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SiD the Turtle

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Everything posted by SiD the Turtle

  1. The ESA have released this teaser video of a mosaic the Euclid space telescope has produced: ESA - Zoom into the first page of ESA Euclid’s great cosmic atlas I can't see anywhere you can zoom in yourself, but other articles suggest this might be March next year. (Also in before anyone says the black square gaps are where the lizard-people live)
  2. Early on, after dynamic background extraction, while the image is linear, as StarXterminator can handle it in a linear state, apparently. Indeed, I found it much easier to just use stretching on the stars on their own and add them back, rather than damaging the nebulosity trying to deal with them on the main image. Edit: on HDRMT, I used it for an image of Bode's and the Cigar Galaxy as I am using far too wide a FoV scope for them, I wondered if it'd help here but honestly it looked like those horrendous sunset shots people do where the clouds end up way too... sharp is probably the best way to describe it.
  3. Thanks. I took another stab in a different direction: Was a bit less lazy in the picking of dynamic background extraction points. Didn't use HDRMT. Used a mask and goosed the saturation of the nebulosity separate to the stars. Used a good-old fashioned histogram transform to trip out the stars. The output I'm happy enough with for now:
  4. Hi all, Having trouble processing the Cygnus loop, I feel like I'm losing data whenever I stretch, or try to reduce the stars. Would appreciate advise, all thumbnails are STF-auto-stretched for visibility: Here's my raw image, after running WBPP. Pretty decent, I have some backgrounds to deal with, and way too many stars. After dynamic background extraction: Now I've used StarXterminator: Then HDRMT and NoiseXterminator. This is the starless image (perhaps HDRMT is a little agressive): This, IMO is pretty special, I see plenty of detail here I'd like to keep. So I use PixelMath [~((~starless)*(~stars)) to recombine: Now the detail is lost in the noise of the stars. Doing the best I can with a stretch, then using 'Star Reduction' from Bill Blanshan and Mike Cranfield, which has worked well for me before, I can get something like this: I feel like I'm missing a lot of the detail that was in the starless images. Any ideas? More stretching? A different star reduction tool?
  5. It's 2am yesterday and I'm doing a meridian flip. Once it's flipped the ASIAir states the camera is rotated 270 degrees. It's 2am and I'm not thinking straight and use its rotation tool to rotate the CCD, forgetting that there's a weird bug with the ASIAir where it misinterprets the rotation now and then. So I rotate the CCD, forever trapping me from doing flats. Any smart ideas? I can't think of anything I can do in the daytime, best I can think is set up tonight, don't touch the focuser or anything else, don't even polar align, plate solve an image from last night, rotate to match the FoV, then take flats in the dark using the screen of my tablet.
  6. Trying to find a decent battery and solar panel to power my astrophotography setup, loads of astronomers seem to recommend Jackery so I gave them a punt during their Father's Day sale. Their online specs are vague and I hadn't realised their DC connectors are not a standard size, even after trying a few adaptors from Amazon and eBay nothing had the right 'bite' for me to be sure everything would stay connected when in the middle of a session, so I initiated a return. They were at first quick to issue the returns authorisation, but were extremely rude about the process. When I said the returns form doesn't say where to return it, I was told to Google it. I then warned them that the drop off places near to me won't work as they're all lockers and the solar panel is too big and if they could do a pickup, but they said I could instead return it at my own expense. After a long drive I eventually found somewhere return it and it quickly arrived at their warehouse then... nothing, I've been ghosted ever since. They stopped responding to my emails even when I threatened to do a chargeback. I called repeatedly and they answered, saying sorry and a refund will be with me in 7-10 days, but nothing. Ended up doing an Amex chargeback to get my money back. They still haven't responded to my emails.
  7. Thanks @Oddsocks I'll give it a try tonight and see what I can do! And yes indeed, the more I stare at the widefield, the more I spot those dust and gas clouds... beautiful. Would be great to get another couple of full nights' data here when I have clear skies and it's not the summer solstice so it actually gets dark!
