tomato

This one is a bit off the beaten track, a DIY designed and built EQ mount and portable steel tripod pier, constructed by @Tomatobro back in the late 1980’s and used for imaging in the days before digital cameras. The mount has since been recycled and parts made from it reside on my current setup, but the pier is still around.

That’s a nice image and certainly a new one on me. I’m also surprised sh2-204 isn’t a more popular target, I can maybe see a crustacean of some sort, the Shrimp Nebula?

Here is a combined effort from the dual Esprit 150/ASI 178 rig and @Tomatobro's SL RC10/ASI1600, although the Lion’s share of the integration is from the refractors so the RC diffraction spikes are quite faint. Made up of: L 521 mins R 103 mins G 110 mins B 120 mins So 14.2 hrs in total. Most of the data was captured last year but I have added some more Luminance this season along with some longer FL LRGB form the RC. It's heavily cropped from the RC/ASI 1600 FOV as I couldn't get the colour to play ball without first cropping the channels. Thanks for looking.

So if an ideal process workflow can be derived just from the image data statistics, why don’t we have a “Process Image” button on the Astro processing software packages?

But no software package comes with a single button labelled “Process Image”and with the almost infinite variability of the input data quality, I don’t see how it ever could. It might be an interesting experiment to try processing a dataset entirely on APP’s and StarTools’ default settings and see how it compares to a “human input” version.

I totally agree, but of course it helps a lot that we can capture and process a well lit daytime image with the Mk 1 eyeball and brain, we don’t have that luxury with DSOs. If they ever make an Astro camera where you just press a button and a perfectly calibrated, stacked, stretched, colour balanced, sharpened and noise reduced image pops out, I’ll be in the first wave of purchasers.

I once took my imaging kit for a short break on the North Devon Coast. We stayed in the unoccupied Lighthouse keeper’s cottage, but yes you guessed it, the light was very much operational! I went NB and got a reasonable image of the Veil Nebula, right below the sweeping beam…

Crikey! It’s hard enough processing an image which is 90% dark sky, look at all those colours and textures, light and shade across the image, I don’t think I’m up to it.☺️

Great result on what I believe is quite a short integration time for this target. It’s heartening to know I’m not the only imager who prefers data acquisition to processing.

Here is my version processed in StarTools. This is using AutoDev rather than FilmDev after the Wipe module. I can't see much wrong with your original calibrated and stacked file, I use APP for this , but I don't think DSS did a bad job.

The numbers are fixed right, once the frame is captured and saved, so it's really weird that one instance of running APP gives you the warnings, and another using the same version, settings etc, does not?

Great image, plenty of faint detail there. This is indeed a tricky target, it fills the frame nicely on my small galaxy set up but I attempted it when the moon was up and the subs were not great.

It’s interesting that in some instances APP displayed a warning during the calibration process, using the default settings and processing each channel separately, I received no warnings with the data.

I use Telescopius and Stellarium, and in galaxy season I use the Cambridge Photographic Atlas of Galaxies, but often get frustrated to find some really photogenic examples are just too far South from my location.

Thanks, it's quite something for me to be complemented on my processing, its an area where I still have a long way to go. I think taking shorter subs is worth a try, but if you upload another set to have a go with, I'll have to beef up my router!😄

Here is my effort, processed in APP, then the stretched image in Affinity Photo, trying to match the palette suggested by @vlaiv. It's great data BTW.👍

As promised, another version combining LRGB in APP, further processing in APP, Pixinsight (on the stretched file) and Affinity Photo to balance the colour. It's just my opinion, but I would be chuffed if I had captured this data.

It’s weird but sometimes StarTools does a great job with my data and other times I can’t get a decent result. On your data I thought APP would do a better job but the initial RGB combination was a mile off on colour. I will give it another go in APP, the remove light pollution tool is excellent.

Here are the LRGB channels calibrated and stacked in APP, stretched but no gradient removal tool applied, these were registered and normalised in APP then taken into Startools. I had to push the blue channel and I have clipped the data in trying to get a more even background which I think was the original issue? Red Green Blue

Hi Brendan, I use APP for my calibration and stacking and StarTools quite a bit so I will give your data a go.

Well so far the cloud curse has come to pass but I got a brief 20 minutes of guiding which look promising, RA trend is now both above and below the line with corrections in both directions....

I have made the tick adjustment, will that be enough tinkering to ensure a cloudy night tonight?😉

When I measured the RA drift at the end of October last year it was 4.27 arcsecs per minute, so roughly twice as bad the drift you are seeing. @Singlin, who started a thread on this back in 2015 had 10.2 arcsecs per minute, and made a successful adjustment to the encoder tick count to fix it. I guess if you are seeing constant RA corrections and the trend is off set from the zero line, it's worth making an adjustment.

I know what you mean, I don't think it will improve the guiding by very much but it bugs me seeing all of the constant RA corrections and the PHD guide points offset from the centre. I will do a bit a more investigation but then I am going to alter the speed, I'll be certain to make a note so I can revert back if it all goes pear shaped.

Although my 8 year old Mesu mount guides at 0.4 arcsec total RMS, with some 70 + kg of kit on board, I still get frequent corrections in RA all in the same direction. I know folks have adjusted the RA speed successfully but I just want to be convinced that it this and not some other factor before I proceed. I think two other possible causes of frequent RA corrections are an out of balance assembly and poor polar alignment. For the former I would suppose the direction of corrections would reverse after a meridian flip but mine stay on the same side before and after. For poor PA, my DEC corrections are small and in both directions so I’m assuming this is OK, but I will do a drift align in PHD. I have let the mount track unguided and it is moving quite a lot in RA but not DEC as the guiding confirms, so if the PA is good it has to be the RA tracking rate that needs adjusting?