Tommohawk

Hi and welcome Steve. I'm assuming you have a Skywatcher 130PDS? I don't own one, though I have a number of Skywatcher newtonians and they all produce great results. I believe there is a thread here on SGL specific to the 130 PDS, though I think that's more about imaging. Have fun!

Looks fantastic - nice job!

Hi Carole - well TBH I thought your original was excellent, but I agree the star shapes are nicer in the new version. I've yet to post my Dark Shark effort from that chilly weekend! I need to have another go at it .....

Thanks for the kind comments and likes. Any thoughts on the Astropixel processor star reduction issue? Here's a crop of the dodgy star just to make it easier to see:

Hi all. This isn't the best by a long way, but a couple of interesting artefacts to discuss. I used AstroPixel Processor, and used the star reducer function - but whatever settings I tried a few stars have an odd faded centre. I've processed some of this out, but in this crop the star on the far right from the centre shows this defect - needs to be at 100% to see this really, which in my book doesn't amount to "Pixel peeping"! Also the bright star to the left of the centre of the Needle has a greeny/yellow colour at the lower left edge. I've noticed this previously with some images and in discussion with others, had put it down to sensor tilt. However, I notice that some of the green RAW images were ovalled, and some were much better than others. And also that a second run done after a lost guide star due to wind I think (no meridian flip) was better. So I wonder if this is really simply a guiding artefact? Thanks for looking! Any thought appreciated! This was done with HEQ5, 200PDS + CC, ASI1600MM @-20C, 60s Subs, about 75 each RG and B and a Superluminance of all the RGB + 45xLUM.

Afraid I don't know Affinity at all - but why not just give it a go with with DSS and see how it looks? Just to see how DSS handles it.

Looks lovely to me.... I've tried this target a couple of times and been disappointed with the results - I think it's a tough one. Re noise, doesnt seem too bad - not sure if you're cooled? Last time I imaged from Spain with an uncooled DSLR I could have BBQed some bangers on the sensor.

Thanks both and thanks for all the likes too. Doesn't come across in my initial comments, but I was pleasantly surprised at the final outcome!

Hi all! I got 3 nights on this although the moon was up a lot of the time - average 70% illuminated. It is certainly a beast to process and I had a lot of fun keeping the colours sensible - I used some masking for star colours and slight enhancement of the halo, but I don't like overdoing this. Otherwise it was just curves plus selective curves for colour and some noise reduction on the halo. I've seen lots of renditions of M94 and no 2 are the same it seems - so whether mine is accurate of not, I have no idea! Open to thoughts and criticisms as ever. Apart from being a bit of a blighter to process, the structure of M94 is rather odd - the outer ring is unusual and its origins seem unclear. Looking at it visually, it's tempting to infer that the halo represents the dark matter known to lurk around all galaxies. Except that M94 apparently has little or no dark matter which makes it a bit a galactic freak. Way above my pay grade, but lots of info on Wiki etc for anyone who's interested. Lashed out on Astropixel processor for another year. Fabulous kit, but painfully slow when using lots of subs a la CMOS - I had to process the RGB separately from the LUM and then register the two sets. No biggie, but detracts from the one of the key attractions for me with APP - ie bung it all in and let APP sort it out. Speaking with APP's (excellent) support people, it seems speed is a known issue and its being worked on. BTW to speed things up I created Masterdarks and bad pixel map first. On the plus side, I did a few slices of toast on the CPU. The trusty 200PDS and HEQ5 combo, ASI1600 cool @ -20degC, 60 second subs for all, no binning as target fairly small. R=157mins, G=161 mins, B=171 mins, LUM=482 mins. Captured with NINA. I let APP do its quality selection thing, so difficult to know what was actually used from these subs. Bit of PS. Well quite a lot of PS actually. Also some star reduction with APP - which now also features star removal option (which I didn't really evaluate) Thanks for looking!

Really nice job! I've just tried this myself and it is certainly tricky - but that's a fabulous result especially for only 3 hours!

