geeklee

The beer googles did a great job David 😊 Great detail and really nice colours in the centre of IC405. The tadpoles look fantastic - the depth on them standing out clearly.

That's lovely Adam. The extended nebulosity easily visible and clean to edge of the frame despite how much fainter its getting. It looks slightly magenta (with some pinkish star edges) to me, but accept this could just be my screen. Removing magenta seems to clean up the stars and background with:

Love this description 😅 I like your experiments and have enjoyed the same when trying this type of thing myself. Awesome, look forward to seeing this one over the coming weeks/months.

Nice one Adrian - Great use of the data to create an image with depth, detail and subtle colours. The dark dust/globules look fantastic too. Hard to imagine many better IC1396 versions at this focal length.

That's great news Chris. That's come out well and some of the fainter outer edges just coming through in the periphery of the image.

Very interesting Wim and good write up as always. Great use of the limited Luminance so far.

Great job @ONIKKINEN Good choices in processing 👍 I always bemoan Orion's altitude with me at 57N but 60N is even more challenging.

That workflow has definitely worked well Andy. Nice detail and subtle colours. The little wisps of Ha in the arms looks great too!

Yes, this! @Lee_P I wish subs affected by guiding was the main issue - it always seems to primarily be sky conditions - thin high cloud etc. It's only when looking through an entire night (or more) in SubFrameSelector in PI and then visually looking through them (usually in APP in a manual way!) do I see unwelcome patterns and differences.

As @tooth_dr mentions the Flats would need calibrated if you're throwing everything into APP. Typically the Master Flat will be (1) a set of Flats and (2) a set of matching Dark Flats or Bias frames. This will produce a calibrated Master Flat. The calibrated Master Flat can then be used with a Master Dark and (in APP) a BPM. While you can absolutely throw all your raw calibration frames into APP, I create the masters then just have them added so its clear to me what's happening in case something goes wrong. If you do decide to create Masters separately, under the Calibration tab is this button:

Thanks @tomato. As mentioned I felt BXT did a little work on the galaxies, but more on star sizes (although the finished one also has additional reduction/processing). Here's a comparison of the original stack (top) with just a simple stretch. It's had no colour calibration or any other processing. Below is the crop from the finished image. I think NoiseXT made more of an impact for me and then using separate masks (using the GAME script) to spend individual time on some of these smaller galaxies. I'm the same. I remember getting the subs from the second night on the computer and thinking "these are great, much better star sizes than the night before" then instead seeing the star count being about half (or less) what it was the night before with less signal. Gutted! You've just got to work with what you can in the UK! Thanks again.

Thanks for the comments @Lee_P @simmo39 Definitely a fun part of the workflow, checking annotated views. Some of those extra galaxies showing are worth spending a bit of time enjoying and sometimes looking up further. PGC 9301 in the top right is cool. ..and PGC 9101. I could go on and on 🤣

I picked up a second hand SW 150-PDS at the start of November and finally had the chance over the last few weeks to show it some clear skies. At least, it seemed clear but reviewing the sub afterwards showed how mixed conditions were. From the 9 hours captured, I settled on ~6 hours of subs - the best of a bad bunch! The framing was inspired by an absolutely superb image by @tomato that was posted recently. 363 x 60s. SW 150-PDS and ASI 533MC-Pro. Processed in PixInsight. I used BlurXTerminator with lower settings and saw a slight improvement in NGC 891 and a noticeable one in star sizes. Stars were also blended from two different stretches. As always, click through for the full size. Thanks for looking. I spent some extra time on NGC 906 and NGC 914 with their own masks to increase colour and try and bring out a little more structure.

Fantastic Dave. Lovely dust & Ha of Barnards loop alongside some super detail throughout (for what must be ~12"PP in the presented image?).

Thanks for all the supportive comments @ONIKKINEN @ParallaxPete @MalcolmM @callisto 🙂 Thanks again Pete. Like most of AP, everyone has a style they like - whether its star count & size, nebulosity, contrast etc. I know these stars aren't perfect or to everyones taste but they work for me for different reasons across each image.

