Laurin Dave

Here's my entry, processed in Pixinsight and Photoshop. STF stretches, then Starnett on each of S, H and O, into Photoshop to deal with Starnett artefacts, combined as SHO in Pixinsight, combined Starry Ha as Lum using Pixinsight LRGB, selective colour in Photoshop, a bit of star reduction,  Local Histogram Equalisation, sharpening, noise reduction, rotate and crop.

Dave

Hi Dave, I ran it though Pixinsight as follows: -  register, crop, RGB channel combine, Dynamic Background Extraction on both , Photometric colour calibration, ArcSinh stretch on RGB,  Histogram Stretch on RGB then colour boost in Photoshop using LabColour, HS on Lum and then LRGB combo...   came out looking like this...

Galaxy and star colours look ok to me.  I'd suspect that its your colour calibration that's gone astray although as I'm not familiar with AstroArt I can't suggest how to fix it.   The light streaks are puzzling as the nearest star in the direction they are coming from is HD214667 which is mag 9, Eta Pegasus could be the culprit at mag 3 but it is a long way off.  I'd check that they are on all your subs and if not would suspect something closer to home.   Focus quality also looks a bit soft and different between filters with green best and blue,  I'd measure all your subs to see what's going on with focus.

HTH

Dave

Here's your new RGB with your Lum from last years mosaic..  (i found this years was too stretched to combine)

If it were me I'd get the spacing sorted and keep the camera...   

Dave

So Steve, the question now is what does the Lum only look like ? 

Hi Steve.. I think  your last one’s the best, background maybe looks a bit green on my screen, but very good, well done

Dave

That’s worked rather well Steve. Next step is to combine your other data  with it 🙂.  
 

Dave

All very nice Steve,  I had a very similar experience and similar results when I did this last year.  As Vlaiv says definitely more nebulosity in the HaRGB version but that one loses the lovely pinks of the RGB..   needs some Oiii I guess to bring them back.   

1 hour ago, ollypenrice said:

Thanks for the heads up. I get very mixed results from Starnet and also find that either it or my PC cannot handle the images from the ASI2600 I'm now processing. These are around 140meg. Does anyone know what kind of processing demands StarXterminator makes? I would spend £45 on it in a heartbeat if I were sure it would run.

I know it's quite a price but de-starring is so powerful when it works. I don't want to publish starless images, I want to de-star and re-star with smaller stars, which is dead easy in Ps. Put the starless image on the bottom, paste the linear original on the top, set the blend mode to lighten, and stretch the linear image till the stars appear at the level you like. This will improve star colour intensity by stretching them less, preserve their relative sizes as captured and let you keep them small. And it saves you the hassle of masking and star-reducing as well.

Olly

Hi Olly

I've tried it in Photoshop and it works on images from my ASI2600mc on my i7 machine, faster than Starnett in Pi...  as others have said  it does leaves very smooth patches where the star has been removed..   Were you aware that you can get a months free trial? 

Dave

Nice one Steve...   the 4 small spikes at 90 deg are from the KAF8300  camera.  I get them with my KAF16200 although the other night I had multiple spikes as a spider had weaved a web across the dew shield  

Started back in late April and finished off early last week, the Tulip Nebula in Cygnus, accompanied by what is believed to be the shock wave from micro-quasar Cygnus X-1 in HaLum_HaR_OiiiG_OiiiB and SHO palettes.  10 hrs each Ha, Oiii and Sii and 3hrs each RGB, RGB and Ha captured with Esprit150/SX46 and Sii and Oiii captured with Esprit100/ASI1600mm.  Processed in Pixinsight and Photoshop, Ha and Oiii added using blend mode lighten and Ha used as a light lum layer again using Photoshop.  

Thanks for looking 

Dave

Excellent Mark, well done !

Dave

If I remember correctly back focus should be 44mm for a Canon fit 46.5 mm for a Nikon fit plus 1/3rd of any  filter thickness you have between the lens and the sensor

Did you use “fast” or “high quality” as the option in Mosaic by Coordinates? If the former then try the later..  and do it overnight as it’ll take a while   also do the Ha, Oiii and Sii for each individual panel align correctly?  If not then I suggest you register the subs using thin plate splines and distortion correction ..  

Looks like amp glow to me ...  

see this from ZWO What is Amp-glow and how do I manage it? | ZWO ASI (astronomy-imaging-camera.com)

Here's my second go.. this time with enhanced IFN. I did this using a masked curve. The mask for the IFN was created using Pixinsight's MLTransform (which isolated the large IFN structures) and Starnet (which removed the star residuals), the galaxies were protected using masks generated with PI's GAME script (which allows you to draw ovals).

Dave

Here's my first go...... processed in Pixinsight and Photoshop.   Background extraction and neutralisation, Photometric colour calibration, HSVrepair, ArcSinh and Histogram stretches on RGB, Deconvolution and Histogram stretch on Lum, Histogram stretch on Ha -  all in PI,  LAB col and Soft light saturation increase in PS, Ha added to Red using Blend mode lighten in PS, Luminance layered on in 5 iterations in PS, Local Histogram equalisation in PI then LHE and non LHE images combined in PS to enhance (although not by very much) the IFN, MLT sharpening in Pi and a slight curve lift in PS ...... and a lot of toing and froing

Dave

 edited 18Aug  - improved detail on Holmberg

Very nice Alan.. I agree,  the NSG script is great, as you say it makes gradient removal easier and also helps brings out faint details.. 

He was busy on Instagram earlier today showing off his polishing skills ..  

Very nice Steve, lovely detail into the core

Lovely images, particularly like  the Trifid.. which must be very low 

Dave 

I run a SX Ultrastar and DeepSkyDad autofocuser through the hub on my ASI2600mc with no issues... from there to the desktop pc though an active USB3

HTH 

Dave

Brilliant Steve, well done!

Dave

I used this  Current Local Time in London, England, United Kingdom (timeanddate.com)

Hi Steve

I used it once to grab this  ISS crossing the Sun today at 10:28 - Observing - Solar - Stargazers Lounge

As far as I could tell it was bang on time local time (ie BST as it was April),  but just in case set the camera going 30s before..

Dave

Have you measured the different stacks in Subframe Selector? It looks to me as if the longer integration time stacks are getting harder stretches, maybe put the same stretch on each stack and then compare, also what's happening to M81 and M82 are they gettng better?