  8. Thanks for all the input everyone. I took another stab using StarXterminator to pull out the stars, use HDRMT on the starless image, denoise it, recombine the stars with Pixel Math then run SCNR (colour calibration makes everything too green for my liking). I've also posted the plain widefield, I think it has a nice look. Also flabbergasted that when I annotated it just for fun, it found 386 galaxies!
  9. Thanks all for the input so far, given me lots of ideas to try and processes I hadn't heard of, keep them coming! Yes the raw subs have colour in the stars, as done the raw stacked image, the levels must be pulling out the colour. Maybe the cause of the blown out core too. Beautiful, is there HA data in there for the reds? Thanks for the detailed breakdown, lots to unpack and consider, cheers! Edit: even a little SCNR makes the image so much better!
  10. Hi all, I'd like some constructive criticism on my workflow and thoughts on the my final image of M81 and M82. I've technically been an astrophotographer for a few years, but as a parent in the cloudy UK, this is the first target where I feel I have enough data at least, though from a less than ideal focal length and image scale. I put together a new travel rig (as in take on a plane travel rig) which has compromises on pixel scale, but hopefully that drizzle can resolve. Giving it a test run, seeing as it was galaxy season taking a picture of M81 and M82 seemed sensible, though on this rig it'll be quite small. My own critique of the final image is that it's a little cold, and the detail is lost compared to photos I've seen online, I think because this rig isn't really the best fit for such small objects. Any steps I've missed? Final Image Kit William Optics Redcat 51 v3 ZWO AM3 + carbon fibre tripod ZWO ASI2600MC-DUO (with the integrated guide cam for zero flexure + ease of travelling and setup) Optolong L-Pro light pollution filter ZWO ASIAIR for image acquisition 129 x 180s exposures at -20c, or ~6 and a half hours of exposure Darks, biases and flats taken Bortle 5 suburbia, lots of moon but hopefully the filter helps there Process Everything was accomplished in PixInsight, I am trying a workflow that is automated as possible. I am not an artist, and I struggle with the processing part, so hoping I can be as 'mathematical' as possible. Images before stretch have been saved here as pngs with STF autostretch so they are visible. 1. Weighted Batch Pre-processing default settings + drizzle x2 (image resized to 25% of original here as it's huge) 2. Dynamic crop 3. SpectrophotometricColourCalibration - didn't do much but that could be STF? 4. Auto Dynamic Background Extraction (ADBE) - a new script that doesn't use AI (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqXfzr1ZLdk), seems to work well and way faster than using DBE 5. NoiseXTerminator (trial, I want to use GraXpert but it's so slooooooooow on my laptop) 6. Statistical Stretch (auto stretch tool from the same guy as Auto DBE above) - seeing some faux 'nebulosity' here? 7. Manual histogram transform to make the contrast a bit deeper 8. Star Reduction using this: https://pixinsight.com/forum/index.php?threads/new-script-starreduction.21109/ to put the focus on the galaxies
  11. Thanks guys. As expected it skipped building the darks, biases and flats, but the rest of the process repeated as normal, taking another 3 hours. I guess ticking drizzle impacted the processes too far upstream? No matter regardless, I've got the better output now.
  12. So I loaded all my lights, biases, darks and flats, set it going and 3 hours later had my final integrated image. Except I am using a camera and telescope combo that under-samples and forgot to tick the box for drizzle, and all the stars are quite lumpy. I know from a previous pass when I had less data drizzle will solve this issue. Any way I can re-engage the WBPP process or use another process to drizzle without another three hours of processing? I still have all the output files from WBPP, from the master darks etc, to the registered and calibrated frames.
  13. Just to add if anyone finds this post in future, a few points on the guide at High Point Scientific:
  14. Thanks again @Elp, @Carbon Brush, this is why I love the astro community, you learn so much and people are happy to share their own knowledge. This is the stuff that's not in the manual! So electrics are not my speciality so happy to be wrong here, but I guess the concern is if there's any chance you could draw more than the system allows. Take the Celestrons: you pull more than 3A, they shut down for safety. The ASiair can take in 5A max, what if the downstream components ask for 6A and your PSU can provide 6A? Does it cut off, does it try to deliver 6A? Does it cook something on the board? I know the Pegasus Powerboxes are built to be fairly idiotproof to prevent burning out devices or the powerbox itself. Is there a risk here that the Air doesn't?
