tomato

Lovely deep image, if the Ancients could have NB imaged, this region would be Canis Major and Minor.😉

Yes, I was hoping for 5 hrs NB imaging tonight but currently 80% cloud cover, it might improve a bit later on based on SAT24.

Thanks for posting this, I learnt quite a bit. Early on, Russ Croman refers to an article by Patrick Cosgrove which the AI sceptics might find interesting. It provides an introduction into neural networks and for me provided an understanding as to why most of the concerns put forward about this processing tool are unfounded. https://cosgrovescosmos.com/tips-n-techniques/blurxtermintor-a-breakthrough-for-decon

Can’t argue with the design principle, I know the blurb says otherwise, but it might be limited on aperture, 6” APO cells will be a big mass to move backwards and forwards.

Looking good! On my IPad there looks to be a hint of a green gradient running left to right so toning the green down a bit with SCNR might help. More subs will always help with noise reduction, along with everything else.

Yes, 4 or 5 sheets of printer paper over the panel, then you can get reasonable exposures of 3-5 seconds.

Is it indeed just a case of horses for courses? If widefield, dim objects are your thing, fast optics are the way to go, if capturing smaller, brighter targets in more detail is what you are after, go for the longer FL scope. For example with the RASA, I can get a nice 2 panel image of the Spaghetti Nebula in one sitting, but I don’t have the resolve to try the same target with an F7 refractor, the UK weather would wear me down.

I have a similar approach. When I put my RASA8 on the Mesu the mount looks a bit under-utilised, so I put the SY135 on there to balance things up a bit, but I don’t need to spend anytime aligning the cameras.😊

Very impressive, was the framing deliberate or fortuitous?

Excellent, close in this deep image is starting to resemble the Veil Nebula.

Great balance between the reflection nebulosity and the dust.👍🏼

It’s all there in your fits file, these AI based tools aren’t for everyone, but they now form the mainstay of my processing workflow.

Here is my take on boosting the blue on your excellent .fits file. Basic workflow: Crop and LP removal in APP Image solve in PI then SPCC, BlurXterminator and StarXterminator. I then stretched the starless image and applied Curves Transformation, but I was not happy with the result. The SPCC/BXT file looked better when stretched in APP and saturation applied. This went back into PI for CT on the blue channel and SCNR on the green (@75%). NoiseXterminator applied and some subtle work in HST in Affinity Photo. I personally like this level of blue, on reflection the M33 images I posted recently are too blue IMHO.

0.2 secs is way too much in broad daylight. You don’t need a clear night though to set up the focus. My first Astro camera was an Atik 314 OSC and I focused it on a distant tiled roof when the sun had gone down.

That’s really nice, are there any scientific explanations for the asymmetric glow on the right hand side?

I used StarXTerminator to subtract the fixed stars from the smeared comet and the registered comet from the star trails. The first was 100% ok as the tool treated the comet like a galaxy, the second missed a couple of the trailed stars and seemed to leave a faint ‘ghost’ of the trails which became discernible after further processing. Other folks have done this in Photoshop, but I’ll let a layers expert chip in on that one.

Hi Lee, It was indeed. I tried combining the Lum and OSC comet registered stacks, but APP was not happy, it seemed to decide that the images had over 650 million pixels, so massively downsampled them and then just got stuck in a loop when it tried to register them. In the end I converted the Lum frames to RGB colourspace and integrated them all together in APP, that was successful. With it now at closest approach I think even 30 secs is pushing it at my imaging scale, if I get another chance I'll go with 10 or even 5 secs but lots of them. Maybe it needs planetary techniques but there isn't much in the way of features to register the frames. I've just realised that this comet is supposed to be green (are they they only objects in the Cosmos that can be this colour?) so here is another version with the green put back in!

Great work!

This is just 20 minutes from last night, 20x30 secs on the Esprit150/QHY268OSC and 20x 30 secs on the Esprit150/QHY268Mono. The framing is not good, I didn’t realise how long the ion tail is, calibrated and stacked (stars and comet) in APP, StarXterminator and Pixel math used in PI to create a stacked comet and non trailed stars. It is moving really fast now across the sky, there was noticeable movement on a single 30 sec sub. If you look closely the ghosts of the trailed stars are visible, so maybe I need to play with the Pixelmath parameters.

A great NGC 891, one of my favourite edge on galaxies.

I use a ZWO OAG on an Esprit 150 and to date (3 years of imaging) it has never failed to have a suitable star in the FOV so I have not needed to rotate it.

Thanks Steve, @Tomatobro deserves all the credit, he did all the work making the rotating disk and speed controller, I just pointed the scope and took the pictures. I’m currently trying to find if there are any other suitable candidates to try the technique on, but the only one I’ve found so far, the Vela Pulsar, is too far South.

Hi Wim, I’m sure @Tomatobro will respond with the details when he reads this.

Good to hear of a happy outcome. My Mk 1 delivers varying guiding performance, on a good night, and the right target it can hit 0.3” total RMS. However I have a big load on there so it is sensitive to balance, especially when I keep putting things on it! PHD does it’s best but I can see the error double from the best performance.

Can I assume if you are using a modified DSLR you have not specifically collected Ha data with a NB filter? If that is the case then all you can do is accentuate the red channel which contains the Ha signal, but as you say, avoid upsetting the overall colour balance, which looks good in your image. M33 is rich in Ha regions, but those images that show this clearly have usually had Ha data added into the LRGB. Nice M33 BTW, more integration will help as well as reveal the faint outer regions.