tooth_dr

@alan potts have you selected the correct threshold in DS to register an appropriate number of stars?

2 hours ago, Marvin Jenkins said:

Lovely natural picture. Just the kind of thing I have been having trouble with. Where is the location, looks amazing.

Marv

Hi Marv.  I picked up several satellites, a plane and a meteor in the shots I took.  I think that's prob a satellite.  The image was taken in Northern Ireland.

This is one I took on the weekend just past.

Nikon D800E, Tokina 28-70mm lens at 28mm, 30s exposures, mosaic of 4.

Thanks for looking

Adam

Damn that’s a hot chilli pepper! Great capture. 

So... things have progressed more rapidly than I could have anticipated 🥳

A 2.2m dome is due to be delivered this week.

Please be patient if i ask some stupid questions 😎

Outstanding!!

I noticed this in your image! What do you think could have caused that?

Nice one Neil. A new one to me too. 

1 hour ago, mercandrea said:

@tooth_dr I do go to the  IAA meetings and judging by your moniker you're the same Adam that I'll have a good oul yarn with in the back row, small world!

Lol I did think it was you, just wanted to check 😂

That’s class you bought an EQ6-R, have you got it out much yet?

Hi @mercandrea Mark!

Welcome to SGL! What part of Co Antrim are you from? Do you attend the IAA meetings?

Congrats on purchasing a fantastic mount.  

CS

Adam  

14 minutes ago, alan potts said:

Really nice image Adam so detailed. Do you ever wonder after 40 hours exposure what 60 hours looks like, asks he who did 2 hrs 30 mins last night and thought that was a lot.

Alan

Thanks Alan.  I would contemplate hitting another night of Oiii and Sii, perhaps in 900s subs.  Bear in mind, on a good clear night, I can get a total of 16+ hours.

12 minutes ago, Xiga said:

Yeah the Light Pollution Removal tool in APP is the one to use on each, so you're good there. 

This is a Deep data set. Could be worth posting the raw data and see what some of the SGL gurus can come up with. Then you could zero in on the specifics of what they did. 

I’ll upload the data later. I’m downloading Starnet now.  Cheers. 👍🏼

Thanks for the comments everyone.  Thanks @vlaiv for that comprehenive overview

Just now, Xiga said:

Looks amazing Adam. Very rich in detail and colour, top stuff 👌

Are you doing gradient reduction on all 3 stacks prior to combining? It's crucial that you do. Vlaiv is also bang on about the background levels. After stretching all 3 channels, just pick an area of no nebulosity and if needs be bring in the black point to make sure the background level of that area is the same in all 3. 

Seeing as you already have Annie's Actions in PS, you should just use the 'Hubble Palette Creation' action to combine the channels. It does a lot more than just assign the channels to RGB.

Finally, I strongly recommend looking into Starnett++ for star removal. It does take about 20 mins per channel, but the results are FAR superior to the AA action, and with hardly any cleanup needed afterwards. 

Congrats on an already cracking image! 

Cheers Ciaran.  I'm going to go back to the start with this one, it looks way over worked now that I've looked at it again.

I spent time doing light pollution removal tool in APT, to remove any gradients. Is that sufficient?  Plus I never thought of using the hubble palette creation tool - it's on NCs tools too i think d'uh.

Starnett++ isnt one I've heard of.  I will get that on the case later.

I think there is a lot more to get from this image, I hope I can get there !

Regards

Adam.

Nice job Francis. Too low for me, you’ve done very well. I like the last version. 

Hi Wouter

I knew when I saw the thumbnail above that this was going to be good, but boy oh boy the full res image is truly staggering.  The detail in the thick lines running across, and in the crater floors!  WOW> 

I'm really really lucky to be involved in the new dark skies programme that is currently underway in Northern Ireland.  The sites in question are about 15 minutes drive from my house, and offer beautiful views.  I took a spin up on Friday night, to one of the sites, the less dark one.  I had intended to do both, but I only ended up doing one of them for one reason or another (hardware issues)

I took this one of the MW rising over the stone circles.  Nikon D800E, 30s exposures, 28-70mm Tokina lens at 28mm stopped down to F4 (I think).  A few stacked together vertically using ICE.  This type of imaging is way outside my skill set, and I'm never happy with the results I get compared to the shots I see online.

Thanks for looking

Adam.

Beautiful image from a beautiful place. 

You have a real talent, nothing short of amazing.  A set of these would make for a beautiful art exhibit.

I scrapped all the Oiii and Sii data I previously took during a full moon (about 15 hours worth) and retook it all when the moon was a bit smaller at 76%.  Ha was taken during 98% and 67% moon.  All the lights were taken on the following nights: 12th, 19th and 20th September 2019.

