geeklee

Nice image @Danield06 You've got loads of data in there. I've mentioned just now in another post but perhaps push the OIII harder before combining if you think there's more colour contrast to be had and see if there's more to get from the image to move it up your image list 🙂

Great set of images and thanks for sharing. I could get lost just shooting Ha and enjoying the B&W before crashing down to earth with sketchy OIII and colour 😁

Great image @blinky, love the colours and you've still managed to create loads of transitions/shades throughout. I'm working on an H(HO)O image at the moment and due to the always stronger Ha, it's again about that relationship with the OIII - stretch the OIII harder then combine and you'll obviously get stronger OIII - then depending on your combination, that could be a stronger blue. Alternatively "fitting" the image first with OIII as the reference can give a stronger OIII influence (i.e. Linear Fit in PixInsight). Sorry, not sure if that helps against what you've done already. As above, I think the colours you have look great.

Lovely Ha image Dave. I hadn't heard of this one and wondered how it would look as I scrolled down. The "mask" jumped right out 🙂

Brilliant images Bryan. A great start to the mosaic and shows the scale and position of those targets perfectly.

Hi Pat, it's just for the camera(s). It's the camera behaviour you're capturing. You may come across posts where the astro camera isn't even on the scope, just cap on, face down on a table and maybe even some tin foil or other material round the end to be ultra sure!

Really nice @whatablanker. I always enjoy seeing star clusters 🙂 I prefer the first image, by some margin - just looks less over cooked (in my opinion of course!). The first image could perhaps have a little red taken out of the background but it could be the screen I'm on.

Lovely! Plenty to enjoy with the 3.5 hours - nice processing as well to pull out lots of faint stuff without overdoing it at all. I have 5h tucked away from September I think (!) and am waiting to grab more. This weekend is looking good but I'm also capturing on another target so we'll see. I keep seeing these great M45 images for inspiration. What was it captured with, if you don't mind posting?

Great image @Z3roCool. Fantastic detail coming through all over.

Echoing the comments about APP - it's a great pre-processing tool and the one I also use. I came across this before PixInsight and used to take an image from APP and then tweak in Affinity Photo. APP can give a certain type of stretch and does have an excellent light pollution (gradient) removal tool among some other post processing tools, but it's limited at that end of processing. Once I realised it's limitations (for me) in post processing I moved that phase into PixInsight - although still compare the LP removal tool in APP to what PI can do with a tricky image. I find PixInsight extremely intuitive, working with images, duplicates, previews, matching previews on different images, storing pre configured processes, history etc. It has a vast amount of tools at its disposal, but as mentioned already you will likely only use small number of these, then perhaps add more as and when an image requires it (and your knowledge of the tools expand). I've found a noticeable curve in PixInsight, but it's not a wall as some find, but the typical slope where you can do plenty of things quickly and as you want to make smaller, more refined or complicated editing, then more time needs to be spent. I've recently found it still seems easier to do certain things in Photoshop/Affinity Photo (where my knowledge is at with PixInsight anyway - learning all the time). If I had to choose between the two it would have to be PixInsight, but I'd shed a tear at losing APP for the pre processing!

Thanks @ollypenrice. After reading this, I had to give it a go, so stepped outside PixInsight with my two TIFF files and tried to match the steps as close as I could with Affinity Photo. This has really been an eye opener for one of the problems I occasionally have with Starnet - turning something natural looking out the other end primarily when there are a lot of "damaged" areas. I chuckled with glee when it spoiled a bright part of a nebula but I just erased that from the middle layer and got my original back so easily. It let me fix other bits too + check out what a reduced star version would like of course! That ability (which is one of many often talked about big pros of PS type workflows) to maintain the changes and just readjust existing layers and masks is brilliant. This has made me think differently about how I might try and do similar steps in PI too. Thanks again for posting this.

Beautiful image Dave. As already covered, the processing and star work especially are brilliant.

Lovely wider view of this target Martin. The surrounding, outer dust looks great. Great perseverance through summer too.... and having to throw away 9 hours of subs!

If I understand what you're asking, in the UK we are GMT (+0) at end October to end March. In the other months we're GMT +1, that we refer to as BST (British Summer Time)

I guess I think of it as both. That drop down box for time is the exposure, hence longer to beat seeing issues. There's a brightness slider but I believe this is purely cosmetic for the view.

Hi Paul. You would still use PHD if you're guiding and it would also connect to the mount through ASCOM. My experience using that same software list is with a SkyWatcher mount. The only issue I've seen with the first bit of software connecting to the mount then the next one not is when one has been "Run as" Administrator and the other not. When I use Apt I run everything natively - no run as Administrator. When I use another bit of software, it's set to launch as Administrator so I let it open PHD2 and CdC itself - also elevated (i.e. as Administrator) Not sure if the above helps? Does PHD just give you an error on mount connection?

