Filroden

I wish I'd had such a good first attempt! I can definitely see the nebulosity though it needs some more processing to remove the vignette. Once that background is gone I think it will be much clearer to see. And that's just a total of 10 minutes of integration time. Imagine what you're going to achieve with an hour.

I apologise now to anyone who might have had a clear forecast tonight. I've just received my new camera. I've treated myself to one of the new ZWO ASI 1600 mono cooled cameras. I figure it removes the noise problems I suffer from using the DSLR (I can make darks for set point temperatures now, plus I can cool the thing to -30C). I also figure that as a mono camera I can image more in our limited capture windows - a huge boon I'm hoping. So I'm going to be trying LRGB imaging on AltAz, hopefully within the next week/month/year/century.

Isn't it great to always be able to go back to older data and reprocess it with newer tools/knowledge? I'm still not convinced by StarTool's treatment of colour (not that I do better with other tools) but you've made a good improvement on the noise with a much enhanced contrast.

I suspect they have to stack much less as they are taking 10min subs, etc. We can only do short subs so we have to stack many more. We get quickly into diminishing returns for noise reduction. I don't think you can add more subs to an already stacked set. I suspect DSS would give each sub equal weight so one image combining over 200 subs would carry no more weight than a single 30s sub. PixInsight allows you to weight subs but I also think the math wouldn't work effectively. Unfortunately you'll need to restock every time. Can you save calibrated lights and just stack those? That might save processing bias, darks and flats for older subs.

Here's another attempt. I think I've lost a little of the emission trying to reduce the noise but I think I've got more detail in the fuzzy above it. i separated the image into its RGB components and treated each with varying degrees of levels/curves then recombined to a full colour image. I definitely prefer the star colours now so I might have to try that same technique on my own images.

Yes, I found processing my 220 images of the Soul Nebula took longer then collecting them! The good thing with PixInsight is I can run calibration in batches and it's just the final integration that has to be done together. My biggest problem is that PixInsight saves all intermediate files and they are huge. Given each sub goes through about 4 stages, I think I ate about 100Gb of disk space doing 220 images.

It's so feint there is little for me to run a mask from. I guess I could try extracting a mask from the Blue channel and see if I can protect the emission more.

I cropped first to remove the vignetting and then removed the remaining background which was then much easier.

Here's that image with mine rotated and resized to approximately match and one with it superimposed. In my original attempt I think I could just make out the outer boundary of the nebula against the background. I think another couple of hours of data might make it a lot clearer.

I definitely need more processing practice. I really struggled with this one as the nebulosity was so feint. Here's my quick effort in PixInisght. I cropped the image to reduce the processing time. Steps I ran included background removal, background neutralisation, colour calibration, noise reduction on background, deconvolution, a masked stretch to protect the stars, curves transformation, small histogram transformation and colour saturation.

Interesting findings. I'd always thought that so long as you could exceed read noise then total exposure time was all that mattered (other than more subs for DSLRs is better to help reduce/remove banding). if you can upload and share the fits file in something like OneDrive or Dropbox I can give it a go in PixInsight.

If you can see cats and this is the Soul Nebula then surely there must be nine in there? Happy hunting the other three

And now I can't decide if it's an upturned baby or a side view of ET.

I think I've been lucky so far. The fence screens it completely already and the Dynamic Background Extractor finds no gradient. You're right though, poorer seem might diffuse the light and interfere more. I may need to increase the fence height with a temporary screen. Thankfully all the lights in the neighbourhood are LED and screened to only point down. I think that's why I'm seeing such dark skies. From the top floor (above the lights) I get some amazing views.

It was debayered but I'd not applied white balance. This was straight from the integration. I'd normally remove any gradient then neutralise the background and run colour calibration as my first steps. I don't know what that would be in StarTools terms.

Another great effort. Thank you for taking the time to process it. I'm glad you had some fun with it. I've had a second try, this time managing to use Deconvolution - probably the hardest module I've found in Pixinsight so far. I've also reduces the stars and toned back the red. I'm not sure this is better as I've completely killed the background but I can see more of the fainter nebula. BTW, does anyone else think this nebula looks like a) a baby with its head at the lower end of the photo or b) Elvis, with his quiff to the top? For interest, I've also included two pictures of my current set up position (one with and without flash). I'm having to use the fence to block the light right next to the garden. There is one at the end of the garden too. Pretty amazing that night seem to affect my images with little discernible pollution and a rough measure of SQM at 20.4. If I also stand by the fence I can just trace the Milky Way overhead.