Integration times, all in 600s subs unbinned:

Ha = 28.33 hours

Oiii= = 5.67 hours

Sii = 5.67 hours

The Ha data is really nice, and unsurprisingly the Oiii and Sii is not as strong (or nice).

I'm missing that (vital) step in my processing routine of getting the Sii and Oiii properly stretched to match the Ha, before combining.  I dont really know how to deal with the weaker data properly.  Any pointers would be appreciated.

What I do currently:

All the data is loaded into APP into separate channels/sessions.

The data is stacked and registered against the best Ha sub

This produces individual stacks of Ha, Sii and Oiii that are all registered

Each channel is processed with DPP in APP and then saved as a 16bit TIFF

Each is opened in PS

Stars removed with AA and any remnants removed and tidied up

I then open a blank RGB document in PS

I paste Ha into Green, Sii into Red and Oiii into Blue

Adjust the selective colour settings to get 'Hubble palette'

Adjust levels, curves, saturation until looks ok

All the Ha Sii Oiii data is then combined together in a single 'super' stack in APP using quality weighted algorithm to create a 'luminance'

That luminance layer is adjusted using levels, curves, and NC tools such as local contrast enhancement and deep space noise reduction (using masks to apply as required)

The luminance is pasted onto the above colour layer, and incrementally added using gaussian blur

Cropped and saved.

Here it is anyway   I haven't intended on any more exposure time for this one, but will consider it, if the expert opinion dictates otherwise!

CS

Adam

Just wow. 

Cant wait to get a look at this later  cheers. 

2 hours ago, Adam J said:

They are far enough out, but apart from that my experience is that baader filters are better quality. Plate solving is not a perfect solution in my experience.  I don't know of anyone who mixes and matches filter brands with narrow band. 

Can I ask how many Optolong filters you used? Have you used them side by side with Baaders to know ‘they are far enough out’ and they are not as good?

I mix and match filters all the time. I take images with Baader Sii and mix with Optolong Oiii (or vice versa) and then combine in Ha from both brands.  Maybe my images are all crap? I don’t know.

I recently lent my Optolong oiii to a forum member, turned out he found it was better at controlling halos than his Baader Oiii.  Side by side my Ha certainly looks more contrasty with Optolong over Baader.  

Plate solving - Any filter gets me to within 1 pixel if I so choose (I actually chose within 12 pixels). It just simply works, year old image solved accurately last night.

Apologies to the OP for clogging up the thread.  You’ll get mixed views on everything 😆

Would you mind posting the unprocessed fits? Id like to try processing the top one if that’s ok!

2 hours ago, carastro said:

You live in a hot location, so you won;t be able to use some of the lower temperatures that we use here in the UK.  I use -15 with an Atik camera, but I know a lot of people go much lower than this.

As regards warming up, this is to avoid thermal shock.  I tend to switch off once my camera gets a few degrees above Zero as I feel it's not suddenly going from freezing cold to warm.  Not had a problem so far.

RE: APT, I stopped using that for CCD imaging some years ago as I didn't feel I could trust the temperature to be reliable as the Exif reads out  that were coming through did not match the temperature I had selected and varied from one image to another.  It may well be that IVO has made improvements to this since I last tried it, so have been using Artemis ever since which I love.  I still have a licence for APT, and there are many more bells and whistles to that, so what are other people's opinions on the reliability of the temperature in APT?

Carole 

No issues here with apt, running 2 x CCDs and the temp is always on the money.

Re warming. I go to 5 deg C and they turn off. Similar to you. No issues noted. I just wouldn’t want to go from -20 and turn off.

I was imaging at -15 but realistically-20 is never an issue (apart to not being able to take calibration data during the day of some summer days.)  But that’s 99.9% not an issue 

1 hour ago, Adam J said:

Get a baader to match, its often possible to identify nebuloucity in a single Ha sub and frame a target, however OIII is vastly weaker and you will often not see any in a single sub only a stack. As such you will want to focus on OIII and then switch to Ha to locate the target. Once framed you switch back to OIII....now the issue is that if you purchase a filter from someone other than baader you will have little hope of them being parafocal and so you will not be able to do what i just described.

With plate solving that is largely/wholly irrelevant.  You tend to shoot with Ha first and then do oiii after (that’s how I do it I’m sure that makes most sense. And then use that ha as you reference frame. How far out do you think Optolong filters are from the Baader ones in terms of focal disparity? 

3 minutes ago, Fieldsy said:

Hi all looking for a reasonable priced oiii filter 1.25 for imaging I have all baader rgb and Ha filter atm but I'm not precious on that although all looking similar 😍 .

Thanks Si

Optolong oiii will be good value  I have a Baader and an Optolong oiii filter and they perform equally well. 

I have the full set of Baader NB and RGB and they arent parfocal in my scope so going for a complete set of the same filters isnt a big benefit imo unless you have a well corrected scope.