Very clear examples David, nice 👍 I'm seeing similar on RedCat data at 3.8"PP. Subtle on larger structures but more obvious on small scale stuff (still subtle though) These go from being good to real stand outs after BlurX. That little bit of deconvolution done by BlurX really makes them shine. Here's the Crescent from my RedCat so 3.8"PP. Left, original Ha stack. Middle with "Nonstellar" at 0.6 then right at 0.9 My finished image was close but BlurX would have added a touch extra. I see subtle improvements in all the nebulosity stacks I've looked at and that's just the undersampled raw Ha.

I have a few projects going at the moment in broadband and narrowband but with the challenging clear skies over the past 2-3 months I've also snagged the occasional star filled image. These made the most of a big moon or a break in clouds that wasn't likely to continue. I hope there's something for you to enjoy across the images. Here's a 6 pane mosaic - around 30 minutes per pane, with one pane sadly, affected by cloud. SharpStar 13028HNT and ASI533MC-Pro. Stock 2 is in the top left. Here's a familiar image - the Double Cluster in Perseus (NGC 869 and NGC 884). This is 120 x 60s (2 hours). SharpStar 13028HNT and ASI533MC-Pro. Finally, here's the Owl cluster in Cassiopeia (NGC 457). This is 34 x 60s (34 mins). SW 150-PDS and ASI533MC-Pro. All pre-processed in APP and processed in PixInsight. Thanks for looking.

Lovely Dafydd 👍

It does look cleaner - there's a touch more subtlety in the first image for me (on star sizes and some of the really faint dust) and the FOV is slightly smaller here too? Also - the image appears to be ~10000x10000 instead of the native 533MC size like the earlier image. If you're drizzling x3 for any reason (although that would only be 9Kx9K) - I wouldn't bother - I don't think you'll be seeing extra details and you want as much SNR as you can get if you're pushing the faint stuff. Both are images to be pleased with 👍

Good shout Steve. As always, these things are worth trying and comparing to see if they offer something. When I see amateur x2 drizzled data, usually everything is just bigger and blurrier. There's not much extra in there to see I couldn't have seen if the data was half the size, let alone double. If it helps with printing though (or anything else) then of course keep doing the same. EDIT: There's no doubting the excellent detail in both images.

Great start, both images look good and nothing wrong with the colour choices - with narrowband you can use the traditional stuff and/or experiment. I notice the images at full size look almost double the resolution of the 533MM (I have one too). If you're drizzling the data thinking it'll give you more detail, I personally don't think it's adding anything here. The below snippet looks like a mask outline? If you're using masks be careful on the edges - feather them / blur them. I might not have seen this if the data wasn't twice the size

A little, but you've brought good nebulosity into the faint areas. It's at the point just before where you are that you need to decide if you'll push it that bit further Don't worry, for my own, I did the same Look out for the background (not dust/nebulosity), it's got some red/magenta creeping in. Here's a side by side with most of it removed. It's not perfect, just an quick example.

Correct, I'd read and seen the same. Here was the warning from ZWO someone posted on SGL. Perfect, I'll have a dig about and see what I have and maybe use the AM5 one too. Did you just fit the dovetail bracket to the ASIAIR or something else? I have an ADM vixen bracket on the bottom of the ASIAIR right now and it connects easily to a vixen bar... so I'm also considering an approach with that... somehow!

Thanks for sharing Martin. I didn't run BlurX very hard (I feel the one above is quite strong - nothing wrong with that). I did have a little trouble with colour though, so it's quite subdued on that front. Hopefully complements your images above 👍 EDIT: slight revision

It's worth reading the official documentation provided with the tool in PixInsight. It's more comprehensive - of course - than the information on his website. It not only covers the function of the tool, but as much as he can say about how its working and some theory. On Windows you can find it directly here - outside PI - C:\Program Files\PixInsight\doc\tools\BlurXTerminator\BlurXTerminator.html. Just paste that into a browser window.