daemon

A crazy impression of the Rosette Nebula. About 1.5 hours of data captured last night with the Seestar, post in Pixinsight. A good example of why post processing is never a good idea when under the influence of legal beverages. 😉

63 minutes on the Horsehead and Flame from UK South Coast last night with the S50. Fairly lightly post-processed in Pixinsight. Alnitak and some of the other bright stars are a little out of control, so may re-visit this later when I have more time.

A Lunar image from the Seestar from last night. About 50% of c5000 frames stacked in PIPP and .tiff prepared in Autostakkert. Final processing in Pixinsight. I also upscaled the image in GIMP to be honest, as it was heavily pixelated at 2mp resolution. First attempt at Lunar with the S50. Will keep trying.

My finished attempt of the Cygnus Wall after 4 sessions over 2 weeks from southern Spain. It is cropped to the region I like. Approx 10.5 hours total integration of Ha, OIII, SII - I do not have the patience or the skills to drag out any more from this target. I need to move on. Thanks for looking!

A cropped version of the last image with saturation increased - may have gone too far. I have a little more data to add to this, but also planning some more sessions to get additional subs to eke out a bit more detail.

Excellent! Especially considering the amount of data. Really like the framing too.

So, back to my Cygnus Wall project and I managed to grab some OIII and SII data to combine with the previously captured Ha data to create a colour version. The updated details are:- Scope: William Optics GT-102 Mount: S/W AZ/EQ6 GT-Pro Camera: ZWO ASI1600MM Acquisition: NINA 60 * 120" Ha Subs 55 * 120" OIII Subs 31 * 120" SII Subs 30 * Flats - 30 * Dark Flats per channel Just under 5 hours total integration Stacked in APP and processed in Pixinsight I'd be really happy to get some feedback - especially thoughts on how much data you think would be needed to really do this target justice. I plan to get more data, but I'm curious as to when adding more will not really add any benefit. Also, my processing skills leave a lot to be desired, so feedback also welcome - I think there is what looks like amp glow at the bottom of the image - maybe my background extraction could have been better. Thanks for looking! Steve

It looks really great to me. But I wonder if it might benefit by taming the core a little more? I'm sure you used a mask in stretching the image, but maybe if the core was dragged down a little, the eyes of the viewer would be more drawn to the dust lanes. Hope you don't mind the comment. 😉

A Proper Project? Maybe? So, not normally being one for massively long imaging sessions - a fondness for sleep being my major reason - I have committed myself to going long for once. I'm really impressed by some of the amazing images of the Cygus Wall that are out there, and I think it is a target that really shows the benefit of long integration times. Therefore I decided this week to seek out the wall with my William Optics GT-102 and used NINA to aquire it for me. The tricky thing being that I can't seem to find a NINA target for the wall, apart from the "Golf of Mexico" - sic - within NGC7000. So instead I had to resort to entering RA/DEC coordinates manually (does anyone else do this with NINA? I'd be interested to learn of your techniques). The plate solving took a good while and seemed to fail, but NINA finally seemed to settle on an area it thought was good and imaging began. I am thinking of doing this target proper justice by also going long on aquiring SII and OIII data when conditions permit. Some of the SHO images out there are amazing. I know I won't be able to match their quality but I can have some fun trying! So for now, here is my first interim stack of Ha data. Just 57 x 120" Ha exposures, calibrated only with Flats and Dark flats. I am hoping this can be the basis for a final image combining all the channels into a decent colour representation of this lovely part of the sky. Suggestions very welcome!! 🙂 Scope: William Optics GT-102 Mount: S/W AZ/EQ6 GT-Pro 57 * 120" Ha Subs 30 * Flats - 30 * Dark Flats More to come.....hopefully...... Let me know if you think I am wasting my time!! 🙂

Thanks, yes you are probably right. The data was half decent, so it may be worth me trying again with the colours. Being colour blind is not a great help in this hobby! 😆😆

Around 3 hours in total of Ha, OIII, SII, and with a strong full moon from southern Spain. Bortle 5-6. William Optics GT102 and ASI1600MM. Quickly processed (DSS and Pixinsight) and probably not the best colour selection, but here we go........ criticism welcome. 😃

First attempt in a long time. A couple of hours on The Bubble in decent conditions from Southern Spain. Data seems pretty good in the subs. My poor/rusty processing skills don't do it justice. Hey ho. Sometimes you end up playing with the data for too long and then just give up!!

