TakMan

That’s much better (in my opinion), gives me more time to enjoy what’s going on! 👍

I won’t tell the wife that bit - she already thinks I have too many as it is - she’d forgotten the 10” dob at the bottom of the garage under an old duvet cover - “well if you don’t use it, why is it still here..?” In case I want to in the future dear, like these bits of wood and, etc, etc!

Very good Alex - despite what you say about your seeing, the detail throughout has held up really strongly - the spicules especially…. and that’s from a capture over midday - not nice and early or late on when seeing (for me anyway) is usually better… Personally I slowed your movie down to half speed on the iPhone and found it even better to view! How long was each capture and % used in general)? I don’t think a lot of folks (who don’t do solar) appreciate the effort that does into a solar animation of this quality. As for my own solar imaging…. ‘We’ cleaned the garage out yesterday as I’d already agreed to… 7 hrs including trips to the local tip - great timing hey! Damian

Cracking image - quite like the colour choice as well !

Yet another Aurora thread, sorry… This time from Streethay, a light polluted suburb of Lichfield, Staffordshire. A very old 12Mp full frame Nikon D3 and Nikkor 14-24mm f/2.8 Tripod mounted, ISO 400, 5-6sec exposures all at f/2.8 Processed in Lightroom. Apologies for some lens flaring - the lens is prone to them, especially so when fully wide at 14mm… and surrounded by streetlights - that’s the one thing about going to see them in the artic circle, clean air, less light pollution and snow! Damian

Friday night - didn’t get any actual imaging done… probably due to that ‘damn unforecast cloud!’ Damian

Seen in light polluted Lichfield also - thanks SGL'ers for posting updates. Did have the imaging gear out but there was a thin layer of cloud so although the camera was cooled, on target and guiding, I never bothered to start imaging - the aurora was way better anyway! Thankfully the old Nikon D3 still had some juice in the batteries as I scrambled to get it, tripod and cable release! 6 seconds @ f/2.8 14-24mm Nikkor lens @ 14mm ISO500 Pointed the thing virtually straight up as wanted a bit of a 'house portrait' for some scale - it was like being back in Norway... to get the corona as well - amazing ! And some more - off to bed now... gone a bit too hazy to see anything more apart from faint colours... Damian

Just back from a busy few days in London with the wife... Zoo on Saturday and then off to Pudding Mill Lane on Sunday to enjoy the ABBA Voyage concert at 1pm, which I have to say was really excellent.... like they were on stage, which of course is the whole point of the experience! https://lightroom.uk/whats-on/the-moonwalkers/ Today, Monday, I'd already booked tickets to 'The Moonwalkers' show at Lightroom (From Apollo to Artemis), a short walk behind the back of Kings Cross station. Located in a very nicely rejuvenated region (like a posher Gas Street Basin in Birmingham). Believe the show's run has been extended, so if you're in the area, something else highly recommended - we both found it quite moving. The Official Trailer is Here (48seconds): The Moonwalkers_ A Journey With Tom Hanks - Full Trailer.mp4 Even managed a visit afterwards (well, I went up to reception), to Central Saint Martins arts college (somewhere I wasn't good enough to consider going many moons ago - I did Bournville instead, behind the Cadbury factory), that is on the same site plus a very reasonably priced coffee and cake... amongst academia! Then we paid a visit (the wife wanted to go) to the British Library... where I also found some astro related items: So first we have an early photo of the moon... very apt I feel, from 1857: Next, a beautifully designed Book of the Moon from 2018 A 1794 letter from Caroline Herschel... I found the last paragraph particularly amusing... where she complains that she hasn't had many clear nights to observe - we hear you Caroline ! And last, A medieval medical text 'A Zodiac Man'... Hope that was enjoyable.... not a bad haul while the wife was browsing! Damian

Yep, same here - both of them on the wife’s old 17” Samsung i3 W7 laptop. I moved to this a few years ago from a Mac OS X environment and looking back, was the best thing I could have done. Platesolving, auto focus, dithering, all work a treat. Suggested a few ideas to the chap who writes the stuff - which he incorporated as well. A few small bugs pop up now and again, which I have learnt to keep an eye out for… but it has never crashed on me mid-session - touch wood! Would highly recommend, although I do think about trying NINA now and again, just to see what that has to offer… Damian

