Zummerzet_Leveller

Great job! Lovely images.

Lovely image Paul. Still not seen these elusive clouds! Hopefully this season I'll get the chance.

My understanding is that you use layers in imaging processing software and subtract your starless image from the image you created the starless from. This just leaves the stars. You can then control star sizes, colour etc separately. Pretty sure this isn't an automatic process, although it might be in pixinsight.

2nd this. Also check your lights to see if there are any frames with thin cloud or dewing of anything in your imaging set up that cause a misty frame. DSS is not very good at checking frame quality. Siril has the edge here with the histogram stretch function. Really highlights poor frames.

I'd definitely try stacking in Siril instead. What camera do you have?

Lovely image Richard. I just started to pick up the planetary nebula in my recent image. 8.25hrs with a OSC and it was only just picking it up. Nice idea to add narrowband data too, might look at that in the future.

I run my 2600MC at -10c and take my darks library with the camera in the fridge. I pop it in a ventilated cardboard box and let them run. I have found it reduces the load on the fan and haven't had an issue so far.

Not sure it's named, the blue tip is Wolf's Cave Nebula. Could be the sea worm nebula! Thank you for the positive feedback. I did wonder whether to x2 Drizzle as the rig is under-sampled, however I'm not sure it would improve the image much.

I managed to get an EAF thanks to @Ollyb. This a is my first image using it so thought I'd take advantage of a minimal moon to get some dust. Taken on the 25/26th of April, 300s exposures making up 8hrs 25mins of data. Taken with the RedCat51 and 2600MC at Gain 0 with no filter. Processed in Siril, GIMP and a smidge of Topaz.

Thank you. It was a monster to pull together, the fans on my laptop lost about 10 years of life! Thanks. Might try an get this one printed as the full scale one could go quite large. I tried to push some of the image focus to the tree as there is so much going on. Thank you for the feedback and nice comment.

Thanks Paul. It was a real pain to pull together, ICE struggled with the sky, I almost gave up. Left it a day and came back to it and the ICE algorithm stitched it first time... Pretty sure I did nothing different! I have got the White Balance right in the past with the modded cam, I set it 2500K in cam and that makes post processing easier. The original Pano is nearly 500mb... I'm glad I have a powerful laptop but at points it was struggling.

Over the new moon I popped up to Priddy Pools on the Mendip Hills to capture a rather wide Milky Way arch over a popular local subject, a lone Scots Pine. Dealing with the light pollution bubble from Bristol was a nightmare but I think I have a reasonable balance where the LED glow doesn't detract from the image too much. The sky is tracked using the LX3 tracker, 2 x 80s per pane. Taken with my astro-modded 6D and the Samyang 24mm at f/2. 12 panes stitched in MS ICE. The foreground was taken with a standard 6D and the Samyang 24mm at f/8. 12 30s exposures light painted and stitched in MS ICE. All editing carried out with Siril and GIMP. The mask to blend the two images took forever to get right. This is a very low quality version that has been downscaled X2.

Useful insight! I've been trying to do 12 panes in a one'er. I'll give the smaller stitches a go and see if I get a better result.

Did you use MS ICE to stitch? I've done a tracked sky and have been really struggling to get the stitch to work. The foreground has worked fine. I managed to get something reasonable last night after about 4hrs of trying but need to do some work on some dark lines where the stitch occurred.

Nicely done, an early start to get it there. Also battling with the rising sun to get the core in that position. I'm sure it was frantic.

Nice one Paul. I'm working on one of these too... Hopefully it will come together. Beautiful to capture the faint Aurora as well. The 6D and the Samyang 24mm are a powerful combination.

Thanks for the help David. My image of Lowers nebula was a bit soft so I'm not happy with it but I'm pleased with this Thor's helmet considering it was taken low down in the murk and is only 110mins of exposures. Looks like it calibrated well, starting to get the hang of Siril stacking too. It's actually not that bad once you get used to it, and delete all the temporary files!

Well it turns out keeping things 32bit in Siril has worked. I've got to redo my flats as they are not correcting properly, probably me playing too much to try different options. I have taken flat darks so might switch them over in the processing instead. But no more bullseye! It seems to have worked well, the Siril process is a bit more convoluted and it created a mass of temporary files (132Gb...). I am at a loss to why things suddenly changed. I wonder whether it is to do with the focal length and oversampling. Who knows. Now to work out whether you can software bin X2 in Siril.

Thanks for this David and a very interesting thread. Indeed the master files are saved as 16bit not 32bit. I have Siril which now supports 32bit so will try to stack in this and see if it improves things, just have to remember how to stack in Siril with the scripts, it's not quite as user friendly as DSS. What is confusing me is that I have had many successful stacks up until now using the 2600MC on my Redcat51 and 200P using DSS. I'm trying to figure out what may have changed. I'm going to retake some flats on the RedCat and restack some older data to make sure that something hasn't gone awry in the capture process. I've just finished retaking a set of darks so I can hopefully eliminate them from the mix. I do have some slightly reflective elements in the tube from the corrector to reducer on the HD8 that I may have to paint with some stove paint to eliminate them too. I'm keen to try the software route first before I put my fine art skills to the test on a pricey piece of kit! It's all rather annoying as I took advantage of 5 (yes really) clear nights and have captured a bucket load of data.

Yep. Definitely my flats, flocking has not helped either. I'm beginning to wonder if the ASIAir is calculating too long an exposure or something, I did double white t-shirt sky flats to no avail. Deleted all master files and stacked in Average, the result being the bullseye image (tried all different stacking iterations). Stacked without flats and get the second image. I think I am going to have to create some synthetic flats.

Unfortunately this hasn't resolved my issue. A bit of internet hunting (cloudy nights) and I've found similar issues related to reflections in the imaging train. Potentially related to the reducer, so took the reducer apart and DIY flocked the internals. I'll take some more flats and see if it improves things.

I've tried all combinations. I have a library of darks an bias frames and have substituted them in and out of different stacks in a trial and error way to see if there are any changes. Each time the flats are the cause of the rings. I've also stretched and checked my darks and bias and there are no unusual artefacts. I've shot some more flats this morning without the filter to see if that makes a difference. I'm wondering if I am getting a strange reflection from something in the imaging train. Trial and error is the only way I guess. The rings on the blue channel and red are particularly prominent which is why I am wondering if it's related to the L-eXtreme.

Something's up with my flats. I'm struggling with circular concentric rings in the image after stacking and it's not just happening on one scope. I've experienced this over my last two set ups, with the 150P and now my EdgeHD 8. To try and remedy this I have taken flats with artificial light at different intensities and sky flats but following stacking they all have the same result. I'm a bit puzzled as I haven't had this issue previously on my RedCat51 or 200P. I take my flats with the ASIAir Pro and the auto exposure routine and that has worked well in the past. Recent exposures with a flat panel, white t-shirt, the L-eXtreme and the 2600MC at Gain 100 were 8.3s in length. It's really got me scratching my head. If I stack without flats the image is fine, I've tried lots of combo's in DSS and with Siril too all with the same result, as soon as flats are added the rings are back. I am probably doing something daft but I keep going around in circles. I've attached an example image with flats and without and my master flat file. Any thoughts or similar experiences would be greatly appreciated.

Managed to catch the full moon behind Glastonbury Tor. I knew where to take the shot as there were already half a dozen tripods set up! A couple of silhouette shots and a composite made up of an earlier exposure. Canon 6D and my Sigma 150-600mm with the 1.4 teleconverter.

As I have a OSC I wonder if I can plug the guide cam into the usb on the OSC to free up a port on the ASIAir? Something to try in 2023 when the skies clear again. Very wet here today.