Simon Pepper

Agreed Adam was clear and precise looking forward to watching it back and the parts I missed. Thanks Adam and SGL for putting it together! 

Clear here heading out for some Milky Way core and NGC7000 running in the garden

Hi Lee 

Thanks no all feedback is good gives me areas to concentrate on. I wanted to try it all in PI instead instead of cheating I’m and taking it back into PS to fix. I recall a feature in PI that shows the colour balance think it was image statistics and then a way to correct it I will go back and have a look at that. Haha I am bad with that saturation slider this was a toned down version lol I will learn one day! The earlier image was right at the start after background neutralisation noted the history tab though don’t remember seeing that and that will be handy!  
 

thanks 

Just now, Simon Pepper said:

Hi Guys,

So this is what I came up with IC405 from stacking to edit all in PI. I followed some yt videos and took your advice above! I think its come out ok I can see a hot pixel snuck through and I did have issues with gradients but not sure if thats the dust of the nebula showing up. Its definitely better than the edit I did in PS so thats a win for PI! Ideally after some feedback please how you think it has come out where it can be improved? Not sure if you can view in .xisf, so added jpg and tif just in case. 

Thanks 

IC405PI.xisf 134.15 MB · 0 downloads IC405PI.tif 133.86 MB · 0 downloads

Looking at it as jpg and at this scale its a little blue and possibly some horizontal banding?

Hi Guys,

So this is what I came up with IC405 from stacking to edit all in PI. I followed some yt videos and took your advice above! I think its come out ok I can see a hot pixel snuck through and I did have issues with gradients but not sure if thats the dust of the nebula showing up. Its definitely better than the edit I did in PS so thats a win for PI! Ideally after some feedback please how you think it has come out where it can be improved? Not sure if you can view in .xisf, so added jpg and tif just in case. 

Thanks 

IC405PI.xisf IC405PI.tif

How did the OP get on? I have the 294MC I love it but I am itching for what can be achieved by going mono. Intrigued to know if you believe you made the correct decision? Pros and cons.

thanks 

Thanks for all the tips!

On 27/04/2021 at 20:57, scotty38 said:

Image/Undo Image/Redo should do what you want, it's how I do it although there may well be other  ways 

Loving it already the splitting out RGB channels and playing with PixelMath and LRGB tool is awesome although its easy to get carried away with those exotic pallet combinations! Will definitely be ordering the license though. Not sure the Mrs is overly pleased though she doesnt see me anymore  

10 hours ago, scotty38 said:

Image/Undo Image/Redo should do what you want, it's how I do it although there may well be other  ways 

Ah yes ctrl z and ctrl y... Not ideal a button would be quicker but that does work thank you

Perfect will do will check out those books too  Is there a toggle in PI that shows once you have completed a step lets say TGVDenoise to toggle on and off the change so you can see what its applied? In PS you can select that layer and then deselect to quickly see if there is an improvement or not?

Thanks 

Perfect will do will check out those books too

Hi Lee, 

Nope all I did was nuke it using STF then dove straight into the BackgroundNeutralization. I will have a look around to see if I see the background extraction and try running that first. 

I think all of your comments make sense  definitely a lot to take it and learn, but will definitely stick with it.

Thanks 

I have a lot to learn here... Ok so I did that and the image looks a lot better a few gradients but I am sure I can find a yt tutorial on that. Quick question then when using the STF tool do you need to press the nuke button after each step through other screens like colourcalbration, backgroundneutraliasation I thought all that was needed was to use the triangle and drag and drop onto the image?  

Thanks

Hi all,

So I am trialling the free license with PI to see how I get on and I am struggling with the BackgroundNeutralization step. Watching some YT tutorials I have stacked and integrated and performed the nuke stretch using the ScreenTransferFunction then people are saying to use BackgroundNeutralization followed by colour calibration and SCNR as the first few steps. However when I complete the BackgroundNeutralization it just wipes out a lot of good data and turns from the narmal green (as I see in tutorials) to a really hevily contrasted image. Am I missing a step here? I am sure the data is good as I have processed in PS and got a decent result. Pretty sure its 4.5 hours of lights plus calibration frames. Any help from those with a PI degree or not will be appreciated

See snips of before and after BackgroundNeutralization

After the colourcalibration and SNCR it gets even darker and loss of more signal. 

Thanks

55 minutes ago, ollypenrice said:

What I do is avoid messing about with the big stars and just let them be. Once the image is fully stretched I make a copy layer and then the following, which I call reverse-processing:

Top layer. Take a well feathered eraser large enough to remove, fully, the star and its bloated halo. (This doesn't show because the bottom layer is what you now see.)

