Horwig

Thanks, actually, the colour saturation was done in Photoshop. using the hue/saturation tool

just the usual, Pi and PS, with a good dose of Mr Croman's magic dust Huw

As usual, excuses first, only three hours LRGB, and one hour Ha, and bad seeing, BlurXterminator struggled to get any good detail, anyway, here it is: Seeing what OIlly got in nine hours at f2, I thought I'd really stretch this to see what was there with three hours at f3.6. Combined the LRGB for luminance, now I'm imaging with a Cmos camera, and not binning, I'm starting to wonder if I need to shoot 'L' at all, just RGB and combine to create a luminance, any thoughts? Huw

Hope you don't mind me having a go as well

I 've been really unhappy with this image, but managed to get a few clear hours Wednesday night, so here we go again. Fresh 5x15 minutes of Ha was captured , and 5x15 of S2 before snow clouds closed in. I captured the final S2 frame with snow swirling about, but this patch of sky remained clear, very strange feeling. The original night of imaging was very windy, I was getting about 5.5 pixels FWHM, down to 2.3 with an application of BlurXTerminator, 1.4 pixels with two applications, but it was looking over processed. Wednesday's new subs were 2.3 pixels un touched, a result! So here's a compromise image The fresh 75 minutes Ha, new S2 subs added to the original, making 195 minutes, and the original 150 minutes O3. Still not sure of the colours, but at least it's sharper And a grovelling apology to Tomato. No, that green tint really was not all Ha was it. Huw

Know what you mean, same here

I'll pick this as my favourite for 2023, well it's my only image of 2023. I'm going backwards in this hobby, seems I have to re learn everything with every image

Yes, might be , I applied LHE to all three, probably a bit cack handed.

This was a very bad data set, my usual seeing is of the order of 3.5", this was about 11", so remarkable what BXt achieved really. It was run with default star reduction, and non-stellar on max for both runs, but yes, I should run the second pass with star reduction reduced to minimum so as not to ruin the stars Huw

OK, so it appears you can apply BXt more than once, but with caveats. This is a 100% crop of the Ha from my California Nebula image. It was a very windy night, guiding graph was a sawtooth, hence the bad sharpness: Worth viewing at 100%. Left, no BXt, FWHM 5.48 pixels, Center, one application, FWHM 2.32 pixels, Right, two applications FWHM 1.39 pixels The difference between one and two applications is subtle, but definitely there, the downside is the dark halos on the double application, but maybe playing with halos might change matters, either that or remove stars and replace with the ones from the single application.

Sorry, brain not in gear, 'FWHM was over 10" is what I should have written

Good to have your input Olly, I've been comparing my California image to Kinch's superb 'clouds of California', he has so much clean detail, which is missing from mine. Interestingly, FWHM on mine is over 10"/pixel, which BXt is struggling to tame, but applying it twice seems to offer hope, the second application ruins the stars, but the nebulosity stands up well. I'm still experimenting. Huw

Hmmm, I think Stuart has a point, after copying both images into Photoshop, equalising fluxes with curves, I can see hardly any difference, will investigate more in the morning

This might be OT, but I got into BXt quite late, (not really done much imaging over the last couple of years, too much cloud.) I'm impressed with what it can do, I measured some images before and after, using PI's FWHMExetricity script. On my long FL scope I image at 0.5 arc sec/pixel, PI shows FWHM of 3.6 on one image before BXT, and 0.8 after correction, that is an amazing difference. I've managed a couple of images over the last few weeks, M33 and The California Nebula, and whilst I'm impressed with the sharpening on the galaxy, the sharpening on the nebula was not that great. Anybody else seeing this, or am I just rusty and out of practise? Huw

Thanks, I'm desperately rusty in processing, it's been so cloudy over the last year or two. Initially I was aiming at two hours per filter, I had a roughly six hour window to image between darkness and when it went behind the house, but when I saw the relative signal strengths, I adapted, 5x900 gave good Ha, 10x900 still gave pants O3. There is so much extended Ha, yes the green is real. Incidentally, I'm not at all happy with the sharpness, BXt has cleaned everything up, but to my eye the nebula is still not crisp, well not compared to Kinch's excellent 'Clouds of California' here. I'm imaging at probably half the resolution, but even then... Huw

This is only my second attempt at NB work, so please go easy, this is my third attempt at processing this image, and I'm not sure if I'm getting anywhere with it, comments please. Tech details: FSQ106 reduced, ZWO 6200Mono with Baader filters, AZ-EQ6 8 x 900sec S2, 5 x 900sec Ha, 10 x 900sec O3

Could I interest you in a swap for constant cloud, nice and grey, no colour at all

A late update on Aurorawatch, the night of Dec 2nd, It gave me an aurora warning, it was clear, so I went outside but saw nothing at all. Since the figures looked promising, I put a camera up, six seconds at iso 6400 gave me this, the first time I've ever caught an aurora. Now I'd love to see one too Huw

I'm sure I've seen a discussion on this some time back, it probably involved colour space differences

Thanks, the original TIFF looked a lot better to my eye, using 'export for web' from photoshop seems to screw up the saturation, not sure why. H

Haven't tried M33 since late 2015, I had another go at the end of this November, but had a problem with my filter wheel not positioning repeatedly, so flats not working. I decided eventually that it was worth trying to salvage something from it, probably because it's my only image this year, damn cloud cover. Here it is, cropped very hard to get rid of the horrible gradients: ZWO ASI6200MM, 40cm f3.6 Newt, 150 minutes L, 30 minutes each RGB, all 5 minute subs, and 100 minutes Ha in 20 minute subs PI with BlurXterminator2, (naturally), finished in photoshop The outer regions are very noisy, probably 150 minutes L is not enough, but applying Noise Xterminator gave a patchy effect Huw

Left a message for Terry, who came straight back! That's what I call customer care. I'll copy the answer here for reference, somebody else might find it useful. Hello Huw, This can be due to several things, so it could be a bit difficult to pin down. The most likely cause is a slow loss of magnet strength on the carousel - this will tend to happen after a long period since manufacture. First, check that the bearing screws are all firm and that the central axle screw is tight. If these look good, please try loosening the two nuts that hold down the PC board and insert a strip of thin card under the long straight edge of the board. A strip of cereal box is about the right thickness. Once the nuts are screwed down, see if the packing has helped. If the card doesn't fix it, then it might be best to send it to us for checking and updating. Best regards, Terry Card strip added, simple engineering fix, moves the magnetised screws closer to the sensors of the pcb, very neat. Huw

Thanks both, yes SX have been good over the years, I managed to bust the USB connection to the board many years ago, and the replacement board was very reasonable. Not sure if it's a direction issue, I do have SGP set on 'both directions', but I have 'rotate through events' set. Some subs were correct, some not, and on different filters. Yes a mail to SX is in order Huw

I've had my SX usb wheel for well over ten years, and this is the first time I've seen this fault, over a few days, the wheel would occasionally not position the filter accurately, and then my flats would not line up, here's a stretched master light: I've since stripped out the wheel and tried it on the bench: no problem found, it behaved impeccably (naturally!). Has anybody ever had their wheel behave similarly? Huw

Any recommendations? What do people use? I've just installed the AuroraWatch Uk app on my phone, seems ok Huw