hi guys More Mono testing 😀 I was able to nab a small amount of Oiii last week to add to the small amount of Ha i'd already captured the week before. I should be getting my very own Atik383l+ in the very near future (yay!), but for now i am still exploring the virtues of Mono imaging using the Qhy9 that Adam @tooth_dr kindly lent me. I had balance and guiding issues again this time, despite the fact id' spent a lot of time on trying to get it right. I think after 7 years it may finally be time to get the mount serviced. It has quite a lot of stiction, in both Ra and Dec, which is making getting balance an exercise in pot-luck, so i think a trip to DarkFrame for a Hypertune may be on the cards soon. After losing half the (already short) Nautical Dark that was available, i finally got the guiding working just in time to get 5 subs, all 20 mins long each. The last sub was actually shot in Civil Dark! 😬 So in total this is just 100 mins Ha and 100 mins Oiii using 20 min subs (all 2" Baader filters) using a SW 80ED. Stacked in APP and processed in PS with Starnet used for star removal. Combined as OHO due to the lack of any Sii. I tend to like my NB fairly colourful, so this may on the 'over-processed' side of things, especially due to the low amount of data. I'm still learning the ropes of mono imaging so always interested in hearing feedback. CS and stay safe folks.

I quite like that Ian. Perhaps v1 stars with full beans Whale? 😅 Or just tone down the reds a bit? Maybe I just like beans too much...lol

Thanks Adam ,and thanks again for the loan of the camera! Yeah I was surprised too at just how little the ADU went up, but in the end I just trusted my eyes as I could see a noticeable improvement. I would definitely try longer subs Adam. With CCD's, you generally want fewer longer subs rather than more shorter ones. So in this case, 1 x 20 mins should be better than 2 x 10 mins as you only get one hit of Read Noise instead of 2 (the RN is significant with these cameras). Now, if you were able to sufficiently bury the RN in each sub, then it wouldn't matter so much, but by my calculations I would need a Mean ADU of about 2400 in order to bury the RN by a factor of 10, whereas at ~1300 (with 20 min subs) I am only managing a factor of just over 3, which is down at the minimum end of the scale. So I think with this setup I am just aperture-limited with the 80mm scope when doing NB. Not a show-stopper that's for sure, it's still possible to get an image with good SNR so it wouldn't put me off the 8300 sensor at all. You should have no problem getting a much higher ADU Adam when you get your Tak 180 up and running. I picked up an Sii filter last year. Still yet to use it! lol

Thanks Michael Thanks Ian

Lately I've been thinking of picking up an 8300 camera on the 2nd hand market, and recently @tooth_dr was very kind to offer me the loan of one of his own, a Qhy9, and after a brief dry run a couple of weeks ago during a near-full moon just to figure out how to actually use it, i finally managed to get out and capture some actual data with it. This was shot on May 14 with no Moon, but also no Astro Dark, just Astronomical Twilight. And in fact, the last sub was even shot in Nautical Twilight. In truth, it was mostly a frustrating night, as i was fighting mount & guiding issues for most of it. Even though i had used the camera the week before without issue, on this occasion Phd2 just wouldn't calibrate properly for me. In the end, after wasting over 2 hrs of what was already going to be a short night, i finally worked out it was due to Dec imbalance, as i was now too camera-heavy (even though it had worked ok previously). So in true MacGuyver form i stuck a kitchen utensil to the front of the ota with some duct tape 😂 and all of a sudden it calibrated fine! Anyways, even after that the guiding was still awful, ~1.1" compared to the usual 0.8"ish. Thankfully i got away with it due to the imaging scale being 2.2". I'm still not sure what was going on exactly (the HEQ5-Pro was blinking erratically at one point, so much so I unplugged it and started over again, and it seemed to behave better after that). I'm putting the crap guiding down to seeing. At least i hope that's all it was! Also, i was late in setting up, and because i was in a hurry, i accidentally put the Ha filter in instead of the Oiii one. With no moon about, this was supposed to be an Oiii night! 🙄 Anyways, aside from all that, i am very impressed with the Qhy9. This is my first time using a mono camera, and boy what a difference it makes. I went back and looked at some of my old Ha data shot with the D5300, and the difference when comparing subs of the same length was remarkeable (albeit unsurprising - stating the obvious i know). I was still able to turn out decent NB images with the D5300, but jeez the Qhy9 data is just amazing by comparison. Capturing and processing this was a joy. It was nice only having to deal with a handful of subs for a change, instead of the usual hundreds that comes with CMOS (that might be changing now though with the newer CMOS cameras that are 16bit). I started out with a 10min sub, but the Mean ADU looked low in SGP, so i upped it to 15 mins. Again, i thought it was still on the low side, so i finally upped it again to 20 mins. I was surprised at how little the Mean ADU increased from 10 mins to 20 mins, but even just visually i could see the 20 min subs looked a lot better so i kept it at that. If i had a better mount, and more reliable skies, i wouldn't hesitate to increase the subs even further tbh. So in the end this is just 6 subs and 100 mins in total, made up of 1 x 600s, 2 x 900s, and 3 x 1200s of Ha (2" Baader 7nm) and a SW 80ED. Stacked in APP and processed in PS. The only processing done was a DDP stretch in APP, star removal using Starnet++, Topaz Denoise AI followed by some Curve adjustments in PS. Hopefully i'll get a chance to nab some Oiii, and maybe even some Sii, before the Astronomical Twilight goes. But if not, i'll still have a go. Us Northern folk don't have many other options at this time of year! Clear skies, and stay safe all.

That's amazing Geoff. Very well processed i must say, and i don't think it's been pushed too far at all. You've really made the most of the C14's aperture here. The cluster extends really far due to all the fainter outer stars, and crucially, without having to over-stretch the data to show them (as most of us have to resort to) so bravo!

More than happy to help Adam. Processing should be fun, so i'm glad to hear you're enjoying it again 😀

Adam, that's a massive improvement from the original. I'd be very proud of that! Ok, the colour data will never be perfect, as your animated gif perfectly shows, but it doesn't in any way detract from what is clearly a great image.

Annie has another great action, 'Ha-Oiii BiColor Process'. It creates a very nice natural colour scheme. I would usually run both and then process both versions to completion, just to see which i prefer.

Looking good Adam! 👍 Nice to see the resolution of the big scope on the wall. That Mesu was definitely a good investment! What method did you use to combine the Ha and Oiii? I've found that sometimes Annie's 'Hubble Palette Creation' Action in PS can create a nice approximation of an SHO image if you first create a synthesized Sii by using a certain % of the Ha and Oiii (using Image->Adjustments->Channel Mixer). But a traditional Bi-Colour version usually looks good too, and more natural, such as what you have done here. 👏

Thanks Mick! 👍

Thanks mate. I forgot too, then realised nearly a week had passed and i'd not even responded to my own thread 🤣. There's not enough hrs in the day sometimes...I need to catch up on the forums, i'll have to go find your NGC 7000. You've inspired me to keep going, despite the lack of darkness. I have had a couple of outings with the Qhy9m (thanks again for the loan!). I got a few Ha subs of the Pelican Nebula last week, i'll put up a thread on it in a mo.

This is good, very good in fact! I've had a go at this myself (with all the wrong equipment, i won't share it, lol) so i can speak from experience. I prefer the 1st version, and i wouldn't mind seeing the racier version either. Colour saturation is always a personal thing, but for me i find this target to be one that lends itself well to a higher level of saturation.