don4l

8 hours ago, astro mick said:

Thanks again all.

I am trying the stand alone,but I think my anti-virus/windows defender is not allowing the programme to run,as it just flashes and closes down.

May have to look at disabling it.

Mick.

If I double click the .exe file instead of the .bat, then it flashes and closes down.

To use it I copy my .tif into the same directory st Starnet++.

I rename my image to "in.tif", and double click the "run_rgb_starnet.bat" .

Afterwards, I copy "out.tif" bact to my image processing directory.

This is what is in my "run_rgb_starnet.bat":-

rgb_starnet++.exe in.tif out.tif 64
pause

10 minutes ago, tooth_dr said:

You could prob increase the colour but it’s a lovely image as it is. I actually have data of this from April. Have processed it twice, gave up both times. 

Your standards are higher than mine.  I seem to remember you posted something and it was very good.  Nevertheless, it's interesting that you gave up twice, because that is exactly what happened to me.

I gathered about 4 hours of data in March, and wasn't able to produce an image.  I had another go a couple of weeks later when I concentrated on gathering more "L".  I still couldn't produce anything, so I gave up/put it to one side.

I've become more confident at LRGB imaging this "galaxy season", and tonight I tackled the data again.  This time I concentrated on flattening the backgrounds in the R, G and B data and that made a big difference.

Hopefully, I'll get more data next year.

I've always fancied imaging unusual objects and this is my first Arp galaxy.  The image was taken in March, but I wasn't able to produce anything acceptable from the data.  This was probably down to lack of experience with LRGB imaging.  Tonight, I had another go, and got a much better result than previously.

Arp214 is a peculiar galaxy in Ursa Major, also known as NGC3718.  This image was taken with a TAL200k and a G3 16200 camera on an EQ6.  L= 313m, R 48m, G 52m and B 108m.  Total 8h 41m.

The Tal  is not designed for photography, and has a very curved FOV.  About 20% has been cropped, but some curvature is still visible.

Comments and advice welcome.

Lovely image.  I like the processing - gives it a nice 3d feel.

I wonder if this might be the result of a change in sensor temperature.  This will seem a bit weird, but read on.

I tend to carry on imaging as my camera warms up at the end of a session. and I have noticed that the image appears to fade as the camera warms up.

It seems that the software that is displaying the image is autostretching when it puts the image on my screen.  I think that as the hot pixels get brighter, the rest of the image gets displayed as if it is darker.

If I manually stretch the image my target looks fine, but the hot pixels become very evident.  The background level also rises.

Just a thought...

On 22/05/2020 at 13:02, Ags said:

On the subject of binning, does it ever make sense to bin? Why not capture at full resolution and then do more sophisticated stacking of pixels. You can downsample at the end. Binning seems to force small stacks of 4 subs (assuming 2x2 binning) which can't be great mathematically...? I had to bin at F10 because the signal was so attenuated... but in general am I right in thinking that binning is best avoided if at all possible?

I've spent the last three months imaging at 2000mm F/L instead of my usual 500mm, and I have (slowly) been wrestling with this thorny subject.

My last image (Whirlpool Galaxy) was taken with the L binned 2 x 2, and the RG and B at 4 x 4.  I have to say that selecting the "4 x 4" binning option really, really went against the grain.  However, it was the only way that I could gather useful data.

The problem for me was that all the images that were unbinned turned out "blurry", and had to be scaled down before viewing anyway.  They just looked rubbish at full resolution.   Increasing the exposure time was just producing smoother looking blurriness!   I think that this is why people say that there isn't much point imaging at less than 1.6" resolution.

Like you, I thought that there was nothing to lose by software binning if necessary.  This didn't seem to work very well - and I don't really understand why.  If I collect my R G and B at 4 x 4 (which is still 2.4" per pixel), then I get a useable image in a reasonable amount of time.  If I try the same thing binned 1 x 1, then I never get anything useable.

Perhaps I should point out that my camera is CCD.  Maybe the answers are different for CMOS. 

