Felias

I did exactly that the first time around, but only ended up with a green blotch in the end. I still have Startools in my laptop, so I will try again. The stacking will be in DSS or Sequator, though, I can't afford the 15+ hours that Siril takes, not to mention that the computer gets so hot it may melt down! When you say calibrate in Siril, what do you mean exactly? Is it the colour?

Yes, I was hoping to get some reflected stars, but there are only a couple at the bottom of the picture. The reflection towards the horizon is too light-polluted for them to show, or at least it seems from the raws I've scanned. Also, it was windy and the water was far from still. But it's a good suggestion, I'll try stacking some and see what happens, thanks.

Thank you! There's too much light pollution around here for a single shot to count, much less with only 20s since I wasn't tracking. I only selected the sky using the irregular mask tool. PS: the water and the foreground are a single shot, blended with the stacked photo!

Thank you! I like it too that the haze in the horizon separates the land from the sky, it gives a better depiction of us being in this piece of rock lost somewhere in the Galaxy! 😱 There was a lot of rioting among the birds on Sunday, even without my lights. I just didn't want to intrude... it is their home, not mine. 🦆🦢 Thanks! And you are absolutely right, it is to the NE. I was just thinking that the photo was facing SW while writing the post, and mixed up things. The photo is slightly cropped on the left, but there's no noticeable curvature in my raws. Bear in mind that the 77D is a cropped-sensor camera, so the field of view is not that large. There is a bit of barrel distortion, but that's all.

Thanks!

After a cloudy day on Sunday, I took advantage of the clear evening to drive to Stodmarsh National Nature Reserve, to the NW of Canterbury. I had never been there at night, it was lovely being the only visitor and listening to the sounds of the birds while taking the pictures. The sky wasn't bad, I guess Bortle 4, I could easily see the Milky Way in Cygnus. At lower altitudes the light pollution was an issue, though. Sagittarius was exactly in the direction of Canterbury, so the photo is pointing towards the city lights at 5 miles from the marshes. Therefore, I couldn't get rid of the gradients, and also there are some stacking artifacts due to the passing clouds (half my pictures had some, it wasn't that clear after all), so there's a lot to improve. Nonetheless, I though I'd share it. Samyang 16 mm, half a stop between F/2 and f/2.8, ISO 1600. Canon 77D, simply on a tripod, no mount. 98 x 20s lights, stacked in Sequator. Processed in PS and Lightroom. I light-painted the foreground, but only dared to try once -I didn't want to disturb the birds!

Thank you, I guess the case for Startools gets stronger... 🤔

Thanks. Yes, I do a sinh stretch before I start with the histogram in Siril. It's not worth stacking in it for me, though, because it takes more than a day using all the RAM in my laptop, rendering it unusable. I could leave it overnight, but in any case I wanted to bin the noisy data, so Sequator did the job. Can you bin in Siril? I tried startools months ago and didn't get good results. Maybe I should try again, now that I know more about processing.

I have not been able to go out with my telescope for weeks, so I am practising with old photos to improve my processing skill. This June picture, almost ruined by too much dew on the lens... ...has turned into this: The first picture was stacked in DSS and processed in PS. The new, less cropped version was binned and stacked in Sequator, then processed with Siril. I removed the stars with Starnet++, then merged and denoised in PS. Both 170 x30s subs, ISO 400. WO Z61II, unmodded Canon 77D. I think it looks better, especially thanks to the photometric calibration in Siril. Maybe I should have processed less the centre of the Lagoon, left it brighter? I'd appreciate any tips on how to improve the result (apart from getting more data, I mean).

Thank you! Yes, it's the Capel. Not quite the top, though; it was too windy, so I had to find a spot where I had a bit of cover for the tripod. Next time, I hope...

I haven't seen that one, but many colleagues and family were interviewed in Errol Morris' 1991 documentary. I have seen it a few times; his mother is just amazing.

