Budgie1

2023 was my first go at mono, starting with an Atik 428EX then moving on to an ASI1600MM Pro. So here's a selection of SHO images using these two cameras.

NGC7635 Bubble Nebula

IC410 Tadpoles

IC1805 Heart Nebula

IC1848 Soul Nebula

SH2-155 Cave Nebula

Welcome to the SGL.  

You mention "a setup to capture images of the moon and Messier objects.". You would be better to aim either for a setup for lunar/planetary imaging or one for Deep Sky Objects (DSO's) as these require different types of cameras & scopes.  

For Planetary imaging you're better using larger focal length scopes with small sensor un-cooled cameras taking video, where as DSO's are better taken with smaller, wider field, fast scopes and cooled cameras with larger sensors using long exposure times. It's not that you can't use one setup for both applications, it's just that there isn't really a perfect setup which suits both.  

Personally, with your dark skies, I'd be going with a DSO setup to take advantage of the lack of light pollution. 

Astro Essentials version is here:

https://www.firstlightoptics.com/finders/astro-essentials-sky-watcher-9x50-finder-to-c-adapter.html

Very interesting, especially for someone who lived on the island for 16 year.

The stones are a favourite for taking visitors too, and the close proximity of the other sets of stones and the Broch, just up the road, at Dun Carloway make a good day trip.

Due to the house, a large hill and tall fir trees, I don't get a good view of Orion at any time of year. So it one of those that I don't normally bother with, but a couple of nights ago it was just in the right place and I managed 1 hour & 9 minutes of subs between the trees.

That evening I'd swapped my ASI1600MM Pro for the ASI294MC Pro, to do some broadband targets. This was attached to a WO Z73 III with adjustable flattener and I though I had the back spacing right, but apparently not, as you can see from the stars in this image.

Tonight I've added another 1.7mm back spacing and the stars at the edges look fine now.

Anyway, I think this is the most detailed image of M42 that I've got to date, even for an hour, the amount of dust in the there is great and I hope I've managed to control the core using GHS in PixInsight.

These were 60s subs with ASI294MC Pro, 200 gain and 30 offset, calibrated with Darks, Flats & Dark-Flats.

C's & C's welcomed and do the clicky thing for full res'.

How are you connecting to the mount, is it a USB cable into the handset, EQDIR cable replacing the handset or ST4? Which ever you're using, have you tried a different cable (assuming you have a spare)?

5 minutes ago, AMcD said:

P.S. After giving me a whole evening of inexplicable problems with no obvious cause, the bloody G11 is now guiding along at 0.6 RMS (which it almost never achieves) like nothing happened.🙄

There's nothing like the threat of replacement to make an old bit of kit work as it should! 😂

What size do you actually need and how much gap needs to be taken up if you use the 10" rings?

5 hours ago, saac said:

Looking good Budgie as you say some nice detail in there.  I think we shared the same clear sky last night for our last run of the year, conditions here were surprisingly good until well after 3am.  I went for the Garnet Star in IC1396 (an itch I had to scratch). Pulling darks and flats now for processing this evening - certainly won't be imaging -  there is sleet and rain forecast    

Jim

The clouds came in at just before midnight here, then cleared again for a while, but I'd packed up by then.

I thought about starting IC1396 when the Veil got too low but went for NCG1499 instead and only got some Ha on that target, which I haven't looked at yet.

I just managed to squeeze in a few hours of imaging last night (29th Dec) before the clouds returned, so this will likely be my last imaging session of 2023 as it's currently snowing here!

I started this image on the 2nd December and collected 3h15m worth of 3.5nm Ha data. Last night I collected 40x 300s 4nm Oiii and another 18x 300s Ha. Sadly the high cloud made some of the Oiii and all of he Ha data unusable, so I ended up with 2h25m of Oiii to add to the original Ha data.

Stacking in PI was a dream this time as I've upgraded my desktop to an AMD Ryzen 7 7700X 8 course processor and 32Gb of RAM, it stacked 68 x 30mb images with Master Darks & Flats in just over 11 minutes! That used to take 30 to 45 minutes with the old processor, so I'm very happy with that outcome.

All processed in PI and I'll probably do it again to alter the colours slightly, now I've seen it on here, but I'm pleased with the detail I've managed to capture, given the cloud issues.

Kit:

• ZWO ASI1600MM Pro at -10°C, gain 139, offset 50.
• WO Z73 III with adjustable flattener
• HEQ5 with belt conversion
• Captured in APT with PHD2 doing the guiding.