Here is M101 captured on 11th/12th June 2023 from the south coast of Spain. Just about 3 to 4 hours of total integration time for various reasons. The first night I grabbed the Luminance data and was lucky with the weather on the second night to grab all the R,G,B. Struggled a bit with auto-focus in NINA on some of the colour channels, but thought I'd try to process this anyway. William Optics GT102 on SW AZ-EQ6 - ASI1600MM - 40 x 120s LUM, 20 x 120s R, G, B. Calibrated with Flats and Dark Flats. Stacked in DSS and processed in PixInsight. Thanks for looking. Steve

Cheers Martin! The subs are rolling in on M3 right now. Not looking too bad, but I'm gonna need some serious flats to sort out various issues! 🙂 About to go through an auto Meridian flip in NINA for just the second time (first time went suprisingly well), so fingers crossed. I'm imaging in Spain at the moment so getting darker skies than you I guess. 🙂 Cheers!

That looks excellent to me, considering such a short session!! Well done! And well done for all that work you've done to set things up for all your combos - I wish I was that organised! 🙂 I'm aiming for M3 tonight, despite a 3/4 moon and questionable seeing. It will also be a short session - aiming for a couple of hours. I'll be happy if I can get as clean an image as you've got here. Cheers, Steve

Thanks! I used 30 Flats and 30 Flat Darks. I have not been using any normal Dark frames recently as I have found that they negatively impact the masters I create. For some reason the image itself becomeds dark and the signal gets very much reduced. If anyone knows how to fix that I'd be happy to hear it. 😉 Maybe I will refresh my library of Darks to see if that helps - they are quite old now. BTW, here is a slightly adjusted version. Maybe the sky is too dark here for some tastes. 🙂

There seem to have been so few imaging opportunities over the past winter, but here is approximately 6.5 hours of LRGB data that I managed to capture from here on the UK south coast this week. SW150PDS on EQ6R-Pro. ASI1600MM. Stacked in APP. Processed in Pixinsight. Thanks for looking.

Only managed to salvage 2 hours of data from last nights attempt at the flaming star. I've also probably processed it to death. Hey ho. 30 x 2 mins Ha - 15 x 2 mins SII - 15 x 2 mins OIII Skywatcher Explorer 150PDS - ASI600MM - Stacked in APP - Processed in PixInsight. Thanks for looking.

Thanks Kirkster. I used PCC in Pixinsight, so hopefully the star colours are reasonably accurate for their spectral classes. 🙂

Thanks Malcolm! 👍

Cheers alacant!! Hopefully heading there again before too long! 🙂 Cheers!!

Thanks Olly! It was tempting to clip the blacks a bit more, but I managed to restrain myself. 🙂

Just under 4 hours of LRGB data from South Coast UK this week. Skywatcher Explorer 150PDS on EQ6R-Pro. Stacked in APP. Processed in Pixinsight. Thanks for looking.

An image of NGC2403 - a spiral galaxy in Camelopardalis. I think I need a lot more data on this to do it justice. This is just about 2.5 hours in total of LRGB. I have some Ha to add to it but don't think that will add a great deal at the moment. I may try and grab more LRGB when conditions permit as this is a nice target to image. Imaged with ASI1600MM and Skywatcher Explorer 150PDS on an EQ6R-Pro. Thanks for looking.

This is old data that I have recently re-processed. M51 with just about 75 mins of LRGB data. The first image below was processed a couple of years ago and the second image was re-processed recently with Pixinsight and some new tools. I know the stars are a bit zany in the new version but using some new techniques I think I have managed to extract some extra detail - I may have overdone the sharpening/clipped the blacks however. Thanks for looking. Comments welcome. Steve OLD IMAGE NEW IMAGE