smr

5 minutes ago, Adam J said:

6-8inch F6 Newtonian for galaxies. 

Any models in particular ?

34 minutes ago, CraigT82 said:

Sorry I just re-read your OP, and the thread title, and it made perfect sense... don't know what I was thinking about when I read it through the first time!

Are you wedded to refractors?

 

Not sure on that one tbh, I've only ever had a refractor, and one at that. I have heard that reflectors can need collimating and that's something I don't know anything about really, but if I understand correctly you can get faster imaging / cheaper reflectors / longer FL ? I wouldn't know where to look though.

1 hour ago, CraigT82 said:

What you've said there is a little confusing to me... you say for relatively widefield imaging, which implies a relatively short FL scope, but then mention you want a longer FL scope?

Longer than the z73 but still quite wide..  is that what you want?

Sorry yes it was a bit confusing ! What I mean is, is there something for around the same price / performance ratio as the Z73 but in a longer focal length scope. So isn't super expensive but performs well. A good performing long focal length scope for around £500 - which scopes are worth looking at, if any, for that kind of money?

Hi,

This might be a bit of an ask, and probably doesn't exist, but is there a scope with the same sort of price to performance ratio as say the Z73 is for relatively widefield imaging?

I understand that the longer a focal length of telescope tends to get the more expensive too, and then sampling comes into play with Camera Pixel size etc. but I just wondered if there's a good performing longer focal length scope that doesn't cost lots. Something like £500ish which is where the Z73 is priced at?

Very cool, and original!

Thanks for the replies guys. tbh I was happy with the images I was getting with my stock 80D and no filters, on Galaxies, so I will image filter-less. I guess with a benefit of no filter you can retain nice coloured stars as well. 

These are the colour stars I got with my 80D and no filter - it's a heavy crop, and I should be able to crop in more with the 2600 with more megapixels.

Hi,

Just wondering (as the last time I imaged a Galaxy I only had a stock DSLR) what to do for Galaxy season now that I have an OSC. Is it better to just image without any filter? I only have two filters, the L-eNhance, and a basic Sky and Moon glow filter.

I think you'll like that filter.

1 hour ago, MartinB said:

Lovely job.  a nicely conservative process  works very well.

Thanks Martin. Funnily enough I was just having another look at the image, having not looked at it since uploading, just before reading your comment. I was quite conservative in my approach to processing as there's a threshold between stretching too far etc.

That said I did try increasing the brightness of the nebulosity and it does look good a bit brighter, the problem is brightening the nebulosity also increases the star sizes, Starnet, which I would like to use unfortunately doesn't work on my Computer (need a new processor as it's a 10 year old rig!)

This is a brighter rendition of it, just selecting the nebulosity and increasing brightness +40 in PS... but as I say the stars begin to look quite bloated.

1 hour ago, gorann said:

Before you make it too complicated, have you tried by starting off by just processing it as an RGB image? If you think red is too dominant you can then work of the color curves separately in PS (in curves where you select one colour channel at at time), for example suppressing red and bringing up blue. Some object of course have almost all the emission in red except for the stars but for the Soul Nebula there will be quite a lot of blue signal. This is what it looked like for me (RASA 8 and ASI2600MC with NBX filter). Only 60 min data so quite noisy. Processed as an RGB image in PS.

Very nice ^

This was my best processing effort with 7 hours, and full Moon so not ideal conditions...

I probably should make the Nebula a bit brighter...

An Astrophotographer on astrobin has an image of the Soul Nebula taken with the L-enhance filter and an OSC (294MC Pro)

This is the kind of look I wanted to try and process, a seperation in colours so not everything is red. In PS I still don't know how to do this. Do I open the original TIFF and split the channels, if so they're all greyscale etc. and then which do I combine etc. etc.

His entire work flow is here but it's all in PixInSight.  https://photo.m-j-s.net/blog/2020/02/ic-1848-bicolor-workflow/

I'm comfortable stretching data and levels adjusting and using colour tools, saturation, colour levels, colour balance etc. it's just all the combining and extracting of Ha and OIII etc. to begin with where I am still stuck. 

If anyone can help so that I canunderstand the whole workflow concept I'll be doing a PS tutorial for anyone else stuck with it!

If anyone wants to see whether my data can be processed into something remotely similar you can have a look at the stacked integration here - 7 hours and 15 minutes on the Soul Nebula.  Soul Nebula Calibrated 7h15m.TIF

41 minutes ago, tooth_dr said:

Really excellent job!  Everything seems to be working well!

Thanks dude. I'm very pleased with the image, especially considering the Moon being out and about, so it makes me look forward to what the Camera can do.  

First Light with my first dedicated Astronomy Camera. 

7 Hours of integration time spanning two full Moon nights. 

180 Second Subs, Gain 100, Offset 50, L-eNhance Filter
Cooled to -10, 30 Darks, 20 Flats (each session, 20 Dark Flats)
HEQ5 Pro (Rowan Belt Mod)
William Optics Zenithstar 73
Altair 50mm Starwave Guidescope
PHD2
APT
Stacked in DSS and Processed in Adobe Photoshop

37 minutes ago, rnobleeddy said:

The dual band filter splits Ha to the R channel and spreads O across G and B. So you can't create SHO images because you don't have S data, but you can create images with H and O.

