geeklee

Looks great Adrian - very solid setup. With new moon coming up, hopefully you'll get a chance to try everything out.

A slight reprocess of M51 from images taken on the 9th, 10th, 12th and 14th April 2021. Two lovely smaller galaxies can be seen - IC 4278 (just above NGC 5195) and IC 4277 (just above and to the right of NGC 5195). Very faint but clearly visible. In total, 285 x 120s (9.5 hours) using the StellaLyra 6" Ritchey-Chrétien on a SW AZEQ6 and a ZWO ASI533. It was taken at native focal ratio of F9. Captured with Voyager, stacked & calibrated in APP and processed in PixInsight.

A little spring fun from the other night. Two pane mosaic of the Sadr region taken with 7nm Baader Ha @ ~F2.8. Left side is 42 minutes, right side 30 minutes.

I think at that marking (just shy of the L) I've seen even a 0.1mm spacer push it all the way to the end stop (to the right). Although mine hard stops just after the L (on the right) and not at the infinity marking - not sure if this is normal! That looks like a really nice setup Des.

Most capture applications can compensate for backlash - either with "overshoot" type approach or calculating actual values. Was just thinking out loud more than anything on whether there was much and if that would be a pain in applications trying to get into such a small focus zone. I felt like autofocus was the last step to my RedCat being fully automated and it made such a difference. Still contemplating ways to introduce this to the Samyang - having seen so many good ideas on here. I'd already bookmarked a belt and pulley based on @Adreneline's previous Samyang system (and current RedCat one).

Nice one Pierre, I've been reading your updates in the main post. Gear to gear looks like a little backlash would be there but with the belts perhaps less, especially thinking about the fine focusing margins of the Samyang when wide open (or close).

Definitely a big step forward compared to the images in the initial post - great job. If you hadn't posted the PI screenshot in post 5 I'd have left it there..... but.... 😁 I'm not sure what stage you were at in PI when you posted the screenshot - colour calibration by the process open? (early anyway). I think the stars and highlights have started to become blown out. If I compare the largest star in the flame nebula, the larger ones around and the highlights in IC410 - larger stars, whiter stars and the highlights starting to go white. The earlier image has a more balanced stretch and colour with smaller stars + a more neutral if dark background and still loads of faint Ha in the background. I think there may have been finer structure in the nebula as well (maybe a little too much saturation & noise reduction?) but the small size in the screenshot might be tricking me. The only way to check is keep an eye on the early image - you can use "History Explorer" to go back in time or just keep a cloned image off to one side maybe (just drag and drop the image identifier onto a blank part of the workspace). Hopefully I'm not taking anything away from what you've done - you should be really pleased with where you've taken the image from the initial post!

Ah... this was just posted as I'd added my images - d'oh! Apologies I had to look them out so it took a little bit.

@astro mick @bottletopburly Here's an old 120s sub using an 80mm refractor with my 533MC Pro, unity gain (100) and -10degC. Preview below is the debayered single frame with STF then with unlinked STF. Third image is stack of ~2.5 hours - again just an STF. FITS file of the single sub attached at bottom. Here's what I managed with the stack at the time (to show colour): https://www.astrobin.com/mcl0r7/?nc=user L_2020-03-10_22-30-09_Bin1x1_120s__-10C.fit

That's a great step forward @powerlord - well done for bringing it all back to the start and trying a different approach. Just comparing the two - I see smaller, less saturated stars, enhanced structure in the flame nebula, more definition in the horse head itself and structure in the Ha cloud behind it. The colour balance looks challenging, but I think there's very good reason to be as pleased as you sound!

Lovely image @Jannis Fantastic detail in the spiral arms and down into the core, plus some really nice colour. Very innovative approach using all the tools at your disposable to get even better results.

Nice one Frank, very clear!

HI Mick - I don't see the above as grey, just green. With the green removed, I see mainly brown and red. I've stretched it a little more so I could look at the colour - great detail in there BTW In Apt, those scaling settings are just for preview purposes, they have no bearing on the image output at the end or what you'll be working with to integrate. I'm not sure if DSS is causing an issue, sorry. Hopefully some perseverance will get you the result you're after. For what it's worth, if I try and mess about with the background or the colour calibration on the compressed non-linear image above it doesn't go well. Did you try these steps when the data was non-linear?

Great image @PadrePeace Dedication getting so many subs, but even more impressed with how many you threw away - I was having a twitch or two just reading that! It's unusual to see a scope and mount like you've listed being used with an uncooled 224MC - you've done a brilliant job. Fantastic detail and colour and I really like that close in FOV.

As Martin says, green is definitely normal. Here's a couple of examples - different scopes, same camera (533). I don't know if there's such a thing as too green or problem green - how do yours look? Are they debayered Adam? This setting will do that: If I'm using Apt, I tend to adjust the Red and Blue Channel Scaling Factor to offset the green (and sometimes the Auto-Stretch Factor too). They are in the same tab, right hand side: Here's one of the above with the scaling settings (the other one would need higher values!):

What a cracking image Alan. Those HII regions - so subtle but so clear. Lovely colour throughout as well. As Adam mentioned, having seen a few hours on my own screen (and being largely unimpressed) I know what the aim is for a future version.

Great job Chris. Just an hour per channel too! It's got that explosion of rainbow colour - strangely more noticeable and absorbing in the starless version. Is it a modified SHO palette? I also like the detail in dark dusty areas.

That's great Graham! Love the way NGC 5053 hovers at the bottom peppering the background with its stars. M53 is looking good too

Lovely image Adam, some great detail at full resolution. I really like the angled framing too. Definitely worth persevering with the Ha, even with what you have already - perhaps try and bring it into the image in targeted areas - Your ~3+ hours should add more to the jets of M82 and within the arms of M81.

Thanks Terry. I guess it's also easy to dump the default process on an image whereas I usually tend to experiment with different amount and not just "1.00". Usually I end up with much less, but still sometimes end up taking some green out later anyway 🙄 It's always best to experiment with these things especially as SCNR is typically linked to colour calibration.

Why do you not do it in the linear stage Terry? I've seen tutorials that utilise it in linear and others non-linear - depending on data. Most I've seen say it's a step after colour calibration (i.e. in the linear stage).

😅 All I see is a great image but with loads more detail I can enjoy👍 I'll let the creator "enjoy" any flaws - I do it enough on my own images, I'm certainly not looking for it elsewhere! 😅

It has, I've opened that in a new tab and done the typical browser "click to zoom" (cursor turns to a magnifying glass with a plus sign) function and am now enjoying the 1:1 version - thanks it looks great 👍

There's a potential market for renting out to SGL members throughout the year 😉

That's OK, I should have just asked You're right, the compression into PNG and JPEG isn't always great, but I think they're part of a small type of image set you can post (no TIFFs I believe - except as an attachment for people to download of course). When you insert an image, you can then double click it and choose the size you want it in the post. If it was a bigger image, you can open it in another tab and you'll get the full size version.