5 minutes ago, Beardy30 said:

Got it ! 🙈thanks everyone

however it doesn’t seem to live - any tips for getting it off?? 

The two holes in the ring can be used to put something into, like a couple of screwdrivers of the right diameter, to give a little extra purchase and help unscrew it from the camera body.

Those holes go all the way through the ring, so careful that what you put into them doesn't scratch the paint on the camera.  

Here's another rendition from me, this time a slightly different pallet used again.

The basic processing in the linear phase is the as my others above (which I'll add to the workflow anyway for completeness ). The pallet I used looks like this and was the input to PixelMath:

// R: sii*0.4 + ha*0.6
// G: ha*0.3+oiii*0.7
// B: oiii

• Run GraXpert on all three images (no cropping, ABE or DBE needed)
• LinearFit onto the Sii channel.
• Didn't have to Bin x2 on this one because I have a new motherboard & AMD Ryzen 7 7700X processor, which has speeded things up a bit.
• BlurXTerminator matching each channel to the correct PSF using Script>Render>PSFImage
• Manual HistogramTransformation to stretch the images and then enhanced using GHS
• StarXTerminator to remove the stars on each image.
• Combine the images using the formula above and create a new layer by extracting the luminance layer from the combined image.
• Sharpen the new Lum layer using UnsharpenMask and then add that to the combined image using LRGBCombination to sharpen the whole image a little.
• Use Curves to enhance the colours with saturation & RGB/K
• HDRMultiscaleTransformation using 9 layers
• Script > EnhanceDarkStructures with default settings
• NoiseXTerminator set to 50% to remove some processing created noise
• Used the Foraxx stars from the previous version, with some star reduction and colour adjustments in Curves, then used PixelMath to add the stars onto the background.

Using this method I found there was a lot more fainter dust detail that I was able to bring out than I did before and give it a little bit of contrasting colours as well.

I have two ASI120MM Mini guide cameras, one on the main scope and one connected to a Astro Essentials 30mm f/4 Mini Guide Scope on top of a Samyang 135mm f2 lens, run by the ZWO ASIAir mini and that setup works well. 

Again, roughly focus during the day and fine tune at night. There are some who say pin-point focus isn't needed for guiding, but I like to have is as near as I can because I feel is gives a better guiding.

4 hours ago, symmetal said:

With AI2 I used to run the PSFImage script to get the image PSF pixel size as that seemed to give better results overall than the BXT Automatic PSF option. With the RASA 11 I generally had sharpen stars at 0 as it tended to create artifacts if used. However I did this with the AI4 version and the result was poor with almost no corner star shape correction. Using the Automatic PSF it did correct the corner stars perfectly as well as sharpening them, (if selected). Possibly AI4 recomputes the PSF for different areas of the image so I'll use that from now on.

That's interesting, Alan. I've always used PSFImage to get the correct PSF figure before running BXT on nebula, only using the auto option on galaxies.

So it'll be interesting to see the comparison between auto & manual in AI4 for me.

1 hour ago, Budgie1 said:

Have you tried playing with the slider? 
It defaults to 0, but try running the process at 1 or somewhere in between to see if that makes a difference.

Forget the above, I was thinking about GraXpert.

I think Stuart is on the right lines.

Have you tried playing with the slider? 
It defaults to 0, but try running the process at 1 or somewhere in between to see if that makes a difference.

I reprocessed the Soul as, looking at it again, the first rendition is a bit garish. 

This time I went with more of a Foraxx pallet. I think the red/yellow contrast takes away the harshness of the first image.

Surly that should be:

• Shoot
• Sleep
• Repeat
• Edit months later when you've finally got enough data to stack

😂🤣

This one I'll call "Experimentation with Fire", as that's what I think it turn out like. It was a bit of messing around and trying things until I thought they looked okay.

I think this is the workflow in Pixinsight:

• Run GraXpert on all three images (no cropping, ABE or DBE needed)
• LinearFit onto the Sii channel.
• Bin x2
• BlurXTerminator matching each channel to the correct PSF using Script>Render>PSFImage
• Manual HistogramTransformation to stretch the images and then enhanced using GHS
• StarXTerminator to remove the stars on each image.
• Using PixelMath I made two new images, a new Red Channel Ha*0.8+Sii*0.2 and a new Green/Blue Channel Oiii*0.8+Sii*0.2 - seemed like a good idea!
• Using LRGBCombination, combine the images using the new images to make HOO colour image, again using nothing in the luminance channel.
• Created a Red colour mask and played with that to bring out the "Fire" then created a Magenta colour mask for the blue areas, including the Crescent & Bubble.
• Use Curves to enhance the colours with saturation & RGB/K
• HDRMultiscaleTransformation using 9 layers
• Script > EnhanceDarkStructures with default settings
• NoiseXTerminator set to 60% to remove some processing created noise
• Use LRGBCombination to combine the stars into an HOS star image, applied star reduction with MorphologicalTransformation and reduced the saturation.
• PixelMath to add the stars onto the background using ~((~HOO)*(~Stars))
• Finally into PhotoShop CS3 for some Contrast & Brightness + some colour tweaks.