Having retired recently I've a bit more time to spend on imaging, and over the last couple of months got quite a lot of data. Lovely..... except that with 572 lights Astropixel processor takes forever and seizes up. I've found a workaround which is simply to create master calibration files first, and then load these masters with the lights, rather than trying to do it all in one go. Hope that makes sense - it processed in about 90 minutes I think which I can live with. Did this over a couple of nights from home, and wasn't sure how it would work out - the ground rises to about 22 degrees south of me and the road now has LED streetlights. bit windy so had to discard a number of subs especially blue. Hey ho. Colours are a bit off I think, but the stars were tricky and some green and magenta crept in. No masking, just curves and adjustment and crop. TBH took forever to get to this point, and need to stop! The next job has 1100 lights so could be a while before posting! So - M78 is 1600 light years away, radius 5 light years, apparent mag 8.3 116 x LUM @60secs, 197 x RED, 145 x GREEN, 115 x BLU all 30sec binned 2x2. ASI1600cool (-20C) with SW200PDS on HEQ5. Thanks for looking - happy for comment/criticism as ever.

Fabulous result Carole, really nicely processed with great colours! You make the processing seem so easy! I'm having fun and games with my Dark Shark which I acquired same night, mostly due to the huge numbers of subs I have. Beginning to wonder if CMOS is the way to go after all! Yes - it was an absolutely freezing couple of nights but great fun all the same. I think my camera was running at -20 without the cooler! I'll post my effort when I finally figure out how best to do it!

If PHD fails to calibrate, at least you have something definite to work with! If you are perfectly balanced but have lots of backlash, PHD calibration may fail. But if you deliberately imbalance - fairly markedly for the purpose of experimentation - backlash in either DEC or RA will simply not be an issue. Have you looked at some of you basic settings? ASCOM pulseguide settings are important. I believe the default for RA and DEC rate is 0.1 - but most folk advise 0.5-0.9. Mine is set at 0.8 though TBH I cant recall how I arrived at that!. If it's too low you may not get enough movement to calibrate. Minimum pulsewidth should be 20-30 msecs I believe (mine is 20) and DEC backlash on mine is 0 ms. TBH I'm not sure what that setting does, but there is a useful guide on how PHD deals with DEC backlash and other importatn PHD settings here. BUT, as I say, initially just keep it simple - ensure there is imbalance and try and get PHD to calibrate. It all seems a monster faff initially, but once you get it sorted you'll be fine! Right now there's lots of clear skies and a big moon - perfect for faffing!

OK I completely agree with that tutorial - nice job from Astronomyshed! DEC balance issue is well made, RA is said to OK for visual when "perfectly" balanced, but the point about being East heavy for astrophotography is also made in closing. RA probably causes more problems than DEC but is more easily solve just go slightly East heavy. (assuming the bearings are good this will sort even quite marked backlash) DEC backlash is harder to sort because the corrections could be in either direction. I did a more detailed comment on this a few years back - see here. Re the clutch, all it needs is to be able to stop things slipping in normal use. You absolutely don't want to be too tight as this can oval the bearing and spoil your guiding completely.

+1

I'm not sure what was wrong with your original balancing method? If there is any play/backlash in RA and you don't balance slightly East heavy, I think you will likely have some issues after dithering. The guide log would be helpful so you could check if it an RA or DEC issue (or both!) Do you have PHD2 log viewer?

