teoria_del_big_bang

6 minutes ago, Ouroboros said:

Yes, I see what you’re saying there, @teoria_del_big_bang.  So, you have signed up to Adam Block’s program have you? His free stuff seems pretty good  to me so, hopefully, the paid content must be even better.   

Yes I signed up to both the fundementals and horrizons. Quite a bit of money on top of the cost of PI but I have found them great as originally I was struggling and he explains really well what actually happens when you change a certain parameter rather than many of the on-line tutorials that just say set it to this value and tick tis box and so on that means you have no idea what doing that did.
Again trouble is there are so many videos on there difficult to get time to go through them all (I am never happy am I 🙂 ) .

In all honesty though I would really recomend signing up to the fundementals that takes you step by step through all you need to know about PI, and loads on WBPP and he keeps updating  things especially WBPP.
Horizons is good  and there are some advanced stuff on there but a lot is actually taking you through actual workflows and doing full processing an data sets you can download yourself. Like I say its good but I find some of the things very subjective as it is more what he want the finished image to look like and might not be the way you want it to look.
Also there is a small yearly subscription for Horizons whereas Fundementals is a one off payment.

So certainly you would gain knowledge from both  but Fundementals is the most value for money in my opinion and probably enough for most peoples needs.

Steve

On 10/09/2022 at 20:25, Ouroboros said:

I'm quite impressed how powerful WBPP has become.  I can see why people say WBPP is the recommended or preferred way to preprocess. But it needs careful setting up and a thorough understanding of what it's doing.  This is going to be a longish learning curve for me.  I'd like to get to the point where I have a typed workflow sheet to follow.  I use a typed workflow sheet to preprocess manually.  It's three pages of typed A4 - and is basically a summary of the preprocess described by Warren Keller in Part 1 of his Inside Pixinsight 2nd Ed. 

I too now love WBPP and like many others when it first appeared I was not too keen but now you can see where they were going all along but I guess the script is mega complicated and so has to be done in steps making sure preliminary thngs work before moving on.

What is an issue with PI in my opinion, is that ever since I bought it it is that it is in continuous development and the amount of processes now is double to what was there originally, many still there but superceeded by newer processes to do the same job. Recently I think this has slowed down apart from the WBPP script which they have worked really hard on.
All this on one hand is great, as without doubt PI is now a much more powerful tool, but on the other hand it has made any sort of 3rd party manual almost impossible.

Maybe one day they will get to the stage where you press a button direct it to the files in one directory and out pops a full colour image. Again this will be controvertial as some peope hate the processing side abd would welcome this and others like the artistic licience processing can give you to make an individual image that appeals to you.

For me WBPP is a Godsend as I was not keen on preprocessing as generally it is a pretty well laid down set of rules what to do and how to do it and if all the data is correct and calibration files present most people would wnd up with exactly the same calibrated images at the end of it so an automated way to do this suits me and the fact you can just select a directory and add keyword if you need to group images to use seperate flats, darks etc is just brilliant. and also add some initial cosmetic correctin as well 🙂 

As for Adam Blocks website that has been the best source of info for me and helped me more than searching for any free videos on Youtube, however, it is another expense and although there are free ones out there the best way is his website.
I guess many either don't want to pay for these videos or can't afford it so I keep saying this but would love to see a subsection of this forum where people could post theor write ups on PI and even full workflows, problem if it is just a new thread then these get lost in and amongs hundreds of questions posed or posts thanking people for their contriutions, it really wants  it so people can ask their write ups to be added to  a locked thread.

Steve

Hopefully had some success, after trying all sorts all day.
What I did notice is that when it started to run any of the star removal processed (Starnet, Starnet2 or StarXterminator the CPU emperature shot up very rapidly and it always to freeze when it hit about 73 C. 
Now although I have never touched the Bios I went into Bios setup and selected load default values, now when I run the temperature only seems to peak about 63 degrees and the processes work without any freezes (SO FAR).

So I suspect that the manufacturer of my tower has tweaked things to make it seem a better machine that it is meant to be.
As I say it seems okay now but for what I thought a couple of years ago was a pretty fast machine (not gaming standards though) takes a while to do these things, using StarXterminator AI10 takes 35 seconds and A11 Lite  takes 21 minutes, not yet reied AI11.

Steve 

Hi @gorann if nobody gets back to you you could ask the question in StarXTerminator support (link below).

StarXTerminator Support

Steve

15 minutes ago, Budgie1 said:

So, I also installed the update this evening and tried it out on my desktop.

The computer is an older one which I built a few years ago but works well. The specs are: AMD FX 6300 Six-Core 3.5 Ghz, 32GB RAM, 4GB graphics card, Windows 10 Home, 1TB SSD

Using StarXTerminator in PI on a non-linear image, Bin x2 (which my normal process) I got the following times from the versions using default settings:

• v10 - 1m19s
• v11 - 10m21s
• v11 Lite - 5m12s

Of the three AI versions I tried, I would say v10 still gave the best results, followed by v11 Lite, then v11 which left artefacts from one star. The PC ran fine throughout, with no lockups, Not Responding messages or anything and I was able to use my browser while the process was running.