My next rendition is an HOO version.

Again the software is PI and the I used the same methods in the linear phase, so the workflow is the same until after the stretch.

• Checked all three files for the need to crop & background extraction - none needed it so I didn't bother with these processes.
• LinearFit onto the Sii channel.
• Bin x2 so my old PC can cope with the file size (new motherboard bundle on the way )
• BlurXTerminator matching each channel to the correct PSF using Script>Render>PSFImage
• HistogramTransformation to stretch the images and then enhanced some areas using GHS
• StarXTerminator to remove the stars on each image.
• Using LRGBCombination, combine the images using R=Ha, G=Oiii & B=Oiii, nothing was using in the luminance channel.
• Use Curves to enhance the colours with saturation & RGB/K
• HDRMultiscaleTransformation using 9 layers
• Script > EnhanceDarkStructures with default settings
• NoiseXTerminator set to 50% to remove some processing created noise
• PixelMath to add the Ha stars only onto the background using ~((~HOO)*(~HaStar))

I have a couple of renditions so far (it's cloudy so I have plenty of time on my hands ).

First here is a Foraxx version.

Software in PixInsight and the workflow looks like this:

• Checked all three files for the need to crop & background extraction - none needed it so I didn't bother with these processes.
• LinearFit onto the Sii channel.
• Bin x2 so my old PC can cope with the file size (new motherboard bundle on the way )
• BlurXTerminator matching each channel to the correct PSF using Script>Render>PSFImage
• HistogramTransformation to stretch the images and then enhanced some areas using GHS
• StarXTerminator to remove the stars on each image.
• ForaxxPalletUtility to combine the background & star channels into the one image.
• Enhanced with Curves
• NoiseXTerminator set at 40% to take out any noise created by processing

41 minutes ago, Sarek said:

Thanks - I think the 3 movements were related to the lack of reported stars then?

Sorry, I was getting myself confused. The Polar Alignment routine normally takes three positional readings, one at what ever position the mount is starting in, then moves around 30°, plate solves, then moves another 30°, plate solves again and calculates the RA & DEC corrections. It's from this position that you make any corrections.

If yours did three positional moves, then it could have been related to the lack of detectable stars.

47 minutes ago, Sarek said:

I had dew heaters on both guide and main scope. I have not tried a  dew heater on the  ASI 533mc Pro as I believe its not required?

Normally you put the dew heaters on the scopes only, but you can get a heater (LINK) for the ZWO cameras, for use if you're getting fogging on the camera AR window. If you're not seeing this then don't bother with it.

You can also get condensation forming on the camera sensor, this is seen on the images as dots or misting in the centre of the image. The cure for this is recharging or changing the desiccant tablets inside the camera. Again, if you're not seeing this then don't bother with it because it means taking the front of the camera body off and exposing the sensor to possible dust! 

My ASIAir Mini does 3 movements on PA and as many as it takes to correctly plate solve (there is no specific number for this as it's relying on the accuracy of the mount).

The only thing I can think of is possible fogging of the camera window or the scope lens, due to cooling. This would then clear as the temperature equalised or dew heaters started working.

You could try a higher gain for PA. plate solving & focusing, as you can set the gain you want for the image run in the planner.

Also think about the amount of storage space you would use/need.

My ZWO ASI1600MM Pro camera produces subs of around 30mb in size, no matter how long the exposure is. So, if I take 1000 subs, that's 30Gb of data I have to store to produce one stacked image. If I only take 80 longer subs, that's just 2.4Gb of data for the same integration time.

Not only that, the more subs you give your stacking software, the harder it has to work and longer it will take to produce the stacked image.  

Thanks for the info.

I was just curious as I also have the ASI294MC Pro and use it with the L-eNahnce filter on the ASIAir Mini at the moment.

I've had gradient issues in the past using 120 gain and 30 offset, even making the Flats longer. So I now use gain 200 and offset 30 and have no issues at all, and that was using 2 second flats and ADU of around 25k. It;s interesting how the same sensor/camera can act differently.  

Have fun with the 294MC, it's a good camera.