As a DSO fan, I'm beginning to wonder if there's any meteorological correlation between there being clear skies, and a full moon??? Anyhow, I thought I'd give the moon a punt with my Quattro and Omegon 385, with a 5x powermate (working at about x4) - had only used this on planets until now. Mostly seeing wasn't great - my neighbours roof gives off some heat I think and mist encroaching too. A lot of this was just experimentation with different file types - AVI vs SER - and I made some interesting discoveries. Main thing is that with OSC the undebayered SER file size is much smaller cf AVI - which is handy given I ripped through 160GB of data! My feeling is that the Quattro mirror doesn't quite perform to the highest standard - sometime I think I'll replace it with something better, hopefully before Jupiter and Mars come around. (see my want ad for a 250mm mirror!) All slightly haphazard targeting and some duplication. The terminator stitch is a right mess!. One thought I had on this is that I'm routinely oversampled, and apart from possibly losing resolution this makes for many more frames than necessary when doing mosaics. Neil has posted some wonderful lunar images which are a bit undersampled, and he has way better quality images and only 9 required for a full disc mosaic! (You need to zoom in on his to get all the detail.) Thanks for looking - labels are above respective image! Copernicus Eratosthanes Fontanelle Anaxagoras Philolaus Longomontanus Tycho Plato Montes Alpes (2) Mystery location - any thoughts appreciated! Sinus Iridum Tycho Wilhelm Longomontanus Clavius Terminator Stitch Rimae Sirsalis

Well it's not bad to be fair - just not quite to your normal standard! BTW wondering why you went for the frac rather than the VX10?

First, well done for sticking with it - there will be a solution.... but I'm not sure I have it! You've tried al the things I would have, but one thing I notice is the position of the discs in those last two images is quite different - maybe beyond the scope of AS to align? When you ran it through PIPP, did you get a cropped result with the disc central in each frame?

Wow! You're hard to please! These images are really really excellent! And btw thanks for sharing your workflow.

Fabulous image Neil - wonderful detail! Can I ask how many images there are in the mosaic, and what your technique is for framing?

Brilliant - thanks for that. As it happens in this instance I am doing lunar, so relatively easy to just convert to grayscale. But since my last post I realised that I will also require colour when doing Jupiter and MArs later this year. I do occaisonally use autocolour because my colour vision isnt great - but I wasn't aware of the clipping issue or the workaround you mentioned, so that's a very helpful tip. Great, thanks. I thought that is what you meant but wanted to be 100% sure. I'll be sure to tick those options. The point I was trying to make is that in PIPP under "processing options" there is a convert to monochrome option - this was ticked by default I think and of course it means all the funny colour issues disappear. But from what you say it looks best to leave undebayered colour for AS!3. Hopefully I'll get round to posting some images later, though with mist and poor seeing they wont be great. Thanks again!

OK great, thanks for that! I dont think I'd used that feature in Registax before, so thats good to know. Just to be 100% clear - in the past I've often run files through PIPP first before AS!3, partly to use both quality selection methods and partly because I found PIPP better at rejecting some dud frames. Whilst doing this, I also (unknowingly) had the convert to monochrome option checked. Are you saying that this is inadvisable, and that AS!3 would work better with the colour image?

Ummmm.... now I have another odd problem! Tonight I grabbed some more images using RAW SER. If I shove them into AS!3, and use autodetect for the debayer pattern, I get a green image. If I manually select alternative matrix patters, I still get a coloured image. Processing through AS!3 makes no difference - image is still green. I can use white balance adjustments when capturing, but this makes no difference to the captured image - so presumably the WB only affects the viewed image when capturing. What threw me is that in PIPP, the image appears gray - but PIPP by default converts to greyscale. If I untick that options, the image is green again. Is this normal behaviour, and if so how do I get my image back to normal colour? Should I choose grayscale in AS13 under colour options? Would this affect the way AS!3 processes the image? Or should I process it as colour (using "autodetect" and just convert to grayscale in PS? Most of my planetary imaging over the years has been done in mono and none of this is an issue. The limited amount of OSC imaging I've done I used AVIs with RGB 24, and that seems to work OK. Interestingly, I've just checked, and when doing AVIs in RGB24, the white balance option definitely does affect the capture - without WB its green, with WB its grey. GRateful for any further thoughts - its driving me slightly bonkers!

OK thats really handy info and makes perfect sense. I've used FC quite a bit with AVI and SER, and never realised that! FC wont handle my Omegon camera, so I'm stuck with Toupsky for that - although to be fair Toupsky seems very good. If I return to FC when using the ZWO cameras I'll need to remember that! Thanks Vlaiv