May we see a pre-BlurXT Ollie - the RASA is also under consideration in cloudy Lichfield with a OSC ! Damian

Hi David.... And APP also has the facility to correct for bad column defects: 2) Calibrate > Cosmetic Correction > Hot Column Kappa (set to default 8.0) This sorts my 2x bad columns out automatically (I don't have to tell it which they are, plus I also dither between shots like yourself). Damian

Anyhow, more importantly - good to see you back David ‘Skipper..’ and sorry to hear that your absence was due to illness - hope things are on the mend… Agree with Ollie with regards to mixing stars from two very different pallets… HOO often benefits from the introduction of RGB stars - but that’s just my preference! Much prefer the new version, perhaps a bit too sharpened..? You still have (but less) posterisation - but perhaps that is down to ‘micro’ sharpening…. Clear skies to you… Damian

I wonder Stuart if you had an Atik with a Sony CCD sensor…? Different chip architecture/microlenses….

Hi can confirm it is an ‘artifact’ of the OnSemi Kodak 16200 chip (the big brother of the 8300 chip), as SkipperBilly and myself share the same scope/camera combination… I personally quite like the little ‘diffraction’ spikes! Damian

I saw your post whilst working on another (none astro) Ps job and thought I'd give it a quick whirl before shutting down... Nothing more than 10 mins. Nothing fancy. A few Noel's Actions. No starless processing. Not as refined as Red Chilli's above, but hope it gives you an idea what your data holds if you don't have BlurX and the like. Onwards and upwards, hey! Damian

300DPI for print at the final size (dimensions that you are printing to - even if that means re-sizing up/interpolating in Photoshop. Doesn’t matter if your 300DPI file is bigger than the intended print size to begin with - just take longer to email to the printers). Can get away with 200 or so for things like box-canvas prints, etc as the grain of the canvas hides lower resolution to a point. If you resize upwards and the image starts to pixelate then you have to decide if you are happy with that, or go with a smaller print, or make sure you stand further away from the finished item when viewing! Often folks quote 100DPI or so - this is usually for pull up vinyl banners you see at trade shows, etc. I wouldn’t be looking at that for glass/metal prints. Printing onto that media may require higher resolution… Note that you can get away with some ‘blockiness’ - you should not be pixel peeping a print and should be standing away from it to appreciate - the bigger the artwork the further away you should be standing. I would say that normally adding some glass, especially anti-reflective will hide a bit of upscaling artefacts - but of course you are printing onto metal (so probably no glass in front), so I’d err on the side of caution and keep artwork as sharp as possible, even if that means choosing a smaller picture to hang. You want to stay away from jpeg as well for ‘art prints’ - supply a .tif file (ie saved out directly from your original RAW data and not just re-saving/naming a jpeg as the damage will already have been done), 8 bit is fine - again, check as a courtesy with supplier (jpeg obviously compressing, adding potential artefacts, chance of posterisation, etc) More importantly, see what your printers actually want and see if they prefer the files supplied in a RGB or CMYK colourspace. If you’ve processed your image in RGB (most probably) and they require "four colour process" (CMYK), convert yourself - visually see how the colours change/dull upon converting the artwork from the RGB colourspace (CMYK cannot print all that you see on a RGB monitor) and then adjust that CMYK file back to something close to your original RGB… at least you get a much better idea of what you may get back once printed! Often printed artwork ‘saturates’ and so the final work is darker than expected. It could help to slightly lighten the darker regions - just bring up your black point… a tad! Sometimes it’s safer to provide a full resolution CMYK, composite PDF instead of a .tif file - your supplier may have a preference and if you ask, they may be more interested in helping you achieve what you want. I send printer files out to various publications / printers (although graphics is now not my full time job) and rather than supply a colour profile to each different printer, it is more manageable just to supply with a fairly generic Fogra39 colour profile for print jobs in the UK - your supplier may suggest a more suitable profile for artwork specifically intended to be produced onto metal (or glass) plus the fact that you are Stateside so will probably have a generic US colour profile). Of course this assumes you have a calibrated monitor that you are working on in the first instance… Otherwise it really can be a ‘hope for the best’, you may be pleasantly surprised at the outcome (it may just match what you are viewing on screen), or not! Can you supply them a file and ask them to forward a proof..? This will give you a good idea of how dark the print may be (and perhaps just how much 'out' your screen may be - hence my earlier comment of lightening a tad…. Hope it goes well anyway, colour calibration and printing are rather like imaging - something akin to a dark art ! Damian

Could you add the exposure times and total imaging time spent on this at some stage…?

