wimvb

I've downloaded the tif file, and I can see why you are struggling with it. It looks like the image is underexposed (too little data), probably due to light pollution. You also have excessive banding which is typical for Canon DSLRs. You used darks as calibration frames. With an uncooled dslr, this doesn't always work. Try calibration with bias and flats, where the flats are calibrated with the bias frames. Here's the extracted luminance, which is an average of the red, green and blue channel and has less noise than the colour image.

Great image. I use aladin lite to plan my imaging and research the objects in my images. https://aladin.u-strasbg.fr/AladinLite/ This site is a front end to many large catalogues and sky surveys. If an object can’t be identified in Aladin, it most likely has no catalogue number yet.

I only use the hcg mode for narrowband imaging. I do all LRGB imaging at 0 gain, and offset 8. That is with an ASI294MM. Works good enough for me. I expose for the stars (ie, no saturated stars except for the very brightest), and extract the nebulosity in post pricessing. At 0 gain, the camera has its true full well depth, and highest dynamic range.

Oh, and of course we want to see a starless version. 😉

M73: check! if you go for the whole list, you must also image the less exotic ones. And you didn’t spend an entire dark, stable night on this target. I’d say definitely worth the time spent.

Have you seen this?

Sorry, but on my screen I see dark gray text on a black background. My eyes aren't what they used to be, and have never been how they should be, so can't read this post.

Thanks, Rodd. I always use a mask when I insert Ha into red, so as to avoid increasing the noise. I think what you see here is due to insufficient RGB data. I only have 10 subs for green and blue, and 15 for red (50, 50 and 75 minutes). The weak ifn in the luminance channel is just strong enough to affect the colour noise, but not strong enough to clear the noise floor. When the moon is out of the way, I plan to add more colour and luminance data.

I added data to my previous image. 228 minutes (3 hrs 48 mins) of Luminance and 4 hrs of Ha. I also collected more colour, but the moon and high clouds ruined those sessions. The luminance master shows very weak ifn and extended haloes, but I need more data before I can turn that in a presentable image. As always, captured with my SW 190MN and ASI294MM camera. Processed in PixInsight Previous version:

Indeed, you now have a much better view of the clouds. 😉 Seriously though, congratulations. And good luck with your observatory.

If you see a donut like object, bright ring with black centre, that’s most likely a focusing issue. Daytime focusing on a distant object will get you close, but is not enough for stars and planets. The moon is so large that even with focus off, you can still see some details. The easiest way to get good focus is to buy or make a Bahtinov mask. https://www.firstlightoptics.com/bahtinov-focus-masks/starsharp-bahtinov-focus-masks.html

In my case, I have flats for each filter (lrgb) with similar but not identical exposure times, and if I don't set the exposure tolerance to 0, wbpp won't match flats and darks correctly.

Correct Also correct. Darks, flats and lights all contain the bias information. If you subtract a dark from a light frame, you also subtract the bias. Bias frames were used with ccd images, because they allowed one to use the same master dark for different exposure times. But with cmos, you need to match your darks to your light frames (exposure tine, temperature, gain and offset). Flat darks need to match flat frames and are used to calibrate those. You will probably need to set the exposure tolerance lower, but wbpp will try to match darks with flats and lights

Adam Block has updated some of his videos to reflect changes in the workflow. AfaIk, those are the most up to date videos out there.

I usually apply the "no free lunch" or "eating and saving the cake" principle. In its crudest form that would be something like this: information that is used to capture detail or enhance detail, cannot also be used to reduce noise.

If you're not sure where to set samples in DBE, download a wider view image with the dust well defined, from the internet, and star align that to your image. This is your reference. Then set sample points in the reference image. Save the instance of DBE to the workspace. Then apply to your image.

Excellent mosaic! You know what this means, right? More panels are needed. 😁

Maybe this explains some https://www.astropixelprocessor.com/community/tutorials-workflows/drizzle-for-mono-cameras/ As well as the linked references in Mabula's post.

Juan talks abou drizzle integration without upsampling, ie keeping the original size. This can be done in PI. So, try this and compare with a. the undrizzled image, and b. the 2x drizzled image.

Those were the days! (Are we off topic now?) Anyhow. I used to do my image processing on a small laptop screen. Last spring I invested in a proper high res screen, although not even close to what is shown here. What a difference! After that I also bought a computer with an i9 processor, so that I could finally upgrade pixinsight to the newest version.

This is a very easy and cheap mod, so I invested 100 SEK (£ 8 ) in silicone studs for my ASI294MM PRO. (Btw, that investment fixes 4 cameras. You buy the studs in packages of 16.)

I also live in a Bortle 5 area (20.5 sky Magnitude), and don’t use any LP filter. But I do need to collect a lot of data to bring out faint nebulosity. Plan to collect at least 10 hrs of data. One other trick you can use is to extract the luminance channel of your colour image, and process that separately. Then combine as LRGB. This can keep the colour mottle under control. 3.5 hrs from Bortle 6-7 https://www.astrobin.com/318629/C/?nc=&nce= A dark nebula from Bortle 5, 15 hrs. The faint stuff you’re after is imo not too different in these two targets. https://www.astrobin.com/cits92/

If you can get a convincing combination of the data, this can work. But as long as the light pollution isn’t too overwhelming, you can also combine two versions of the same master with different stretch. I’ve done this with good result in an image of the Orion Nebula. However you choose to do it, you need a lot of data to bring out the faint dust.

This nebula has a very large dynamic range, so you need lots of data, especially if you block part of the light. I’d suggest you skip the L-extreme here.

Thanks guys. Glad you both like it.