Luke Newbould

@scotty38 - I had a rocky and frustrating start with PixInsight for the first three weeks or so of the trial, and I seriously thought I'd not be purchasing it, especially given the lofty price tag! - Things started to click into place though soon afterwards, and now I do genuinely enjoy processing in it

Thanks for the lovely comments guys! I'm really happy it was of some use 😊

Hi guys, I made a quick video tutorial to try and show an easy to follow method to take your OSC narrowband data taken with filters such as the l-extreme and other similar ones and turn it into a hubble-esque palette. I know that there's lots of ways people like to perform this sort of task, but this is how I've self-taught and I thought if I can do it then anyone can! This tutorial uses PixInsight, the EZ-processing suite, available free here https://darkarchon.internet-box.ch:8443/ and also finally requires that you have Starnet installed and working in PixInsight, though I believe this is standard for new versions. I hope this is useful for some of you! EDIT - I made available a newer version of this tutorial which is in my opinion better - I'll leave the old one here for anyone interested still though! the older one is below -

Hi Jonny, I think for 30 minutes it's a really good picture regarding grain/noise, that would simply decrease with more integration time of course! To my eye I do see quite a bit of excess green noise in the image, that's probably making it a bit more noticeable - depending on your processing software there's different ways to deal with it but it's never really a difficult task Cheers!

Nice job and a tremendous effort

Wow!! - what a result, that's just fantastic! I've just got this same lens for some wide-field shots after seeing so many lovely images taken with it, - I was also considering the Askar but I'm glad I went with the Samyang as being able to get quality data at f2.8 is nuts. usually the reserve of high-end specialized astrograph equipment needing precise collimation, never mind an off the shelf lens!

really solid image mate, especially for just a few hours under challenging conditions - it's not easy! one thing I'd never really noticed until now is how much the density of the starfield varies from the left to the right of the image - crazy!

Really wonderful image and processing job, well done! - I really like the natural feel to the image that comes from nothing being pushed too hard, it lets the underlying data speak for itself really!

Nice job! Really good depth of colour on an interesting target

@AstroNtinos Thank you for that mate, I'm happy you liked it! (sorry about the late reply!)

Thank you guys! I'm real pleased you liked the shots ! I had a lot of fun doing the experiment, I'd still rather be shooting with narrowband filters at something appropriate during that sort of lunar phase, but it's just nice to see that you still can do something without, even when the sky brightness looks almost insurmountably bright Cheers!

Lovely image! - oddly enough I quite like the novelty of the satellite trails one! it looks like a spider's web on a frosty morning

Hi again everyone! I took the opportunity to get out on the last night of February as the skies promised to be clear (a promise not quite kept!) My target of choice was the Cone and Foxfur nebulae in Monoceros - I wanted to shoot something that allowed me to use my L-Extreme filter in an effort to beat the strong moonlight somewhat which that filter seems to do excellently Image capture went quite smoothly, the only things that went wrong were things out of my control - the weather! - as the night progressed the air thickened to the point where it almost felt wet on your face, bringing with it a misty haze to the night sky that made the light pollution show in the sky as a strong orange glow, unfortunately this did significantly affect my exposures during capture, with the latest subs taken looking significantly worse than the ones from early in the night,.. Oh well! in total I captured 41x5m frames with the following gear: zwo ASI2600mc pro camera Optolong l-extreme filter Skywatcher Esprit 120 apo I did take the opportunity to make a video documenting capture too for anyone interested anyhow, here's the result! and the video : Thank you for looking! Luke

@peter shah Thank you so much Peter for the kind comment! - I am really enjoying making them and everyone has been so supportive, it's a fantastic community we're a part of I'm sorry about the late reply!

@geeklee Thanks so much mate, I appreciate that a lot! - I know what you mean about the subs looking incredibly washed out, it's quite hard to stay motivated to press on during the night when the data per sub looks so poor 👍 And thank you again for watching when you get around to it 😃 - I'm really enjoying sharing my nights with people that way

Lovely and sharp, nice to see the beast that is Alnitak has been well tamed too! - I think you're going to get some phenomenal results with your new camera

@tomato - Thank you for the kind comments! I'm glad you like the end results A bortle 3 must have been beautiful by the way, I'd like to go somewhere dark for a night when we can travel around again, even if just to look at the sky visually. - I marvel at the sky from my bortle 7 so a proper bortle 4 would probably blow my mind haha!

Hi everyone, It looks like most of the UK got some clear skies this weekend, even though it was around a full moon I was still glad to get out and at least have a go! - I hope you all got the chance to get out too It gave me the opportunity to try and make a video also which I've been enjoying doing recently I imaged for two full nights, dusk til' dawn, and in the end captured 104x2m subs on M42, and 300x2m subs on M51. - very tiring! I'd made a mistake on night 1 and accidentally recorded that night's data all at 300 gain! - I noticed on night 2 and put it back to 100 as I'd intended originally, in the end I don't feel it mattered too much . anyhow, I was very happy with how m42 turned out given the conditions - as to m51 though I'm not too happy with it, the data was pretty much ruined by the nearby moonlight so even with 10 hours of exposure it was washed out and a [removed word] to process. - I'm not put off though of course, I'll just redo it when conditions favour it more Thank you for taking the time to look and finally my video covering my multi-night slog!

Beautiful image really clean and "soft" in a good way - making it look natural.

You're not alone there mate, they've almost legged me up plenty of times hehe, usually when carrying the scope in or out! - she definitely rules the roost by the way 😁 Thank you so much Peter, that's really kind of you I'm glad the video offered context for the final shot

Thanks Mick! - She's called Freya, and she keeps my equipment safe and the other two boy dogs in line! (Henry the gsd/berner cross, and Nugget the pug 😂)

I'm using PixInsight, sorry I should have put that in the main post! - I agree that there's more there, I just personally didn't think it was worth the trade off for even more noise to bring it out, it's always a balancing act eh?

Really incredible image! absolutely top-tier stuff.

Thanks for all the comments and pointers guys I appreciate it all, - I'll probably reprocess the data during the week just for more practice

Haha! Very kind of you both, I think perhaps we're all our own worst critics? 😀 - maybe I was overly down on the image, it's not a total tragedy given the conditions on the night! I absolutely love the target so I want to do it justice at some point 👍