Thanks for the info, I will try tomorrow on laptop as it looks like there is something amiss with the desktop as it freezes using starnet as well.

Steve

How much is a quantum computer these days ???

2 minutes ago, scotty38 said:

I have seen lots of chat on the PI forum about the speed of the latest version, so much so that he created a lite version to speed things up. Have you seen it?

Yes tried that too.

I think the CPU or memory load may be why it is so slow on the laptop but if I leave it it does look like it would work, eventually, but on desktop I think there is a bigger issue, probably with my computer. I tried the older AI's and it also freezes, also sometimes does this on Starnet and Starnet++ so maybe my computer.
Not what I wanted. really wasn't

Steve

Anybody else have any issues with latest AI version11 in PI ?

I have up to date PI on two computers, admittedly not gaming machines but not archaic by any means, but on my laptop I cancelled the process after about an hour it had only completed 10% and on my desktop I have tried 5 times now on various size images and always crashes , well I say it crashes everything becomes unresponsive, just freezes with no cursor movement, unable to switch between running processes and ctrl alt del also dows nothing.

Desktop:
Processor    AMD Ryzen 5 2400G with Radeon Vega Graphics       3.90 GHz
Installed RAM    32.0 GB (29.9 GB usable)
System type    64-bit operating system, x64-based processor
Pen and touch    No pen or touch input is available for this display
 

Laptop:

Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-3210M CPU @ 2.50GHz   2.50 GHz
Installed RAM 16.0 GB (15.7 GB usable)
System type 64-bit operating system, x64-based processor
Pen and touch No pen or touch input is available for this display

EDIT: Now cured, my Bios settings had been tweaked to speed up processor which overheated when process was run, put Bios to default values and now okay.

Steve

It might sound difficult but honestly it is easier to do than to explain.

But I just made a quick example:-
I have data on NGC 7835 for 3 different nights so I put all lights and flats into 3 different sub directories each has a keyword Date and then after an underscore a value which is the date I started each session.
In this case I already have  master darks  but they could just a easily be a set of frames and let the script do the masters.

If I add files without using the keyword then in WBPP they are all grouped together with no separation of nights for lights or flats.

But if I add the keyword Date it then regroups everything correctly.

And if you look in the flats and lights tab you can see it has grouped everything correctly.

I hope that explains it, try it I am sure you will see how it works very quickly 🙂 

Steve

I was just about to reply but looks like @Stuart1971 has it in hand.
You can specify keywords in WBPP to group things together. The keyword can be something from the fits header or from the full pathname of the file but remember wbpp will look at the pathname first before the fits header so if you make a keyname the same as one already in the fits header  then it will use the pathname keyword.

The easiest way when using data from different nights is to put the data from each session into a different directory  for each night and in each of these directories for each night add the lights and flats  (i.e. everything you need to group together for that night).
All the stuff you want to use for all nights such as bias, darks  must NOT be in these folders but somewhere else.

The important thing is that the name of these directories for each nigh must have a keyword and a value/

For example for 3 different sessions you could make directories called HorseheadNebula_Night1, HorseheadNebula_Night2 and HorseheadNebula_Night3.
The keyword then is HorseheadNebula and the values Night1, Night2 and Night3.

The keywords and value names are arbitrary and totally up to you.
 

Then in WBPP add the keyword HorseheadNebula and it will separate all the data and group it to use the flats from each directory only for the lights in that same directory but will use darks, flat darks etc for all data.

Steve

Incredible, nothing else to say as I am scrolling back up to look again 🙂 

Steve

1 minute ago, Mike Q said:

See your mailbox.  I found one on amazon that might do you

Not this one is it ?
I only ask because feedback suggests it is only 43cm.

50cm is long for a 5V heater band which I guess is why you are struggling.
Generally I have seen them up to 30cm and even the odd 40cm, I thought I havd found one HERE on Amazon but I read the feedback which says it was only 43cm.

I know it might be expensive but you could by two 25 cm bands as they should just velcro together as one and then use two USB ports (not ideal I know).
If not in a hurry you can get them from China for around £15 each rather than the £30+ you would normally pay.

Steve

Hi and welcome to SGL as I see this is your first post.
I think what would help members to help you is to explain what you want to image, planets, DSO's or just widefield images of stars / milky way etc.
Where abouts you plan to image from - what is the sky quality like, light pollution etc ?
Also we really need to know what sort of budget you can manage in these austere times.

Many people do get good images from what are considered below par AP equipment but generally the cheaper you go with this hobby then the harder it can get and often many people get frustrated and leave the hobby because they were trying to get (or expecting to get) better images than the equipment is capable of.

Also you need different approaches for different types of images and there is no real do-it-all  setup that caters for all types of target so giving a lot more information is really required.

Steve

20 minutes ago, ScouseSpaceCadet said:

Very nice. How many small to medium tents will the garden take and not wishing to sound too fussy, is it flat? 🧐😀

Star party ?

On 06/08/2022 at 01:42, faulksy said:

Hi folks.