Bottom Layer. Curves. Pin the curve at the level of the background sky just outside the halo. (Place cursor and ALt Click.)  Add a fixing point below the background sky point. Now pull down the curve above the background sky point, experimenting with a shape that gives you a smaller but still natural star. You can see the effect in real time and look for artificial-looking transitions. The same technique will work for stars set against a nebulous background.

Olly

Thanks Olly will give this one a go!

7 hours ago, Davey-T said:

If it's only a few stars you can sort them manually in Photoshop using a custom cloning brush as recommended by Nik Szymanek IIRC, haven't used it for a while so can't remember the exact process.

Dave

Thanks Dave not heard of Nik or IIRC is there a YT tutorial or point me in the right direction? Thanks 

Thanks Lazy I will give that a go. Well It was an old Celestron 127 SLT scope (F12) that I used for visual when I got into Astro its been gathering dust for about 10 years and thought I would get it out and see what could be done with it. Paired with ZWO 294 MC pro on HEQ 5 mount. I think it was 4 hours of 120s subs at unity gain plus calibration frames. No filters or flattener reducer, never collimated it either I was surprised myself by its capability. I am usually a widefield Redcat Nebula kind, but as it was galaxy season and didnt want to blow another 2k on a Edge HD thought I would give it a go!  Just need to sort that bloating Ill see what I can do 

Hi Seelive

i use starnet to remove the stars to wok on the dso but how do I remove the stars and leave the dso?

thanks 

Hi all,

I was wondering if anyone knows how to get rid of the halos on larger stars? I have tried several ways in post. I use PS but when I stretch the image they appear I have tried the astronomy tools plug in as well as running a minimal filter but I think as they are so big the software doesnt even recognise them as stars! 

Am I over or under sampling causing it? I have only noticed it since switching to dedicated camera from DSLR. Is there any other tricks I can do in post or is there something out in the field I can try?  I have attached my image over Bodes Galaxy so you can see what I mean (not finished)

Thanks

Thanks Vlaiv great explanation as usual! 

Its funny when asking these questions I almost addressed it specifically to Vlaiv

@Vlaiv thanks for putting in the effort there its helped me and others I am sure who come across this. Just to clarify things if you could I am bortle 4 with good sky conditions and have a HEQ5 pro currently my guiding usually averages around 1 rms total error. So checking your scale ideally I need to be somewhere around the 1.5 mark? Looks like with a .7 reducer and binning 2x2 that gives 1.34 or 2.01 at 3x3. I guess what I am asking here is the combination I am looking at isnt going to be a disaster? By the sounds of it there are options available if I invest in a reducer and add in some binning? I did dust out an old slt 127 1500mm with the 294 and was pleasantly surprised at the result hence why I am looking into the Edge 8.

Also just to edit reading again you mention the 294 has 2.3µm is that a typo as I believe its 4.63 when not binned? Hopefully that will also help?

Thanks again!

Hi all,

I have been using the https://astronomy.tools/calculators/field_of_view/ site to choose my next scope (galaxy season) but I will use this with my current ASI294 MC pro I need to better understand the arc seconds per pixel and what this means to the final image and does it have any impact on that image if I want to get it blown up and printed? 

I like the look of the Edge HD series so I am thinking the 8 with my 294 this gives me a resolution of 0.47x0.47 and a dawes limit of 0.57 per pixel, but I have absolutely no idea what these numbers mean. I have seen on other posts saying the lower the numbers the better, but I am not sure if this is accurate. To throw another question out there as well I do plan on going mono at some point and I am keen on the 294MM. I have seen this has a feature where you can bin 1x1 (think default is 2x2) and this increases the MP to 47 which sounds interesting, but again how do all these figures go hand in hand?

Hopefully someone can assist.

Thanks

Thank you I was really surprised as well didn’t expect this I am bortle 4 so that would have helped had good seeing. That’s a great image as well I have heard about this nova from Alyn  Wallace am I right in saying a nova is a new star? Did you centre on another object or have the coordinates as this could be my next target fascinating to know it’s a brand new star!

I thought I would share this was just two hours with calibration frames. I have never used another scope just my redcat which is 250mm this slt was 1500 so I was thinking it was going to be an uphill task but I was surprised with the result considering it comes in at F12! The focus is a little soft as trying to get that right without bahtinov mask and dedicated camera was hard (I have now ordered a mask). But thanks really for giving me the encouragement else I wouldn’t have bothered! 

Pretty good result I have a clear night tonight so will give it a shot thanks