gorann

Yes, a great improvement Francis! One comment: in the new version bright stars and the blue (and some yellow) areas around them have been blown out. There is more details in these areas in the first version. When that happens to me I try to select the best of each version. If you have PS, you can put the old version as an invisible layer on top of the new one and blend in some of the old with the brush tool where the old version is less blown out. Maybe as a luminosity layer (experiment with blend mode).

That is a great, and as @ollypenrice says, eerie image Wim! As you know I am at the moment escaping sub-zero Sweden on an island in the south Pacific. With Musk´s eerie Starlink as the only connection with the rest of the world I have not been on SGL as regularly as normally so I missed the posting of your dwarf galaxy. Have you tried the dark arts of BlurXT on it yet? If not you should. Also as you know I have an MN190 tucked away in a closet - got it a few years ago for 500 Euros from someone that did not know its true value . It seems to be as close as a deadly person can get to an 8" refractor, so I see it as an investment to play with during all those dark nights I expect to get once I retire😄.

Very impressive demonstration of what StarXT can do! I would experiment with reducing the blue a bit (using a curve on the blue channel) since much of the blue appear to be halos from the bright blue stars (so artifacts of the optics that can be suppressed with good conscience). That would also make the Ha signal less purple.

This is a busy area in Cygnus with both bright and faint delicate nebulosity, near Deneb, one of the brightest stars in the sky (the big one down to the right in this image). It took some taming of Deneb in processing to allow the extremely faint centerpiece, the very large supernova remnant Wetserhout 63 to come through. There are four Sharpless objects in the image, more LBNs and LDNs than I could count, and also the Propeller Nebula that has been missed by the famous catalogues. Over the last year or so I have been coming back to this area with my Samyang 135 and RASA 8, now all sitting together. When I a few days ago caught this wide field image with the Samyang 135 I thought I could use it as a nice frame to bring all the RASA8 images together, totally around 50 hours of f/2 data. So this image is a symbiosis of Samyang and RASA8 data.

He he! Thanks a lot Alan and Merry Christmas! CS, Göran

Sh2-126, the great nebula in Lacerta, here flanked by LBN438 (down to the left) and the Gecko Nebula (LBN437, upper right). This is a Samyang 135 image where I have added RASA8 data to the main features. I have my Samyang 135 piggybacking on my dual-RASA8 rig, so there is a bit of symbiosis in this image. Totally about 18 hours of data using IDAS NBZ filters and IMX571 OSC cameras. Processed in PI and PS, including StarXT. Happy holidays everyone!

Very cool Wim! Are there any other images of Leo A? I could not find any after a short search on Astrobin. There is a small area of bands just north of Leo A. Is that an artifact of something real (would be an odd artifact - banding are usually not that local). Cheers, Göran

Yes, it would be worth finding out if there is still a quality issue with the mirror of RASA8. There has clearly been a bad batch produced as @symmetaland others have been victims of.

My guess is that if you are into astrophotography long enough and take thousands of subs, a freak satellite event like this may eventually happen

My vote is on the RASA. I have an Esprit 100 and it clearly needs many times more integration time to get to the same depth as a RASA8. Not sure why you want a RASA11. Your camera fits well with a RASA8 and to get an equally large FOV with a RASA11 you need a full frame (24x36) sensor (like ASI6200). The RASA 11 is also very heavy and difficult to handle alone, as evident from this scary thread 😱 Cheers, Göran

PS Steve, maybe you could make a crop of each image to better show your point?

Interesting Steve! Is BXT rewriting theory? Keen to see what @vlaiv have to say🤔

After 7 years of astrophotography, I could maybe start a web page for advice, but it would only have one line: log onto: https://stargazerslounge.com

I am equally perplexed - why would someone that obviously (clear from this thread) has no experience and no clue about astrophotography start a web site and give advice? Who would it benefit?

Thanks a lot Steve! And yes, you are right about the sky!

Could be! This two-planel mosaic has a big overlap in the middle, to double the data on the SNR. The left part of the mosaic was captured two nights ago and combined with data to the right, including the SNR, that I captured two years ago and may have posted here, but then with less data so not as good.

Thanks Carole! Yes, a dark sky really helps for an object like this.

This SNR is another cool target for RASA owners! This is a two panel mosaic including the rather well known Propeller Nebula and the very large but faint supernova remnant (WC63 aka SNR G 082.2+05.3), which is possibly even more faint than the Squid Nebula. Captured with my dual RASA 8 rig with ASI2600MC and IDAS NBZ filter. 92 x 5 min. Processed in PI and PS using both StarXT and Noise XT, which really helps squeezing out that last part of faint nebulosity. ( I don't think BlurXT does much for an image like this with few delicate details).

Excellent Stu! Did you use some form of starless processing? I have never used Affinity Photo so I have no idea what options you have there.

Even if you, like me, prefer PS for most procedures, there are several useful functions in PI that complements what you can do in PS, so it is well worth getting. I do all stacking, calibrating and integrating of images in PI. DBE and Starnet2 in PI are useful if GradXT or StarXT occasionally do a poor job on an image.

I think you may be right Olly. I just had a go at my 14" image of NGC7331 and it only produced those worm-like artifacts that Block showed in his video of the Crab Nebula. No improvement at all and I will not even show it here (actually I deleted it just after I saw the result).

Yes, they are so easy that it may mean that now (or soon) many years of perfecting your processing skills may no longer be as important and being able to afford the best equipment. I hope not🥴

Thanks a lot!

I am now and then trying to hunt down unknown planetary nebulae on suggestions about hot stars given to me by Dana Patchick in California. So far we have not nailed one but I do not give up! Here is my attempt from Thursday night, which was clear and virtually moonless, although very cold (-18°C) so my cameras did not need much cooling, while my laptops actually needed some IR heaters to stay alive. As far as I can tell it was a miss when it comes to a PN (should have been around the hot blue star at Ra 04 27 33.49 Dec +74 07 31.77). However, There are some rarely imaged galaxies there, including NGC 1560 and 1573, and a lot of never imaged IFN, so I am still happy! So, 21.5 hours with my dual-RASA8 rig and ASI2600MC with IDAS NBZ filters. Stretched to the limits and of course processed with all the latest from Russ (StarXT, NoiseXT and Blur XT) Cheers. Göran

Well, mine was not over exposed in the raw files, but we have different equipment, and you could always take an extra set of shorter exposures (does not take much time) - that is what I have previously done when I have aimed super-dynamic things like M31 or M42.