BTW,  Nice image, and really nice to see different techniques in action.

What a result!

Very impressive.

This image has been taken with a Moravian 16200 on my TAL200k.  The L was taken binned 2 x2 and the RG and B were binned 4 x 4.  I have to admit that the idea of binning data at 4 x 4 seemed mad to me, but as the "galaxy season" progressed I learned the hard way that imaging at 0.6" per pixel is just plain stupid with my equipment, location, skills or whatever.   It took many nights to realise that my unbinned data just looked too blurry to display at 100%.  Eventually, I tried the colour binned 4 x 4, and I didn't seem to lose anything, but I did gain useful data in a fraction of the time.

Exposure -  L (2x2)  306m,  R:G:B (4 x 4) 52: 48: 80  Total 8h 6m.

Tal200K, EQ6

CCDCiel, PHD2, INDI, CCDStack, Gimp

Very nice Geof.   I also noticed the 3d effect.  I like the star colours too.

29 minutes ago, swag72 said:

Thanks! I only loaded the G17 file..... I'll go and do the other two then and see if that sorts it 👍 BTW where is the asteroid files? I can't see them

 

I've just checked.  I just used the database that was in my Cartes du Ciel.  If I remember correctly, I also had some issues finding the files, so I tried the CdC one and it works just fine.  Here is a screenshot.  If you click tools->Asteroid annotation you can just select the MPCORB.DAT.  It remembers it next time.

However, there is no point trying this until the platesolving side is working

31 minutes ago, swag72 said:

Oooo, I'll give that link a go.... many thanks!!

 

** That's a shame it doesn't work for me....... I'm just downloading the long focal length database but I can't imagine that my scope at 1200mm and my camera would class as a long focal length..... I was really excited at the prospect of this working as well **

 

The only extras that I have downloaded are the G17, Hyperleda and  asteroid files.  It all works for me at focal lengths from 375 (Tak 106 with FR) through to 2000mm (Tal200k).

If you want to put up a fits file, (or a link to one), (dark subtracted is helpful) then I'll happily have a play. 

6 hours ago, Knight of Clear Skies said:

Good to see Sara, AP isn't just about the showpiece objects. Hope you are doing OK down in Spain.

This might be a good place to ask, is there an easy way of checking images for minor planets within the field of view? I must have captured all kinds of things over the years without realising it.

I use ASTAP https://www.hnsky.org/astap.htm#asteroid_annotation

If your image file has a reasonably correct fits header then ASTAP can both platesolve and highlight any asteroids that should be in the field of view.

It usually works in a couple of seconds.

32 minutes ago, tooth_dr said:

That red Ha jet is pretty clear, so I'd say youve done a great job here.  I also have a lot of LRGB data to process, and I havent got around to it, because it's not easy!

Well done for spotting the Ha.  It is barely discernable from the rest in the Ha data, but the Gimp did a good job of exposing it.  I might try to get some more at some point, but I would really need to get the rest of the faint stuff first.  The problem is that the amount of darkness is diminishing, and I want to try to do some other stuff while it is still around.

This image has been a bit of a learning curve.  I don't normally do LRGB imaging (and now I know why)!  When I got the first couple of subs in, I thought that it was going to be easy.  M106 seemed really bright.

I got a bit of a shock when I tried to make an LRGB image.  All I seemed to have was the core surrounded by the most appaling noise.  Trying to lift the rest of the galaxy out of the background has taken hours of data, and it still isn't much good. 

Any advice would be very welcome.

The image was taken on my Tal200K with a G3 16200 camera.  The pixels are far too small for 2000mm focal length, so I took  all the data binned 2 x 2.  I did try some subs binned 1 x 1 at 6" per pixel, but it was clearly pointless.

L = 109m, R = 44m, G = 64, B = 128, Ha = 136m.  Total = 8 Hrs.

The odd balance between the different filters is because I kept having to collect more to try to make that particulat channel useable.

[EDIT]  Good grief!  I either uploaded the wrong version, or did something stupid.  I've raised the black point.  Hopefully this is correct.

