Laurin Dave

44 minutes ago, gorann said:

A great capture and excellent processing Dave! As said you caught even the faintest parts.

16 hours ago, geeklee said:

That's excellent Dave.  As mentioned above, the OIII getting fainter and fainter plus that elusive and almost "not there" Ha even further out (and in the bottom left of the nebula) shows superb processing. 

17 hours ago, Craig a said:

Super image and the faint extended nebulosity is showing, will I turn to stone if I look too long?

Thanks all..  I find that masks are the key to including the dim stuff without introducing noise into the background.  I made starless version of the Ha and Oiii, then made range masks from them  in Pi then adjusted the masks in Photoshop and used them when adding the Ha and Oiii using blend mode lighten in Photoshop..  

Imaged over the nights of 4,5 and 8 January through my Esprit150SX46 and Esprit100ASI1600 dual rig.  3hrs each RGB through the 150, 9 hrs Ha split equally between the scopes and 8 hrs of Oiii through the 100.  Processed in Pixinsight and Photoshop.   The Medusa nebula is about 1500 light years away , 4-5 light years in extent and pretty dim with surface mags estimated at between 16 and 25.. Discovered in 1955 by George Abell who classified it as an "Old Planetary Nebula".  Named after Medusa as the filaments are supposed to represent the Gorgons hair.

C and C welcome.. thanks for looking

Dave

Excellent work well done!

Dave

34 minutes ago, smr said:

 

I'm not sure on the translation of some of those - what does background extraction and neutralisation mean in PS ?

My normal process is crop the image first, then run gradxterminator, I usually run HLVG later on in the processing as I've realised if you do it to begin with it can remove detail or colours, then I do linear stretches, curve adjustments. 

I did have the demo version of StarXterminator which is great and I think I'll have to buy as it really allows you to pull out the nebulosity without affecting the stars.

My scope is the Z73 f/5.9 

They're Pixinsight process code... Background Extraction perfoms a similar function to gradexterminator.  background neutralisation sets the colour of a chosen piece of background sky to equal R G and B, colour calibration sets the average star colour in the image to white..  like you I leave HLVG (or Pi equivalent scnr - green) till later in the process as doing it too early can mess with colour... ACDNR I would say is roughly equivalent to Noel's DeepSkyNoiseRedn and ColourBlotchReduction (if you have those)...  Histogram Stretch is Levels.

In my processing I switch between Pixinsight Photoshop and APP depending on what I'm doing and which tool is best for doing it..  

HTH

Dave

Hi Steve

I think you want this plus the jack .  GX16 16mm 2 Pin Screw Type Electrical Aviation Plug Socket.... RS Spares or similar should have them

Dave

53 minutes ago, Budgie1 said:

Topaz is a game changer for cleaning up images in a quick an easy way, but you do have to be careful that you don't over do it because it can add detail that isn't there.

Which it clearly has done here in the Flame... apparently, (so I've read elsewhere) its trained on faces and hair..  so when it sees dark filamentary lanes, as here, it adds detail... not a criticism Martin, just an observation.  Very good for cleaning up noise in low signal areas but to me its pretty clear when folk use it for sharpening as it gives fine filamentary detail in images with huge misshapen stars.. 

My processing was on the no filter colour stack..  crop, background extraction, background neutralisation,  colour calibration, histogram and masked stretch, noise reduction using ACDNR..  colour saturation boost using curves.. 

what scope ? 

A quick Pixinsight process gave this...  some good detail but possibly a bit noisy for the integration time (compared to my Bortle 4/5) , what scope were you using and where was the Moon?

I couldn't find a UK source so went to Precise Parts for my adapter for E150 flattener to SX46/USBFW/OAG ..  somewhat pricey though about £200.   In the meantime you might try it without the flattener, wont be so good in the corners though, I was told by my dealer that he used his E150/SX814 with no flattener and had good stars

Hi Ivor.. apologies...  GMM is still there (don't know what I was thinking last  night)  but there is a new script under Scripts ... Mosaic ..  Photometric Mosaic which is worth looking at..  superior results and no pinch artefacts

Dave

I'd think so based on my own ASI2600mc which had much worse tilt than yours and it was just a fraction of turn to correct .. 

How_to_clean_ASI_camera_and_redry_the_desiccant (3).pdf

Hi Martin

Clearly storage is too cheap!    Also forgot to say that with my colour camera subs I only keep the calibrated files to save (a lot of)  space...  the other thing you need of course is some kind of system for naming 

Dave

I would suspect the most likely culprit is the camera chip rather than the scope,  several have reported tilt issues with the ASI2600.  I'd have a go at adjusting the tilt screws on the face, probably just a fraction of a turn  required to fix. 