 

I tended to separate R,G,B then combine G and B, but I'd didn't use PS.

 

The problem is that, for whatever reason, it seems hard to collect a lot of O data with there filters. The veil look stunning and is strongly dual colour, but almost everything else was just a shade of red. This came up before, and another user had better success with longer integration times in darker skies, so I'd start by splitting the data, then stretching the O data to see what you've got!

Thanks, it's splitting the data correctly that I'm not sure about though. 

In Photoshop if I open the stacked image, and click on Channels > Split Channels, it opens the R, G and B as Greyscale images in separate tabs. 

15 minutes ago, davew said:

I don't know of any tutorials in PS to do SHO processing with that particular filter mainly because SII is cut off entirely ! What you can do in PS if you want the gold colour and blue colour is this - Image - adjustments - selective colour and in the red colour ( top one ) change the Magenta to -100 and increase the yellow to +100. Bang Gold  Totally false but there you go.

If you want the old look of false RGB then split the channels into R, G and B, delete the G, create a B copy and put it where the G went and reassemble into RGB.

There are other ways too I'm sure.

Annie's actions as far as I can remember just uses proper narrowband images when creating a false RGB or Hubble.

I thought that filter created a narrowband look all by itself ? Is that not so ?

Dave.

Edit to rearrange a few words !! 

No it doesn't create a narrowband image, if I stretch the stacked image it's just red. I'd like to be able to create bi colour images though, for instance like the Rosette where the outer nebulosity is red and the inner nebulosity has that lovely blue look.

It's possible but there's just no clear method described anywhere as to how to go about this workflow in PS. The frustrating thing is that I'm pretty sure it's possible.

1 hour ago, Sp@ce_d said:

Not sure about PS.  I was playing around in PI with my first light subs from the ASI2600MC & IDAS-NBZ under full moon at the weekend.. I googled "map OSC to narrowband" there's some interesting different approaches & some threads on cloudy nights worth having a look through if you haven't seen them. You could apply the same approach as one would normally process SHO mono in PS by splitting out the channels as described in some of those threads.

 

Of course if you haven't already seen it, this is the one I followed when I used to use PS many many Moons ago

http://bf-astro.com/hubblep.htm

Thanks for the reply. Yes there does seem to be a lot of different tutorials and techniques but none so much on just doing things in PS. As I said I did find one in PS which is exactly what I need but the tutorial jumps around too much and I need to follow everything completely with clear explanations on each step, it's no good making a video tutorial and then skipping ahead and not explaining why a layer which was there before you fast forwarded the video is not there now!

This is why when I do tutorials I literally explain every single mouse click and don't fast forward anything.

Is that link applicable to OSC dual narrowband data because I have had a look at it but it seems to be applicable to the Mono Narrowband method?

Anyone? I can't believe there isn't a clear tutorial on how to do this in Photoshop. It all seems to be either in APP or Pixinsight.

I'm pretty sure it can be done in Photoshop as I have found one tutorial on it but it jumps around far too much and is very confusing(infuriating!).

Hi,

I'm trying to go for a tri or bi colour image with my first light data from my 2600MC Pro and Optolong L-eNhance Filter but I'm not sure on the work flow.

I use Photoshop only. I have downloaded Annie's Actions. In PS I split the R, G and B channels and then stretch them all a bit and save them as individual images. I then reopen the stacked data as is (rgb) and stretch that. Then using Annie's Actions there is a bi colour or Hubble palette action. It asks for Ha, SII,  OIII data, which out ot the split R, G, B do I assign to each filter?

Or if its more doable I would like to create a bi colour image, red and blue or similar, or orangey blue etc.

Thanks for any help.

You could try uninstalling and reinstalling PHD2.

I did the other day and guiding has been great, I created a new profile and let PHD2 determine the Mount speed, entered Camera, focal length, and calibrated on a star S-S/E and 20 or so deg of the Celestial Equator. Guiding has been really good since.

Shootin' Flats 

34 minutes ago, Clarkey said:

In theory as long as you don't move the focuser or anything else. For the amount of time Flats take I would do them in situ, but it's not critical. The other benefit of doing them before bringing everything inside is you can take them when it is dark and there is less risk of light getting in your image train - especially if you take dark flats too.

Is that as long as the focuser adjustments are small ? I mean if you have to refocus for temperature fluctuation throughout an imaging session you shouldn't have to take flats between each focus adjustment ? Just one set of flats at the end of the night ?

Oh yes another problem I had last night was the mount behaving erratically, or basically, not responding at all. I tried slewing to a bright star to focus and it wasn't having it, then started slewing off to random parts of the Sky.... fortunately I figured out what it was quite quickly - I hadn't tightened the Dec up at all, completely loose, after balancing. In the 3-4 years I've been doing Astrophotography I've never once forgotten to tighten the dec clutch!

Yes with regard to focusing, forgot to mention that 1:1 image is good, I don't really use the magnifying tool in APT other than to check the roundness of Stars when imaging occasionally. 

Just ordered my first Autofocuer, the ZWO EAF, so there's more learning curve! But I can't wait to have a fully automated setup! 

Thanks for the replies. 

With regards to Flats, as I don't remove the imaging train from my mount ( I carry it in with the scope attached ) is it ok to take flats the next day if everything stays the same (Camera orientation as well) ?

Thanks for all the replies.