[edit again]  This is weird.  The images look much brighter on here than in Gimp.  Black point raised again!

Here is a screenshot from Cartes du Ciel showing a rough outline of your photo.  M51 is quite a bit off the top.

I really like this.  I just know that I would have overcooked sh129, and in fact it looks much better like this.

What a lovely image.

I didn't know what M60 looked like either!

What an interesting image.  I'm really surprised that we don't see it more often.

Thanks for sharing this, Geof.

4 minutes ago, geeklee said:

What about a back to basics approach if it's on a tracking mount?  Get the camera to take 50-100 individual frames (or more!).  There will be some slight shift but given the size of FOV it'll crop out; with a fast exposure time too, it should rattle through that many in no time.  Those RAW frames can hopefully then be processed by PIPP into something that AS!3 can take.

Good luck when you're next playing with it, especially if you have to refer to the manual 😅

That is definitely worth thinking about.  I think that I would have a problem keeping track of the files, but that could be sorted by being a bit disciplined when taking the images.

57 minutes ago, geeklee said:

@don4lDoes the camera take an uncompressed RAW video or is it already "preprocessed" and compressed?  For only 25% of 72 frames, the result was pretty good anyway!  PIPP, AS!3 and Astra Image for a quick deconvolution, sharpening and contrast

I haven't a clue what the camera is doing, and I'm not sure that the manual will help.

I was surprised when @geoflewis said that it went to 200Mb.  However, my 190Mb filewent to 7G after taking about 30 minutes for PIPP to convert it.  Autostakkert then took another 30 mins to stack it, and then I discovered that the alignment had got itself confused.

I do feel that if I could figure out some sensible settings, then the EOS could do a great job, but I think that I will have to read the badly written manual.  So, it might be some time before I have another go.

I've used PIPP to convert to AVI, and processed in Sharpcap.  Here is the result.  I think that a lot of the image has been cropped because it was very jumpy.  However, this is looking very promising indeed.

28 minutes ago, geoflewis said:

Hi Donal, can you post the DSLR movie and I'll see if I can convert it using ImagesPlus - it's been several years since I did that, so no promises, but I'm happy to give it a try....

I only took two. This one is about 12Mb.  The other is about 200Mb.

They don't look too bad when I view them.  However, I haven't yet figured out how to control video capture from the PC - so this is a bit shaky.

I've just downloaded FFMPEG, but I haven't got it working yet.

EDIT:  I wasn't expecting to see it displayed as a video.  Geof, can you download this?

44 minutes ago, geeklee said:

For a single JPEG that has no processing, it's excellent.  I wonder what even 50-100 of those frames would look like stacked and processed?

For the 120 image, great detail all round, but in Clavius Rutherfurd also has some lovely, subtle detail on the outer wall.

This is what I was wondering.  I'd love to be able to stack the video, but I am at a loss about where to start.  I was very impressed with the quality.  I think it compares very favourably with the 120, with the enormous advantage that there are far fewer panels to process.

That's lovely. It doesn't look sharpened at all to me.  I suppose that means that you've got it just right.

I've taken two shots of Clavius tonight to see what the EOS250 is capable of.  Having a large sensor, and many more pixels, it would make lunar mosaics much easier.

Initially, I was very pleased with the result from the EOS, but after I processed the ASI result, there really wasn't any contest at all.  I think that the biggest factor is that it is easy (ish) to take 1000 frames with the ASI.  I also took some video with the EOS, but I have no idea how to process it.  If anyone knows, then please tell me.

Anyway, the first image is from the ASI - 40% of 2000 frames.  Processed in Autostakkert and wavelets applied in Registax.

The second image is a crop from the EOS.  The image did cover about 5 times the area, but I wanted to compare the detail that each produced.  This image is a single jpeg - so I could do a bit better with RAW.

Of course,  taking a full Moon shot would take 5 minutes with the EOS, whereas it takes me 45 mins to take all the panels with the ASI.  Assembling the EOS frames just takes a couple of minutes, versus several hours processing is involved with the 120.