Hi Steve

A quick test go..  1. extracted Lightness from your RGB... 2. registered the Ha..   3. Use GAME script to create the mask...  used Pixel math to create a merged lum (Lum fromRgb*(1-mask) +Ha*mask)  then used LRGB combination to apply this new lum to your RGB...  extracted background and gave it a slight strttetch...images below.. a bit rough and ready but you can see the effect..

Dave

Hi Ivor..  not an answer to your problem but the script has been substantially updated and improved since it was called GMM ... its now called Photometric Mosaic..  to update you'll need to do a re-install of Pixinsight

hth

Dave

Very nice Steve and going well, to me the initial image has better colour than the pcc'd one..  I'd highly recommend that you get as much luminance data as you can as it will transform your image and really bring out all the features.  As for Alnitak, masked stretching works well as does using the Ha as luminance over it. To do this in Pixinsight you'll need a round feathered mask which you can create using the GAME script in Utilities..   extract the Luminance from the RGB .. create a mask for Alnitak  ...  blend the extracted RGB  Luminance and the Ha together using Pixel math to create a new Luminance and then apply to the RGB  (eg Pixel math formula (RGBLum x (1-mask) + Ha x mask) ..  you'll need to fiddle around with the size of the mask and the blend ..  I find it a bit easier in Photoshop 

Dave

I've just spent the recent cloudy period clearing up several terra bytes of data..   For each object I kept all calibrated and cosmetically corrected subs and all LRGB Ha Oiii Sii masters together with  several versions of the final result.   I ditched all the intermediate files from processing as I couldn't remember what any of them were for and figured that if I want to reprocess its best to start form scratch.. 

I kept all the  calibrated cc'd subs because the future may hold better ways of normalising and integrating them (eg Pixinsight's recent Normalise Scale Gradient script) 

Dave

Another image taken during last weeks clear spell with my Askar200 ASI2600mc AZEQ-6 combo. Two panel mosaic of the Hyades with 4 hours per panel. Processed in Pixinsight and Photoshop with the mosaic stitched using Pixinsight's mosaic by co-ordinates and Photometric Mosaic scripts and subs normalised using Pixinsight's Normalise Scale Gradient script.  Stretched to death to bring out the dust so a bit noisy.  Also in the image are open cluster NGC1649 at top left and NGC1555 (Hind's Variable Nebula) top right (can just be made out next to the uppermost bright star in the dust cloud)

C and C welcome and thanks for looking

Dave

Two panel mosaic of the Heart, Soul and Double Cluster taken with my Askar200/ASI2600mc with added Hi res data of the two nebulae and wide field Ha taken with Samyang135.  3 hrs per panel for the Askar200 data with the Heart/DC panel being taken in November and the Soul panel taken during the long awaited clear nights last week. Hi res data collected with Esprit150SX46, Esprit100ASI1600, Espri100SX46 and GT71ASi1600 combos between October 19 and last week.  Wide field Ha taken September 2018.  Processed in Pixinsight and Photoshop.  Mosaics (wide field and Hi res)stitched together using Pixinsight's Mosaic by Coordinates and Photometric Mosaic scripts. 

C and C welcome Thanks for looking

Dave

Nice ... the banding/rainbow top left is an artefact caused by Alnilam, I had the same the other night.  Alnitak is always an issue,  I use Pixinsight masked stretch to control it prior to any star reduction, not sure if APP or Affinity have something similar but if they do I suggest trying that.

Read and write times to disk can be a substantial portion of the total processing time so if you aren’t using one a ssd can speed things up ..  

I think he's trying to detect whether there's any change in the speed of light as the earth moves through the Ether and around its orbit...  his baseline seems a bit short though.. 

Pixinsight reports an FWHM of between 4.45 and 4.6 (that's pixels as I didn't set the image scale - which I've just checked is 0.99) and eccentricity between 0.42 and 0.45.. so it's pretty flat across the frame.  I'd thought with the WO adjustable flatteners that you just unscrewed the back (ie Camera end) to give the required spacing then tightened the locking ring. 

HTH 

GMM has become Photometric Mosaic in the new PI release, it has some worthwhile improvements .  NSG normalises the gradients on each of your subs back to a reference frame (which you choose) and automatically weights them for Integration..  It makes the gradient on the final Integration much easier for PM (and indeed DBE) to deal with.  When combining with the PM script it's worth experimenting with/without DBE on the integrations (I'd just put DBE  point in the very corners) .

Very nice Adam,  I'm wondering whether you used the relatively new Normalise Scale Gradient script on your calibrated subs and the Photometric Mosaic script to combine the panels?  If not they're worth trying out as NSG really helps with gradient removal and the PM script is good at producing seamless mosaics.

Dave