Just moved to my new house in midwales.

Outside now with the Mrs having a brew.

Can't believe how bright the milk way is. Even with lights on its blazing away .

Made up.

Thanks

It's where I want to retire to (roundabout now) but can't persuade

the wife to move so far away 😞 .

So Jealous

Steve

From memory (which isn't great) the 3 grub screws should bear onto a big steel washer and directly on the other side of that washer is the clear plastic washer youe are talking about (I think).

Steve

1 hour ago, powerlord said:

it;'s worth a check, I got one a few weeks back. It's prob not a great position, but I'm considering mounting my tripods on top of the motorhome.. 😬

The way the weathers heading you might need a space telescope to get a clear view 🙂 

Steve

10 hours ago, Wikiastro said:

I've just been looking at the website for the event and the holiday camp itself, and there's mention of a discount for attendees if you mention that you're going for the star party.  Does anyone know how much it is per night for a tent w/o electric?

I paid £20 per night for a fully serviced premium pitch but as Paul said I doubt there will be any vacancies for this year, although there may always be some late cancellations I guess as things happen we cannot control.

Steve

6 hours ago, Live_Steam_Mad said:

Hi thanks for the offer and I am doing my best to obtain a used Ford C-Max for under 3 grand locally as a replacement car. I'd rather be independent if I can. The C-Max should have a load of room in it. Tip for anyone coming Astrocamping in future, don't buy a small car lol.

Regards,

AG

My last car was a C-Max and you could totally remove the back seats and get a shed load in it.
I now have a normal Focus and had to get a big roof box and still have nowhere near the capacity of the C-Max.

Hope you get sorted 🙂 

Steve

Just now, DaveL59 said:

so, scrubbed for today, oh well 😞

 

I think we all expected it 😞 

Steve

On 15/08/2022 at 13:21, Mayank Rathi said:

HI! I am new to this SGL. Also i have never been to any star-fest but recently been visiting Liverpool astronomical society. I don't have a car . Is there any carpool groups for the upcoming star-gazing events? Thanks

I think some do share cars, or motorhomes but I do not know of any official site for car sharing.
I think one issue for me is that only having a car I struggle to get all my gear in as well as myself so not really much in the way of room to spare, people with caravans or motorhomes may have more room to spare.
Quite often getting booked into some of these events is harder as they are often full very early on (and with covid cancelling them for a year or two many were very near full before they were announced as many just rolled their bookings over).
Are you actually booked into any specific event yet ? or is it that you dare not book an event without knowing you have transport ?
If you don't have any gear as such but just wanting to meet other astronomers then maybe the train is viable to get within a few miles of the site and then I am sure somebody on SGL could pick you up from a nearby station, just a thought.

Steve

23 minutes ago, powerlord said:

hi chaps, does anyone know if it's ok to sell yer old gear there ?

seems like it would be a good place to stick a table of stuff in from of my motorhome - save postage, and make easier to sell/buy big stuff like old mounts, etc ?

 

stu

Hi Stu,

I have never been but understand this is pretty normal and often good to advertise a couple of weeks earlier and mention you will be at Kelling so it can be picked up if somebody that is going buys it, or lives in the area.
I am hoping to do the same if I can get to my gear soon as garage is full of laminate flooring and loft insulation waiting to be fitted when I get the time 😞 

Steve

30 minutes ago, pipnina said:

I do often wonder if i am doing something wrong as I feel many people get much cleaner images than me on similar integration

Yes I also feel this and certainly a few people on SGL can certainly seem to get images to exhibit signal that others just can't seem to find.

32 minutes ago, pipnina said:

I put it mostly down to better comfort with their kit and better processing.

Absolutely will make a big difference both knowing how to get the most from your kit and processing software.

33 minutes ago, pipnina said:

i suspect a lot of it is knowing exactly which denoise featured to use and how to use them.

The many denoise methods out there certainly makes a difference but I would not think it can make a huge difference.
I mean @ollypenrice hardly uses denoise but has some magnificent images, of course he also has some fantastic clear dark skies.

Steve

I really do not know, I agree it does look far too good and perfect for such a short integration time and the equipment used.

It does say category Traveller and that the  location is UAE desert so if well out of any cities probably will have clear dark skies and so the Bortle 4 may just be where he lives and a mistake but if he is close to Abu Dhabi then will be Bortle 4 or higher.

Obviously there are many ways to cheat, but like my teacher used to say the only person you are cheating is yourself.
Regarding a new processing technique then if it were a viable technique without adding stuff which is not on the original data (in most processing software you can paint things in or add things from other images but I would say this is just another way of cheating as the images are not from the original data just enhanced) then hard to believe he would be the only one using it and that processing software companies have not achieved it as well.

But at end of day I am do not have enough knowledge to say how the image is achieved, he has some great images and at the end of the day I just tend to take the images at face value and assume the acquisition info is correct. Yes if there is some great processing technique that does not include some form of painting stuff in then I would love to know and most imagers are willing to share but other than that I wouldn't worry much about the integrity of other peoples images, your own are what count (to yourself).

Steve