wimvb

Blair MacDonald had an article in the Canadian astronomy society's periodical about this. It's available online, and easier to read.

Nice catch. The Rosette Neb will be a challenge for an unmodded camera. If you have the possibility to increase the exposure time and number of exposures, that will really help to pull out more detail. Otherwise the nebula will stay close to the noise floor. What processing software do you use. To enhance the nebula and keep the stars under control, you can use either Masked Stretch in PixInsight, of a similar technique in PS/GIMP http://www.nightanddayastrophotography.com/gallery/Processing.htm Especially nr 12: LMS (Layered, Masked Stretch) processing Thanks for sharing

Alejandro Tombolini has worked examples at pixinsight.com.ar that show how to use the script. I use it after dbe and background neutralization, but before colour calibration, since it will affect white balance. Then I follow up with deconvolution of stars only, before stretching. If you mask stretch the V channel, you end up with plenty of colour in the stars.

HSV repair script. It's under scripts -> utilities. You can combine them in the linear stage, or (masked) stretch the V before combining. Star reduction (morphology transform -> morphological selection) with contour mask can also give more star colour.

Been there, done that. Nowadays my camera is always on RAW. Even when used as family camera. (Which it is less nowadays, as mobile phone cameras are so much easier.) Nice pic, btw. I'm not sure that calibration frames make sense when shooting jpeg, since the calibration process needs single pixel information, which is lost in the conversion process. Flats may work, removing vignetting. Bias and darks may deteriorate the lights due to added noise. There's only one way to find out ...

Since you're testing PI, here's a tip from a dark lord: PI has a noise evaluation script, and you can do image statistics (process -> image -> statistics), which you can use to evaluate the three stacked images. The difference between the images should be in the background noise, and any hot pixels. You should also examine the stacks for any "walking noise" or streaks left over after stacking. If you want to test stacking in PI, I suggest you use the batch preprocess script, since you're only on the trial version. The feature that should win you over to the dark (dark) side is DBE. Crop the image, apply DBE, and see the magic force.

I agree with Neil, that's a good start. The easiest way to proceed from here is to expose more frames, download deep sky stacker to combine them, and use whatever image processing software you have to increase contrast. Good luck, and have fun

That would be a great challenge, if it were not for one tiny detail: the mount used. Non autoguiders range from poor students/kids using an alt az or eq3 mount, to semi-professionals having mounts that don't need guiding. The challenge would be unfair. But who am I to stop people from taking this challenge?

Great, Neil. Much better than my attempt at ngc2903. What camera settings did you use & nr of subs?

I know that seeing can be bad, but this bad? I guess you meant "no flats" Nice catch, anyway. Cheers

Nice catch. Ha nebs are difficult witj an unmodded camera, the results depend very much on camera make and model. With this target you did very well. Thanks for sharing

I don't think the horzontal lines are from dew. Have a look at a single sub and see if the dark lines emanate from bright stars. I have a issue with dark lines like this when stars are becoming over exposed. http://wimvberlo.blogspot.se/2017/01/correcting-dark-lines-in-dslr-astro.html?m=1

I have found that a longer dew shield can be better than a dew heater. My guide scope dew shield extends about 30 cm in front of the lens. Haven't had dew or ice yet, despite not using a dew heater. Otoh, I have had dew and ice when using a heater alone.

Nice result. You'll notice that being able to do 3 minute subs will vastly improve your image quality. Unfortunately DSS seems infamous for sucking the colour out of images. Sometimes it helps to blur a copy of the image and turn saturation all the way up. Use this as the colour information in an LRGB combination. Thanks for sharing,

Done that, been there. (Never got the t-shirt ). Made a dew heater for my st80 guide scope, but didn't really solve the dew problem until I also made a dew shield, which extends about 30 cm or more in front of the scope lens.

Dunno, one could argue that the Ha emits red, so it should be red. Otoh, it will probably also emit some Hb, which is blue. That would pull the colour towards magenta. Your Rosetta and Veil have a more traditional look. I would leave it the way it is, even if it isn't the way it "should be". I like it.

Impressive. Never seen such a red pelican.

Great catch. As you already noted, more data will improve the result. If you can increase exposure time to 1 minute, and catch 60 good frames, I think you can have a great image. It also seems to me that you are at the limit of what the Gimp can do. You can probably improve the image in photoshop or PixInsight. Thanks for sharing

Wow, those tadpoles really stand out. Great. If you can do that in a 2 hour gap, you must have a permanent setup, I guess. It usually takes me an hour at least to set up my rig and align. Thanks for sharing.

I don't think it was phd, but rather me. As it turned out, phd was already in an ubuntu repository, so installing was much easierthan in Raspbian. No need to check dependencies, just link to the ppa. Now I need to learn ekos/kstars. Sounds familiar?

Snowing here, after yesterdays short cold spell. (Why does this site lack an emoticon for snow?) Enough opportunity to tinker, but never enough to test what you tinkered with. BTW, as you may have read from a recent post of mine, I managed to get a Raspberry Pi working with Ubuntu mate, INDI and PHD2. For some reason I had less luck with Raspbian + INDI + PHD2. Maybe because I installed INDI after PHD2???

?? Can you elaborate? The center spot of my mirror came off during cleaning, and I replaced it as per numerous articles on the interweb. Was this not right? What's the cause if the difference?

The primary isn't too difficult to remove. The whole cell is held in place with just 3 - 4 screws. To center the center spot, it's good to have transparencies with a circle the size of the primary. For collimation I use a self made cap and a barlow with my laser. It does require a center spot on the primary, however. If you google "barlowed laser collimator", you should reach a few explaining articles on the matter. Good luck

Dare I say that I enjoyed two nights in a row with clear skies. Just enough to get some images of Bodes galaxies before moonrise. But now the gap has closed. Hope some gaps find their way to your site as well.

Thanks. Have you seen this site? http://www.deepskycolors.com/archivo/2010/04/21/formulas-for-Photoshop-blending-modes.html It may help finding the right blending method.