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Thank you to everyone for your help on this one. Still a big learning curve for me but I'm getting there. Attached is my finished image. Not 100% happy with the background, still gradients in there which I've disguised a bit by bringing down the black point. Hopefully not too excessively though! My processing steps were: Dynamic Crop DBE x2 Background Neutralisation Photometric colour calibration Canon banding removal TGV Denoise Multiscale Median Transformation (for medium/low scale NR) HistogramTransformation StarNet2 SCNR on galaxy image to remove green cast Curves with masks on the galaxy image to tame background and enhance galaxy / boost colour UnsharpMask to increase detail Curves on the star mask to boost colours Morphological transformation on star mask to reduce star sizes PixelMath to recombine the stars with the star mask ADCNR as final touch of NR Curves to tame the background further and lightly boost galaxy contrast Now to decide the next target! Thanks Ed

With regard to a modified dslr, I would suggest one with an articulating screen. Your back and knees will thank you! Ed

If I'm understanding this correctly there are two things sticking out. 1 is that you are plate solving in different screens depending on whether you are doing a mosaic or single frame? 2 after framing up in framing assistant you are using slew and centre in that screen (not sure I understand why). My understanding of the plate solve button in the framing screen is to plate solve an image you have loaded in from a previous session in order to get the same position and rotation. I've done a 2 panel image of the veil nebula by doing the following. 1 With the mount parked, Pull the target in to framing assistant. 2 Set mosaic parameters for number of frames and rotation and lining them up as required on the sample image loaded at the time of target import. Not clicking on slew or centre etc. 3 Click on set as new sequence 4 Go to sequence tab and set everything up, no. Of frames, dither, guiding etc. 5 click on the start button. Mount slews to target, takes a 10s image for frame 1 and plate solves. It then adjusts position as required until centre of frame is spot on, it then tells me whether I need to rotate the camera and by how much. That's an iterative process but once right it automatically starts taking the first imaging shot and just gets on with the sequence. Might be worth giving it a go this way to see if you get a better outcome? Ed

For astro, just shoot in RAW and adjust in post processing. WB is irrelevant with RAW.

Oh wow - thank you all so much! Those images look amazing. What attracted me to M106 in the first place is the star colours along with the galaxy and those are captured really well Ref flats, a master was included in the stack but I must confess I don't do flats very often and its probably time I generated some new ones, especially as I have now removed my CLS clip in LP filter since doing this image. That dust bunny is new, so something has shifted in my imaging train. Last night I had a good play with DBE and did get better results that I was before, but still not perfect. Having seen one of Adam Blocks videos that suggested going more aggressive on the parameters as long as you ensure no stars are in your sample points (which I was doing already). Running the Canon banding script also seemed to help. Next step I guess is some kind of noise reduction but I'm going to follow the steps you guys have done and see what I get. Thanks Ed

ok, so the unlinking worked great, but I'm still having trouble using DBE to get a nice even background. Something I always seem to struggle with! Can someone run DBE on the attached for me and show me what the result looks like? Its still blotchy for me to some extent no matter what I try with DBE. I've clearly not grasped one of the settings correctly yet! Thanks Ed M106-session_1_session_2_session_3.fits

Ahhh thats better! Thank you! Lots of gradients etc to sort now but at least I can see what I'm doing in DBE now. Steve, still stacking in APP as I'm more familiar with that. I'm at a point where I need a bit of a morale boost with my processing skills so need a bit of a quick fix on that side from PI. I really like the stacking in APP, but no so much the processing element. I will have a go at stacking in PI but as I've not been getting the results out of APP post processing that I want I would like to get that nailed in PI first. Thanks Ed

Hi, Having lost my astro mojo over the summer I've rekindled my interest over the last few days (helped by some clear nights!). It was unfortunate timing as I was trying to get to grips with PI at the time and I'm sort of starting from a basic level again now! I'm trying to process a galaxy image I did over 3 nights in spring, M106 and for ease of learning I've stacked it using APP as I'm familiar with that but without selecting 'Neutralise background'. I then pulled the resulting FITS file in to PI. This has a very blue cast to it which is giving me problems being able to see what I'm doing with DBE. Is there any down side to running background neutralisation before DBE in PI? Or would I be better off stacking again in APP and selecting background Neutralisation this time? Image below to demonstrate just how blue it is! Thanks Ed

I don't think 10s should be an issue, I use the same exposure for plate solving without issue, albeit with an NEQ6 Pro. It does track after slew as well. Not sure if I'm misunderstanding something with your procedure but heres what I do for a Mosaic: 1 Find target in Stellarium and import in to NINA framing assistant 2 Set up the framing and Mosaic as required 3 Click on 'Replace as sequence' button 4 Go to sequence tab and set up exposures, dithering, tracking etc 5 Hit the go button! Works like a charm. Mount slews from the park position, plate solves, adjusts and then gets on with the session. You can of course replace line 1 with 'Find in NINA sky atlas'. It may be that there is a bug in NINA with the slew or centre buttons in the framing assistant? My process above doesn't use them and so may explain the difference? HTH Ed