Thanks for trying it Steve. I'll see what more data I can collect and in the mean time I'm going to try deconvolution again with some better masks to see if I can sharpen it.

It will be good to see if StarTools can do anything more. I still haven't mastered deco nvolution so it will be interesting to see if it can sharpen the image. I'm not happy with my processing but I'm much happier with the raw data. It goes to show more data makes a huge difference though it also makes alignment much harder as I'm having to collect data over a much longer window and crop back much further. In hindsight I should have rotated my camera by 45 degrees to give myself more field to play with. Tonight could be clear though windy so I might try to add more data. The moon will start to interfere soon and I'm worried in another month it will be too high and rotated too much.

Round 2 - I apologise this is badly processed but here's what an additional 80 minutes of data can do... IC1848 - Soul Nebula 54º34’N 000º59’W Equipment Skywatcher Esprit 80 Celestron Evolution Alt/Az mount Canon EOS 60d Images Lights Quantity Exposure ISO Notes Lights 160 30s 1600 10/09/2016 21:54 to 23:47, 63% Moon, SQM 20.4 60 30s 800 07/09/2016 23:03 to 23:44, 36% Moon, SQM 20.3 110 minutes total integration Bias Superbias used Darks 30 60s 1600 Scaled to 30s in Pixinsight Flats 32 1/32s 1600 Here's a link to the raw fits file if you StarTools gurus want to see if it can pull out more detail: https://1drv.ms/u/s!AvTUh2l4A9nVgck6uy56qgCfDIcBzA Next step top is to take about another 130 minutes and see what four hours will show.

My Heart Nebula was a bust. Like you say, I need far more photons for something this feint. I can't get above the noise with 30 minutes. It looks like another clear night tomorrow with little wind. I may see if I can get a couple of hours on the Soul Nebula though I'm tempted to park it as even if I got a couple of hours, by the time I crop the image, I don't think I can get it in a single shot. I'd need to do a mosaic which doubles the subs I will need I'm thinking I might have to try something else tomorrow - probably adding more to my M31 image.

Not my finest work. I can't remove the lines that look like claw marks and I've given up processing it and just pushed it through a quick stretch in Photoshop. This is only 30 minutes of total image so I'm actually surprised to see anything. Going to see if the images of the Heart Nebula are any better.

Really good to see it's possible to capture both nebula with an unmodded DSLR. You can definitely see both nebula in the image and it's nice to be able to capture both with the double cluster. My field of view barely covers the Soul Nebula and I'll have lost quite a lot of the Heart Nebula (once I finally get to look at those images). I did think to take a third sequence between the two nebula and try for my first mosaic but the clouds came over. I'm on my third processing attempt. Although I got rid of my circular artefacts, there were two or three really bad marks across the integrated image. Given I'd rotated the image slightly when I cropped it to remove the stacking artefacts, they were not horizontal/vertical and they didn't cover the full width of the image - they almost looked like a bear had clawed them!. I'm running the data again with no calibration other than auto detection of hot/cold pixels to see if it's the bias, darks or flats causing me grief.

Well, I think I've no Heart but I might have a Soul. Just spent best part of the day integrating and re-integrating 60x30s shots of both Heart and Soul Nebula. In both cases I seemed to have a very circular artefact being introduced on integration. When I removed/neutralised the background and stretched the image it looked like someone had taken a circular grinder to the centre of the images! I've been pulling my hair out to figure what was wrong with my set up given the images appeared much sharper than the ones I took for the M31 image and I also reset my goto after every 10 shots (my tracking seems to degrade after about 10 minutes so I recenter every 5 minutes). Well, it appears it was all down to one misclick in my settings. I'd noticed a function that looked like it was ideal for helping to de-rotate images and had clicked it. It certainly did something! If I only had a brain! I've gone back to my original integration workflow and I'm just doing the final integration on the Soul Nebula. The initial integration, with a quick background neutralisation and stretch, seemed to show nebulosity. Hopefully I can have it processed tomorrow (removing the background is going to be tough because of the vast star field and sheer amount of nebulosity in that region). If successful, I'll then process the Heart Nebula. I'm not expecting much as my camera isn't modded so I think it's only 25% sensitive to Ha and 30 minutes total integration time just isn't long enough. But it will be good to know if it's worth doing 4 hours on it.

Hi Nige I definitely prefer the look of the 210mm compared to the 420mm even though its a fraction of the total integration time. I think you're right about the additional glass on the x2.