Very nice. Sharp, nicely framed, processed, plenty of detail to enjoy, like the colours as well ! A reasoned argument for your rendition. And why not - one of the advantages of NB data - you can try all sorts of interesting things to bring something different to the table… Will have to try this technique with my own data (have also started this region as well, but with other targets requiring exposure time to finish them, it’ll be next year before this data set is complete!) Personally, if I was “printing this” - I’d go with the second (stars) image. Whilst I get the reasoning for reducing the starfield to enhance nebulosity, to my eyes, stars add their own structure to the composition… either with stars or without. Nature’s large, striking, powerful nuclear reactors reduced down to something akin to odd bits of dust, plus the countess smaller others removed to the point of looking like underlying ‘noise’ just (to my brain anyway) make the image look oddly fake - I can get that sort of ‘space image’ from the Deviantart website… https://www.deviantart.com/search?q=Space Damian

Down at the family static caravan in Amroth, South Wales (at the start - or end, of the Pembrokeshire Coastal Footpath). Blessed with a few clear nights so far despite mixed daytime weather - well, it IS Wales ! This year it’s been about bringing down the new bass lure fishing gear rather than a scope and sundries (can’t fit everything into the car and I know when not to push the wife too far!) - so only have the Vixen 2.1x42mm ‘binos’ if you can call them that, for scanning the Milky Way - which has been glorious this year... stretching all the way from the Teapot, through Aquila, Cygnus overhead and through to the Double Cluster…. Seen a few meteors and managed M33 through them as well - a good catch… Came back from a night’s fish around 2am to observe and took in the Pleiades and surrounding area as well - Autumn is definitely on the way and there is certainly that ‘September Chill’ in the air my old mum talks about when she’s here. Been nice to not have the proper astro gear - to just relax and take the in whole spectacle… brings home the difference of bortle 3 skies here compared to the depressing 6 that is now Lichfield (home)… Out for an evening stroll with the wife and came up with a mad idea, so off we went down onto the beach! Something quite magical about the moon and the sea…. So astro has been quite successful despite the lack of major equipment - I’ve managed a few night time ‘birds’, and a ‘dolphin’, but no fish… although I did catch a ruddy daytime seagull that decided my top / floating lure looked like the real thing in distress and decided to go for it ! Thankfully I was able to reel it in and unhook the thing without injury (to it or me), if only the Bass were as dumb! Taken with an old iPhone X Clear skies, Damian

😀 👍 🥇 All that needs to be said ! Damian

A damn fine set of images - great contrast and tonal range… Another solar imager to add to my reference list! Damian

Credit to Kostas on here who put me onto it - quicker than Parallels as I’ve tried AS!3 on both, plus it takes up less hard drive space….

A super capture 👍 Saw that (well the lower half) on the GONG image and thought that’d be a good target - if only it wasn’t a work day…. Lucky you! Damian

Fantastic weather over the weekend and on Saturday the wife was away! More than 60 sets of data to go through, process, access, develop - will keep me busy for some time! Basler '174' > Quark Chromo > TEC140 > Baader D-ERF SSM to monitor the seeing, guided with a Hinode unit. The TEC140 at full aperture - f/7, with the Quark's 4.3x internal telecentric, that presents about f/30 at the etalon Captured in Basler's own Pylon software on Mac. Tried out some new settings for capture - all at RAW Mono8, reduced the gain to around 21,000-23,000 (dB), Black Level (offset) 10 (DN) and settled at 6ms for exposure to keep the full 165fps. Gamma @ 1 (so off) Now, thanks to CrossOver software, running the latest AS!3 / ImPPG. Then into Photoshop - all on OSX. From today then, to kick off - a two frame vertical mosaic (it actually stitched together!) AR 3314 / 3311 / 3314 Mono8 / 165 fps / 6ms / 300 frames from 3300 (20 second exposure) - taken around 8.40am BST GONG image for ref (so we're looking upper left for the above image) Damian

Another super set of data Ewan. We had clear skies later on Sunday, but we’re down the road having a street party and the wife gave me that look to say ‘don’t even think about heading off to image’ - I value my life too much to disagree! Thanks also for the details of acquisition 👍 Damian