geordie85

I've recently been playing with the trial of APP by using it to combine separate data sets and i must say that I'm quite impressed. On Friday I set up  my star71 and QHY183C beside my FLT98 and QHY183M and shot just shy of 3 hours on C19 through each setup, so almost 6 hours of data in total. 

Shot under bortle 6 skies. Stacked in AA6, aligned in AAP and processed in photoshop.

30 minutes ago, Rodd said:

Thanks Geordie.  If I am not mistaken, I think I read somewhere that the tallest pillar is several light years long.  If that is true--it would stretch all the way to Alpha Centauri....that's amazing.  I can't remember if it was that long or a couple light years.  Either way.....HUGE

Rodd

Yeah, I think I read somewhere that the little nipples you see in the hubble image are the size of our solar system. 

Truely immense 

Very nice. It's amazing that they appear so small, yet they're truly massive and dwarf our entire solar system. 

I prefer the first one. The 2nd seems to be clipped, but that may just be my phone screen

A lovely image, seems to be lacking colour though. 

Do you have any other equipment? Tracking mount? Telescope? Lens's? 

Can you post it as a jpeg/ PNG file to save downloading please

On 25/07/2019 at 07:12, ollypenrice said:

More data would help considerably in my view. Did you dither guide? This would also help.

When I feel the need to process my background sky I try to avoid ready made noise reduction routines because they all work by blurring, meaning pixel to pixel communication. This gives the oily 'vaseline on the lens' look. Instead, in Photoshop, I prefer to zoom in to pixel scale to see what is going on and then select 'families' of pixels for adjustment using the colour select tool. I try to allow each pixel to retain some of its abnormality so that the sky still looks natural. In this case I lowered the colour saturation on most of the background pixels and then picked a middle-brightness background pixel and placed it on the graph in Curves. I then flattened the curve somewhat just above and below it. Even working on a JPEG screen grab this worked reasonably well. It's over-done here but it shows you the general principle. By using Photoshop layers you can choose how much of the modification to apply to the final image. If doing it for real I'd take more time to protect the stars.

Olly

 

That's an amazing result. 

Would you mind posting a few screen shots of the process please? I find it easier to learn things when I can see them. 

43 minutes ago, teoria_del_big_bang said:

Thanks for the advice. I eventually got round to doing it and Terry got right back to me and believes it could be due to my wheel beng a very early version that does not like 64 bit windows and has offered to reprogram it if I send the unit back.

Such great service, this is a second hand unit, well old.

Steve

Yes, mine was a 2nd hand unit aswell which I disclosed in my first email to him. Yet I still received a service as if I'd bought it new from them. 

Amazing service and I cannot praise him enough. 

4 minutes ago, LukeSkywatcher said:

Please please please buy more astro gear. Lots more. This heatwave is killing me. Not as hot here as last year, but it's not far off it.

That's what I keep telling the wife, but she's not having it

The postman kindly delivered this today. 

Yet another reprocess of this data. Due to poor weather, i have been unable to collect any more data.

All comments or tips welcome

You've managed to capture some beautiful detail. Well done 

Just cleared the houses here. Ran out to the local bowls club with my DSLR and tripod. Got a few nice images and several funny looks 

17 minutes ago, ollypenrice said:

In truth this is not the main reason for the luminance channel containing most of the detail. It seems like a reasonable explanation but debayering algorithms are very sophisticated (some are better than others) and they use ingenious ways of working out what, say, the missing red pixel would have recorded had it existed. Imagine the curved edge of a red nebula: a red filter in a mono camera will record that curve on every pixel when an OSC will only record it on one pixel in four. However, the debayering algorithm will reconstruct that curve as a red value on all pixels. This is not quite as good but it is very good indeed. RGB from a mono camera is shot on every pixel for every colour but it still doesn't compare with luminance.

No, the real reason the Luminance channel is powerful both for finding detail and for finding faint signal is that it passes all the light of the visible spectrum at once, which is to say about three times as much as gets through a colour filter. The LRGB system was invented, pure and simple, to save time. That's what it does. When you shoot L you are capturing vastly more light than through a colour filter so you get more signal. This will drag out the faint stuff and allow you to sharpen the details in the areas of strong signal.

Wim, I follow your reasoning but have read many times that OSC cameras are more susceptible to light pollution than mono. This from people who've tried it. I've only ever imaged at a dark site so I have no experience but this is the first time I've heard OSC praised as a light pollution buster.

Processing an OSC image using a synthetic lum in the way one would use a real lum is sound advice but I know from experience that there is no comparison in signal strength between OSC or RGB and genuine luminance. Theory might suggest that real lum might be 3x stronger than synthetic but I think it's more like 4x stronger in my data.

In a nutshell, Lum catches all the signal and RGB is used to distinguish between the colours. There is no need to waste photons by shooting only colour.

Olly

I learned something new today. 

The luminance channel is where the details lie as every pixel is registering every photon. 

If you imagine the bayer matrix is like a filter, red only let's in red light, green only let's in green light and blue only let's in blue light. So if a red photon hits the green filter, it is blocked from the sensor. 

I've just packed away due to clouds stopping play 

Thanks to Ian King joining forces with FLO, I managed to get a 1.25" 3nm Ha astrodon filter. 

But the postman signed for it, but still put that it was signed by me. I was at home so there was no need for this. A signed for letter or parcel should only be signed for by the recipient, indicating that it has been delivered safely and undamaged. 

The signature is only a squiggle. 

6 minutes ago, Gina said:

Light panel for taking Flats for astro imaging.

I have the same one

Where did you buy it from? 

Have you tried updating the driver's/ software? 

Apt will connect to the same settings as you previously used unless when you click connect, you hold the shift key down too. This will open the connectivity window.

When you select your camera, the properties tab will become available to press. This is where you change the gain settings. 

47 minutes ago, Starwiz said:

Lovely image!

What kit are you using?

This one is my next target, also in narrowband.  I had a go last night, but the wind kicked up causing havoc with the autoguiding.

Hope to try again tonight.

John

Thanks. 

I'm using a william optics flt 98 carbon fibre scope with a 0.8x Reducer/ Flattener. Qhy183m, astronomik 12nm ha, O111 and s11 filters in a starlight Xpress USB filter wheel all sat upon an neq6 mount. 

Good luck tonight 

1 hour ago, carastro said:

Looks great zoomed in which is the real test of an image.  

Carole 

Thanks Carole. 

I was hoping for more detail but since this is less than 3 hours of data I don't think that's going to happen. 

I'm hoping I can get more data before this disappears behind the neighbours house. 

Another reprocess

17 minutes ago, Gina said:

Sorry to pour cold water on your fantastics image but as I read the conditions, this was supposed to be a single exposure of 30s.  Or am I wrong?

My guess is maybe. The rules seem a bit vague on this as its only said that all entries must fit the theme "30 second exposures, unguided" which this image does. There's only 1 x 30 second Ha, 1 x 30 second O111 and 1 x 30 second S11 which are actually all uncalibrated. 

It was also asked in that thread if separate lrbg images could be entered as long as they're single 30 seconds subs, without response. So I took a chance. 

I guess it's up to the judges if this is allowed or will be disqualified. Either way it was fun