  15. Oooh good shout. I don't know how good the regulation is on the Air, but I don't want to cook it.
  16. Thanks @Elp, @Carbon Brush. Indeed if I turn off the dew heater the draw appears to max at about 2.1A when slewing. I guess I could turn off the dew heater, GOTO, do all the usual setting up of tracking etc, then turn on the heater. But as if you suggest, the draw is still high on the dew heater, I might be dancing a little close to the edge. Still, gives me options regardless. Interesting how even the mains link might cause me an issue if it breaches 5A. I have a relatively cheap Lynx Astro 12v adaptor that delivers 5A that I'm using indoors for testing. I have a ludicrously expensive Pegasus Astro adaptor in a dribox in the garden, and now I know why it was so expensive: it can support 10A. Probably more expensive than it needed to be, but it's been as solid as a rock for years.
  17. Thanks @Carbon Brush that's good to note and tracks with my findings. You go over 3A, it just turns itself off instantly.
  18. Thanks all, I can't believe how daft I've been. @ONIKKINEN is correct, that's my old tank, and my new one is its baby brother. Both are rated at THREE amps, not FIVE, only the even larger version will do five. I'm simply underpowered, nothing more nefarious. When the whole system is going (tracking, one dew heater, camera capturing with cooler running, anti-dew on the camera on, guide camera on) it's using about 2.5A. When using GOTO, it peaks at about 4.5A, way above what the batteries can do. Even if I turn down the slew speed it seems to take the same amperage, so no luck there. I guess this matches the AM3 documentation, which states it needs 1.7A during GOTO. I put together this setup as a travel scope, and by travel I mean small enough and light enough to go in airline carry-on, so a car battery or proper caravan-spec lithium battery is out of the question. However, all is not lost, as @ONIKKINEN suggested, I'm going to run the mount off the smaller battery directly, everything else off the larger one via the ASiair and spread the load. Plus smaller batteries are easier to spread across backpacks for the aforementioned travel, rather than returning this battery and scaling up to a monster one. For reference, the AM3 does not have the separate 12v out option.
  19. I've got a brand new ASIair Plus, a ZWO AM3 mount hosting a Redcat 51 and a ZWO ASI2600MC-Duo camera. This is all working lovely when connected to the wall via a 12v power supply, but I'm having issues with Powertanks. I have an old Celestron Powertank Lithium Pro which has seen a lot of abuse. When slewing, the power entirely cuts out and the battery dies. So I bought a brand new smaller version, the Powertank Lithium, but it has similar issues. Basically on slewing after a moment I hear a relay-like click in the mount, the same noise you hear when you first power it up. Then it decides it's only going to slew on one axis, and beeps if you try the other. In the ASiair app it seems to occur when I breach 3 amps, but that's miles under what either battery is rated for. So, I think the ASiair and the mount are fine, as they'll work off of the wall socket. On battery if I turn off everything apart from the mount, it slews fine, so I think it's load. I'm going to try it on my HEQ5 mount via a Pegasus Powerbox to be sure, but anyone else had similar issues? How best to diagnose the cause? Are these batteries just rubbish, or am I missing something?
  20. Hi Grant, thanks for the news, sorry that the latest version of Android is a pain!
  21. With all respect to @FLO for providing the Android app free of charge, the lack of response here and to my emails is disappointing.
  22. Retailer and William Optics both told me to simply screw it back in until there was resistance, but not overtighten. I did want to ask WO exactly what it's for after a slightly vague answer, but with the earthquake since, I'm not going to pester them. The focuser seems fine, but as we have this infinity cloud over the UK right now, not had a chance for first light yet.
  23. The android app works a little better in app than the mobile website.
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