Just speculation but are are any of the images clouded out or enough to reduce the star count? If not already done, just have a quick look through them all. I'm not sure if this would be a problem for the engine but the error message says "some frames"

Good post, thanks for sharing that link - saved for another day!

An admirable project in the UK without a doubt and I couldn't believe you'd still squeezed it in during that time period! It was a real treat viewing at 1:1, especially around the core area and the dust lanes. I guess only you can answer the best on whether it was worth it - does it meet your original goal(s)? Wow, that's a staggering amount of sample boxes! Apologies if you approached it like this already, but what about dealing with each panel independently - remove gradients, balance the backgrounds, then use APP to do the mosaic- assisted with LNC. Did you test different LNC degrees and iterations in APP with the above? Perhaps it can be a multi year project? <tumbleweed> Yeah, I know!😁 I'm always very impressed seeing longer term projects like this from challenging skies & weather - this was no different 👍

Great write up and image. Thanks for sharing the links to the methods used - it's always enjoyable learning and trying techniques in PixInsight that may replace/complement existing workflows.

I have one on my RedCat and remember coming across a recent ASCOM driver mentioning support for two instances. Could always ask the author to confirm and his experience. https://deepskydad.com/autofocuser3 It's under the AF3 section (under Software in the link) so not sure if its backwards compatible or as alluded to above, stable

Very nice. Loads of detail in both the heart and soul.

Francis @fwm891, Adrian @Adreneline Hope you don't mind me adding to this first light thread - I wasn't sure about the best place to put it but thought joining a thread may be better than a brand new one. With mixed skies tonight I thought it might be a good chance to get the StellaLyra RC6 outside for its first light. Collimation inside looked OK with eyecap and Cheshire - just a small tweak of the secondary performed. These photos aren't great but this is roughly how it looked! Any tips welcome. As usual the forecast was being optimistic and it was really challenging dodging the clouds so I didn't spend any time looking at a star test this time. Some cloud made it into the subs, but here are two targets (M27 and NGC 457) - both 30x30s (15 minutes each) - with the ASI533. I was breaking all the "rules"... guiding was a shocker - half the imaging scale you say? Not tonight, try 2-3x the imaging scale. Focus was a challenge and something I'll have to work on. Quick 5 minute process in PixInsight - to be honest more time wouldn't get more quality anyway 😁 Thanks for looking and I'm keeping an eye out for future images from your StellaLyra RC6s and the bigger RC8s in circulation.

Thanks Adam. I've read and tried to absorb a lot of the discussion on SGL about drizzle and always come to the conclusion I don't require it but in this instance when I saw the square stars I decided to look at it within APP. I read some APP forum posts and the tool tips and just tried out the options. I put the droplet size back to 1.0 and the scale back to 1.0 and stacked - I got an image with original dimensions and rounder stars than no drizzle. Running them through APP and PI for star sizes, I did gain ~10-20% in size. Say 1.5 pixels to 1.6 or 1.7 pixels. I have gone back to revisit this while working on a 10 hour Ha integration of the Heart nebula. When doing the above, I notice a very slight loss of detail - hard to see at 1:1 but it's there. SNR was very close though - almost indistinguishable - a little better if the reported values were accurate. Reducing droplet size to 0.75 and then 0.5 (keeping scale at 1.0) did seem to recover a lot of that detail while keeping the SNR similar. Having droplet size at 0.5 and scale at 2.0 created a noisier image (as expected) with double the resolution. With 10 hours of data this still looked great, but SNR was a little lower. Worth investigating if you have some time. Here's the section in APP in case you haven't come across it. Changing mode from interpolation to drizzle and then working with your droplet size and scale - tool tips provide a little help. Requirements are under sampled image and well dithered.

Hi everyone - this image has taken a month or so to acquire and unfortunately not because it's got so much integration time 😁 I eventually got the OIII during the (very) occasional break in clouds during October, with the Ha obtained in September. This is using a RedCat 51, Atik 460EX, filter drawer and Baader Ha and OII filters. My OIII is a shocker for halos, although I think I've hidden them well... Captured with Voyager, calibrated and stacked in APP then processed in PixInsight. I drizzled the data - just x1 - as I was starting to see square stars. The shapes came out better but at a small cost in size. Image scale is ~3.8"PP. Ha - 31 x 600s (~5hr) OIII - 30 x 600s (5hr) I like this colour blend although it won't be to everyone's (or anyones?!) taste. I've got some challenges with stars and a very soft look but it's done for now. As always, thanks for looking and any feedback for improvement is always welcome. There's plenty of really interesting stuff in the image, here's the annotation with more details: Here's the raw stacks, just Auto STF in PI