Rodd

Again, a botch. Always the palette. Here is a better version.

Palette has been my downfall in this data. I think I finally renedered a fairly ballanmced image-not to saturated, though I think some of the Ha is still to colorful. And in reality-the whole image is too colorful; certainly not what it l;ooks like in an eyepiece. Buts its the best I can manage.....so far. There is a color imballance that I have tried to minimize. Not sure why. This is the TOA 130 with a .7x reducer. The resolution doesn't seem that much inferior to the .99x flattener, and the FOV is much greater.

Another realistic image. Very nice. There are a few things in AP that have no equal: speed, FOV, aperture, good seeing, low Bortle, quality optics, and processing skill. You have them all! And it shows. Amazing

Thanks Goran.

Thanks, Bryan. I agree, saturation and brightness are often quite high. I am guilty of this often. “Painting” is an apt descriptor. Or in my case, “cartoon”. Maybe I am finally learning.

Thanks, Olly. I kind of suspected you would lean toward the first. “Leave 10% on the table” (or was it 5%?).

That’s what I was thinking as well.

Thanks HK!

I finally was able to get get this to stand up to Bin1. The palette is pale by design. Bumping bup saturation invariably cuases problems. Instaed of making the data look like what I want, I made it look like what it can handle. I posted two versions-teh second has a bit more sharpening--too much? TOA 130 with .99s flattener and ASI 1600. About 24 hours A bit more fine scale sharpening

BlurX helps, though some feel AI is not to be trusted

Thanks, Wim. The challenge is only using data from good seeing. Tries my patience.

Maybe this will pique interest

This is an experiment of s0rts. I was blessed with decent seeing (average for me is good, good is so rare its virtually a myth, and 5/5 is a never ordeal). I am trying to create as good of an image of this target as possible, so I am piling up teh data so that I can elimin ate all but the best and hopefully come up with a good image. This image is 281 120 sec red subs (9.4 hours) and 173 300 sec ha subs (14.4 hours). There was no reason to cull the red subs very dramatically, as FWHM values were consistantly below 2.5". The final FWHM of the red stacdk is 1.94, which is very rare for me to havev a stack come in under 2". I piled on the Ha for 2 reasons, one, I always manage to lose some of the faint emissions during processing, so I figured I would pile it on and hopefully strengthen the faintest regions. Also, the Moon came out about 12:00 during a couple days of this shoot, so after shooting red with no Moon, I didn';t want to lose good seeing sky time, so I decided to keep collecting Ha for this target instead of starting a new tareget. The image should probably be displayed at bin 2, based on the math, but I kept it at Bin 1 for the pixel peepers. Pardon the the bbackground, which is always the weakest element of my images. Hopefully I get good nights for the GB and L, which will smooth things out. I accentuated the Ha a bit more than I usually would becuase its harder to differentiate it in a mono image. The Ha was added using Pixinsight for those that question PIs ability to handle Ha insertion. I recall a recent post about this. TOA 130 with .99x flattener and ASI 1600. About 24 hours of red and Ha. AND I STILL COULD USE MORE!!!! Here's a slightly better core. Only sio much can be done with a mono stack....by me that is!

But what happens to me is the target drifts so that half way through the video, I have to move the scope. Or if I shoot 4- 5 videos, I have to reposition before each one. The drift limits the length of my video, which gives a smaller data set from which to keep, say 10% or 20% of the frames. Its an annoyance. So I’ll move the scope during the video knowing that the frames taken during the movement will be discarded. That works, but always having to worry about it is a pain.

Don’t the planets move differently than the stars? Even though I get sometimes halfway decent PA, I always see the moon or planets drift so that I need to readjust gif each video I make. And my mount has a lunar and planetary setting.

I wish I could polar align that well. I use a RAPA scope that claims it is pretty accurate. But when phd2 calculates PA, I haven’t been under 5 arcsec but once, at 2.3. Usually it warns me it could be better.

I find I have to do that even with my mount when imaging the planets or the Moon. Kind of frustrating

Ahh. I assumed all mounts track. I guess that’s not true.

How do you track without stars?

I had similar issues-a deluge almost washed away my observatory. I keep my power converters in a cooler beneath the tripod. Like a fool I did not think to place the drain plug on the downslope side, and I left it open! Naturally, the cooler filled with water and sediment and ruined my power converters. The observatory roll-off tracks were buried in mud. No fun imaging in Southern CT.

Regarding filter cycling. I don’t think there would be much difference in my case because I collect allot of data. At least 2 nights per channel. So for each channel my target progresses from about 30 degrees to an hour (sometimes 2) past the meridian. So each channel has data from the various declinations—just at different times. I check PA nightly, but often I make no adjustments

I have nog tried other TV software. I thought it might be due to old darks, but new ones are no different. I guess I could try maxim DL. Good idea.

I fouynd an alternatlyt registered SII stack that I used Windsor sigma clipping to register. Itr was smaller in dimensions, but teh same scale. I guess I must have registered to a cropped master. Dont remember. Seems to have worked. Thanks! C11 .7x ASI 1600 about 13 hours SHO

I found an alternate stack registered with Windsor sigma clipping that doesn’t have the grid. But the FOV is smaller. I think I must have cropped out the right hand area and registered to a cropped stack as the ha, SII snd oiii combine well. thd other issue I have is my amp glow does not calibrate out. Others don’t have this issue. It is only apparent in 300 sec subs (NB). I took new darks recently to see if the darks were the problem, but the same glow is visible. The amp glow is supposed to calibrate out. The best answer is to get a 2600, but I can’t

Out of luck. I checked and only have the registered SII subs and they all have the grid pattern.