Reading the article... <<Last year, he shared a photoshopped image of himself in a spacesuit and tweeted it to NASA. He asked if he could join the SpaceX Crew Dragon Demo-2 commercial spaceflight to the International Space Station (via space.com) and tweeted: “Just in case; the suit does fit!”>> ...he's basically saying, "Have Space Suit—Will Travel". 😅

Guess it was a "Night in the Galactic Railroad"... ⭐🚂🚃🚃🚃🚃🚃🚃⭐

There was such a clear sky on Friday that I decided to drive South to capture the Milky Way over the Channel with my new Samyang 16 mm f/2 lens. I thought it would be nice to enjoy a little trek over the cliffs with just a tripod and the camera, forget about the EQ mount and all the heavy equipment. It was lovely, of course, but right after sunset and once I had framed the Milky Way, clouds rolled in fast from the North, getting in front before I could even press the shutter. 😡 I tried nonetheless, but I had to discard 80% of the pictures. The following are what I think is usable, though far from the quality I expected: A stack of 24 lights, 10 seconds each, f/2.0 ISO 1600. Flats and darks, processed in Sequator and Lightroom/PS. That's Folkestone in the foreground, and the bright light in the horizon is Dungeness nuclear power plant. Needless to say, there is plenty of light pollution even by the sea. Then I shifted my camera to the right and tried to do the same, but it was too cloudy and the stack was a mess, so this is a single photo, again f/2, 10s, ISO 1600. There's not much of the Milky Way visible, but I love that I could capture the lighthouse and a passing train in the same picture. It was lonely at the cliffs, and the lit-up trains running empty near the sea made me feel like I was intruding in Chihiro's journey in "Spirited away". I'm glad I'll keep this picture to remember the moment. I intend to return when the weather gets better, though. Finally, although I could only use one of the 64 lights I took along with the last photo, I though that the train was perfect for a time lapse video. It's very short, but there you are: Folkestone -slow.mp4

Good point, thanks. Mmm, I haven't used Linux in a decade at least, maybe I should go back...

I see. If that's the case, there's not much I can do, there's never enough space in my SSD. I'll keep exploring options... Thank you!

Thank you all for your encouraging comments! ☺️ As for Siril, thanks for the input. I don't know the reason, I'm using a laptop, but it's pretty decent (i7, 32 GB of RAM), so it's puzzling. Both DSS and Sequator are fast, but Siril has taken almost a day to process what the others can do in half an hour. I followed the instructions in the webpage, which are quite straightforward, so I don't know. I'll watch the video and see if I can find a solution, thank you! 👍

Not being very happy with the curves in PS and the colours in my previous processing of Andromeda (https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/382537-two-versions-of-andromeda-any-advice/), I decided to try SiriL. I did the stacking (took a whole night, how can it be so slow when DSS takes 20 minutes?) and the post-processing in Siril, then cosmetic retouches and denoising in PS. I have tried to keep more natural colours, less saturated, trusting the photometric calibration in Siril. I think it looks better than my previous attempts, any advice? 340 x 30s shots, plus darks, flats and bias. WO Z61 on a star adventurer, no guiding. Canon 77D. And a version with a bit of star reduction, I'm not sure if it's an improvement:

I have reprocessed M31 from scratch, hopefully this version is an improvement? I have only stretched it once using arcsinh function, and I have denoised it selectively. It is less contrasty than the previous versions, so the dust lanes are not as defined, but the nebulosity looks better I think. I have pushed the colours a bit more, to compensate from the loss in contrast. Any thoughts?

Nice, thank you! 👍

The red background, I can do that easily, so here: Would you denoise the nebulosity and leave the background as it is? What about the dust lanes? 🤔

Suggestions noted; I will try those, thank you all. I actually noticed that the satellites were worse off this time, but at that point I didn't feel like going back. I should have known better. ☺️ Processing is so fun, and it has the advantage that I can do it with one hand while my three-year old daughter immobilises half my body while leaning on me on the couch!

I have been working on processing M31 again (original post here), following some of the advice I have been given in the forums. This time I have used Sequator instead of DSS. I have also binned the photo, applied HLVG filter, and stretched in PS trying to keep better colours. I have tried not to clip the background excessively, the colour sampler in PS detects RGB values around 20 in the darkest places. I have uploaded both versions below; any further advice will be most welcome! Old version: New processing:

Thank you, the plug in definitely worked. The pinkish came out when I increased the contrast to see the dust lanes (a bit of dehazing too), I'll see if I can play a bit with that. It's very mild on my computer, but I've never been able to perfectly calibrate the reds on this screen anyway.

Thank you, I have applied the green correction, now it looks like this: I haven't had time to go through the entire processing again, so I did it as a last step. At which point would it be best to apply the filter? After colour balancing I assume?