How do you rotate the camera with the first of those two adaptors? Thanks Ed

Interesting thread, I had wondered this before but never did anything about finding out. So how do I create an album? I'm still not clear if there is a way of creating a gallery specific to me or its its just part of a bigger aggregated gallery? Thanks Ed

Have a look at Microsoft Image Composite Editor (ICE) that stitches images together and I'm sure I've used it in the past for lunar mosaics. Its free to download (or certainly was when I did)

I could be wrong, but with regard to the sealant I think best practice is to pack between the mirror and the base while the sealant cures, in order that it doesn't just squidge and settle with the mirror touching the base? Thats what I had noted anyway for when I get round to doing this mod on my 130PDS. Thanks Ed

This is pretty much where I am! Have decided to stick with my 600D (modified) for now as all the alternatives seem to have one drawback or another! 533 = Too small FOV with my 130PDS 294MC Pro = Calibration issues with narrow band filters (though may be resolved using gain 200 or higher) 2600 = Out of my price range Other 571 based cameras = More of a risk, initial feedback seems good but what will they be like after a year or two? Its a minefield! Hoping for a silver bullet of a new release from someone which has zero amp glow and a large enough FOV with my setup, but can't see anything on the horizon at the moment. Ed

Hi Colm, TBH I'm doing it because of the target, Western Veil & Pickerings Triangle, which have more stars than you can shake a stick at! To the point I think they detract from the beauty of the Nebula. Having said that, my personal preference isn't to reduce them massively, I'm very much in the camp of keeping things as natural as possible while helping the subject come to the fore. Having said that, there was a fairly recent thread on here (started by Alacante I think) where people were imaging M106 and the different colours in the surrounding stars was truly beautiful, something I wouldn't want to see diminished at all by star reduction! Ed

Thanks all, really interesting that you all seem to be removing the stars after a stretch. I thought it was the process of stretching that bloated and discoloured stars in the first place and hence trying to remove them as early in the process as possible. I shall follow your well trodden path and see where it takes me Many thanks! Ed

Not sure if it will help the walking noise particularly but I think the recommended ISO for the 600D (I use this camera as well) is 800. I did also find that when I used DSS for stacking it was horrible for horizontal banding, switched to APP and the problem disappeared. Again, may or may not help with what you are seeing, but thought I would share as its the same camera being used. Thanks Ed

Hi, I'm still using the PI trial (must be time up soon but not going to pay until I have to!) but I'm having a bit of difficulty in understanding when is the best time to separate stars and nebulosity to process separately. I noticed on Starnet 2 that you can remove them at the linear stage, but the starless image produced looks to be non linear. I'm then running in to a bit of an issue getting a good result using DBE and I don't really know if thats related to removing stars (an going non linear) too soon in the workflow. Any thoughts? Thanks Ed

For those interested, I have a bit of an update on this. I've been experimenting with Startools and Pixinsight and my images from each are below. I'm definitely further along that I was getting in Photoshop but still lots of improvements that could be made. Of the two I feel more comfortable with Pixinsight I think, and I'm happier with the resulting image but thats not to say that more time put in to understanding Startools better would improve that as well. I'm pleasantly surprised that I've managed to get a PI image so quickly having read the many many posts about the learning curve! I'm sure experts will look at it in horror but its the start of a journey for me Startools version: Pixinsight version:

Have had APP for a while, for stacking its light years ahead of dss, though I have to say for more general image processing I do find the interface a bit unintuitive. I'm currently using the free trial of PI which I intend to use for image processing. At this point I envisage using APP for stacking and PI for everything after that.

Just to say once again a big thank you to everyone that took the time to have a go at processing my data. I am now 'happy' that its more to do with my processing skills than the data itself so I'm knuckling down and trying to get better at it, both with the apps I already have and trying others out. Thanks Ed

Jager - thank you so much for this! I really appreciate that you have not only given the steps needed, but explained why and what to look out for. I'm going to give this a go over the weekend and see what I get. Thanks Ed

You have got way more out of that in PS than I have managed to Carole! Just underlines the fact that my issue is my processing skills, not the data.

Ah well... there is a story there as well! I use APP to stack and initially I was stacking panel 1 across all 6 sessions, saving that (unedited) and doing the same for panel 2, then combining them as a mozaic afterwards. When I was not getting the results I expected from my processing I initially thought it was the stack causing the issue, so I reverted to treating each session separately. Doing a panel 1 and panel 2 mozaic for each session (again not edited in any way) and then finally combining the 6 resulting images in a final stack. Didn't seem to make any difference 😕 It is something I could go back to though. Ed

where it mounts to the OTA?