Adreneline

Wow! Excellent first images Francis! You got off to a much better start than me with your first light. I only managed M31 and that was after an age spent getting focus; I'd also had not relised the focus unit was prone to droop. Purely for comparison purposes here's my "first light" M31 "out of the box" - RC 6", Canon 70D, CEM25-EC unguided, no calibration frames. Mine RC packed ready for the move but the move has been delayed (arghhhhh!!!) so I may be unpacking it again. Adrian

I think (maybe?) I got the first one - never been a trailblazer before. I wanted one of these and was offered the StellaLyra - only difference being the colour (doesn't matter in the dark) and the name on the side. I understood they were soon to be added to the FLO site.

Got mine a few weeks back. Not had much chance to use it as yet but initial results look very promising. Adrian

Exciting! Enjoy

Stunning result Emil. Love the detail especially in the lower right quadrant - really good. Adrian

I know there are plenty who will say otherwise but I gave up with NB autofocus and SGP - I wasted too many perfectly clear night. I decided to devote one night to establishing the best focus positions for each filter with a BM, noted down the settings and fed them into SGP and/or offsets with respect to Lum. Sorted and time well spent. Temperature variations here are not that great that it's caused me any issues and I've not lost out on valuable imaging time. That's probably not the answer you were hoping for, sorry If you think Ha is a trial wait until you try to get OIII to work. Life is too short. from Melbourne, England

Haha! I'm retired so I need something to help fill the time between brushing up on quantum physics and sleeping

I suppose in principle something similar ought to work in any photo package - invert the image, reduce the green, reinvert the image. Because I have PI I take the easy approach but I might have a go in PS or Affinity and see if the same result can me emmulated. Adrian

I'm afraid I used the "cheating method". I took the image into PixInsight, inverted the image and applied the SCNR process normally used to reduce green in an image. I then reinverted the image and the magenta halos have been removed. I am sure there are fancy methods involving PixelMaths and masks and all manner of things but the cheat method seems to work and I honestly can't see it has changed anything else. Adrian

Very nice image of one of my favourite areas. Hope you don't mind but I took the liberty of removing the magenta halos. I probably didn't use the best approach but they've gone and I don't think it has changed the rest of the image. Adrian minus_magenta_stars.tiff

Very nice - love the colours. Adrian

Haha! There are indeed. I think I might try and add some RGB to bring a bit of colour next time I get a perfectly clear, moonless night. Thanks for the advice. Adrian

With Orion starting to reappear in the night sky it's time to have yet another go at imaging the Angelfish Nebula. I've tried this target on several occasions last year and everytime was thwarted by poor seeing, and unfavourable moon or clouds curtailing imaging. This is 31 x 180 seconds (93 minutes) of Ha, unguided. It is a huge target and barely fits into the fov of my Samyang 135mm with ASI1600. I really struggle to pull anything out of the data. I've included my calibrated master if anyone else would like to have a go. If the Ha is this feint I dread to thing what OIII I might get - if any; it will definitely need a clear and moonless night! As always all C&C are welcome and appreciated. Thanks for looking. Adrian Angelfish-Ha-93mins.fits

Hi Stu, I've had a play but my colours are not as vivid as yours - I'm more of a pastel man! Thanks for letting me play Adrian

I am somewhat intrigued by this statement. What mechanism would cause a filter to fail? Do they have a 'working life'? Is this something we should all be looking out for? Adrian

Thanks Vlad - I'll give it a go and see how I get on. P.S. The GSO is boxed up for moving to darker skies - It might be a few weeks before it see the light of night again.

I thought I would combine H, O and S in the linear state and then stretch, so this is 10 x 180s of Ha, OIII and SII mapped as SHO. At least this approach ensures all channels are equally stretched (as advocated with RGB) but results in a rather pastel look. More data would be good but surprising what you can get with 90 minutes and a Samyang 135mm.

I have A and C and use A the most; not used S.

I have found the reduce star size action in Annie's Astro Actions for Photoshop works well - at $15 they are a bargain with lots of useful actions. This particular action is quite subtle and on occasion I have used it several times on the same image. I have also used it on individual filter masters (mostly OIII) to reduce bloating before combining - it is a very effective method of reducing those annoying blue halos (it also works a treat on B in RGB processing) and seems to have no impact on the underlying nebulosity. It was a good fix when imaging with a cheap doublet! Adrian

MotionCo - they provide a very comprehensive supply of pulley wheels and belts. I bought an additional belt to cut and stick to the lens itself to help with registration. HTH Adrian

Thanks to @mAnKiNd I've changed the mounting arrangement of my Samyang by using the WO tube ring - it is soooo much better. I find that the CEM25-EC allows me to image without guiding up to 180s which is also the sky limit around here. This is 10 x Ha, 20 x SII and 30 x OIII (all 180s) stacked in APP and processed in PI with a little bit of noise reduction (Dfine2) in Affinity. The new setup. Adrian

Excellent! A very impressive image. Thanks for all the background info too. Adrian

Difficult to know what to say! Stunning and inspiring in every sense of the word. Thanks for sharing. Adrian

Hi Peter. All very strange. I always use APP to calibrate, register and integrate and I've not noticed any issues at all. I've just been scouring my latest image of the Heart & Soul in SHO for hot pixels and can't find any - my master dark seems to have worked very well. I've also just had a detailed look at the master dark in PixInsight and can see no evidence of anything elongated. Not very helpful I know but I will certainly be interested to know if APP is the culprit; I'm using version 1.082. Adrian

You've captured lots of nice detail - interesting choice of colours! I've got to say I mess around endlessly with colour mappings in PI and then often end up blending more than one in PS (or equivalent). Interesting to see you're using Topaz DeNoise - I am currently trying DeNoise AI and comparing it with DxO Dfine - both on 30 day trial. Thanks for sharing. Adrian