powerlord

Keep yer eye on ebay. Though most sellers are trying for silly prices, some are not. I got a 4gb pi4 for 85 quid a month ago off there. Stu

ive done it again havn't I - where's that ha at the bottom coming from..its not in hubble.. arggggg update: nope - I've double checked - that's the data I got. hubble is clearly wrong 🙂

Ok, I'm finally going for it - I'll not repeat the life story behind this - it's all on its own thread: Suffice to say, I think I've spend as long editing this as I have in the integration time *well, the Ha anyway). Definitely a new experience for me. And hopefully it will be a lot quicker the next time! I've ended up with about 11 hours of Ha, and about 7 hours of RGB, though there was more of both which was thrown away as seeing not good enough. Shot with my SW 300PDS, mk3 CC and asi2600, with L-ultimate for the Ha. It's very much been a learning experience, and a big thanks to @ollypenrice, @wimvb and @vlaiv in particular for helping point me in the right direction. It's edited in Siril and Affinity Photo, with NoiseX and StarX used. I found it helpful to compare this with Hubble's image while working on this, and I've attached a (256 colour of course) animated gif as I think it gives a good idea, at least imho, of what can be achieved from yer back garden on the edge of a town in the South of England. I suppose that goes both ways - for me I'm still amazed I can capture pics of any of this, so to see my image recognisably mapping to Hubble I find awesome. However I suppose the glass half empty viewer might look and say how blurry it is compared to Hubble. Depends on your point of view I suppose. I've also captured a fair number of tiny wee galaxies in there - for example the little yellow line to the right of M82 - thats not a blurred yellow star - it's a tiny wee galaxy. There's lots of these all over the image which I find almost as amazing as being able to capture the big guy in the middle. Man in a garden shed vs Hubble:

well, never say never, but I think I'm done with this - last night I grabbed another 6 hours of Ha data. So I integrated that into the Ha I already had, bringing it up to 11 hours. With that, it's been possible to being out the Ha a fair bit more. So here we go. And I've added an updated (256 colour of course) animated gif comparing to hubble. Man vs Hubble

ah! https://aladin.cds.unistra.fr/ that was the one I was thinking about

Hi chaps, I thought I'd try my first OTA (SW 102mm mak) tonight on the moon while the 300pds gathers more Ha from M82. It's been a whiite since I tried lunar caps and would rather not waste the night, so looking for some help on best settings for my asi224 with ir filter. I'm thinking high gain (350?), and as it's so high gain no point in RAW16, so use RAW8 mode ? no debayering - just save as ser ? ensure histogram about 1/2 way or a bit less. take maybe 5000 images, then move to next bit, another 5000 ? I want to try for a full mosaic, but as it's all manually moving around doubt I'll get it right. I've never had any luck with the focus helpers on sharpcap - so I'll do the usual of trying to work out the range where it seems to sometimes be in focus, and pick the middle of that. that all sound sensible ? https://astronomy.tools/calculators/field_of_view/?fov[]=1945||266||1|1|0&solar_system=moon What I always find a pain is finding the thing in the first place. asiair won't platesolve when all it can see is a white blob. The best I can do, is get one of my guiders and fit it onto a finder style adjustable mount, and try to align it before the night to point at same things as the skymax.. and then set asiair up to use that as the main camera - hopefully getting me in the rough area with a bigger fov to give me a chance at finding the thing - it still won't plate solve with moon in frame as it will just blow out everything. I suppose the alternative is.. shaking... visual alignment - and use a number of increasing eye pieces on the 102 to get it centred. a faff though if I lose it at any point as I have to take the camera off, eyepeices back on, then faffing with the 30 off turns of focuser to try to get it focused again... yada yada. sigh. so pipe up if I've missed an obvious better way of doing it. As I've no use for guiding on it, I suppose keeping it visual might be the easiest.. I'll rake out an actual finder and fit it just now.. and see if I can get an eyepiece working with the 102 and align em.

thanks, that look interesting, but seems no way to show fov for camera ?

Someone posted a link to one I think ending .nl or .fr a year or so ago, and I forgot to bookmark it ? Any ideas ? I've tried the usual suspects to search for it without joy. And the others I've found (stellarium web, google sky, etc) are all pretty rubbish. I use stellarium app on my mac, skysafari on my phone, etc - but could do with an alternative for the phone, because frankly skysafari sucks if you are actually looking for pics of nebulas - since most are not even there, and loading the DSS pic is usually totally useless. stu

Right.. v99 - I think I've got it this time 🥵 Went back to the start - background extracting, colour balancing. decon a bit, wavelet a bit. Plus, I made use of the 100 30 sec subs I'd not used before. Integrated they were quite a bit sharper than the longer exposures, so used them to sharpen it up a bit. But aligned hubble photo in a later in affinity and kept flicking back and forth to ensure I wasn't adding any detail. The Ha was blended in as a lighten layer. It's not as in your face as before, but it is more genuine. What do you reckon ? maybe a tiny bit less red needed in the blue ?

Wow, that's miles better than I've been able to achieve. Both of them .

Rl is the recommended decov type in siril too.and seperate wavelet sharpening. I keep pestering Russell to do a ps plugin (for affinity photo) or a standalone version of blurx, but his concern is he will get flooded with support requests by folk using it wrongly on on linear images. 😞

Do you reckon NASA is buying site licences from Russel to redo all Hubble's images ? Do you reckon they'd tell anyone if they did ? 😃

there u go, I knew it! I'm right, and NASA is wrong. I'll expect an apology from them forthwith. too much blue indeed... 🙄

Right so firstly - apologies there - because what I posted it turns out was NOT the raw stack. I'd been faffing with this so many times I had a directory full of 100s of version with contructive names like M82.230419_230415-RGB-session_1-crop-lpc-cbg, M82.230419_230415-RGB-session_1-crop-lpc-cbg-1, M82.230419_230415-RGB-session_1-crop-lpc-cbg-1b etc I thought I'd selected the raw one, but it was not - it was one that had been through various experiments in deconvolution and wavelets in siril, various faffing about in affinity, noiseX, etc. And yeh - I reckon during that it got 'webbed'. I've attached the almost definitely (but can't guarantee it) original stacked, cropped and lpced image out of AAP (rgb only, no Ha) And when I experimented with deconvolving and waveletting that puppy, I got webs too if I went too far. M82.230419_230415-RGB-session_1-crop-lpc-cbg.fitsAs I say, back to the drawing board for attempt number 1.4x104e...

that's crazy talk.

its not linear is it? if it was linear you'd see nothing. it's the linear stacked image, stretched in Siril. no AI bogey men. it: the bit in the final image: To my (human no AI eyes) both show the same 'web'. sharpening/contrast/colour curves/etc in the final image have accentuated it via those human eyes. No AIs weree harmed during it's making. I agree it is not a 'web' in reality (aka hubble), but it is what I recorded - which short of making stuff up, is all I've got to work with.

Well that certianly one word for it Vlaiv. 😁 My issue here I think is you jumped in with a not very constructive 'less AI' comment - rather than something truly helpful. As I subsequently showed - the issues are nowt to do with AI and everything to do with human editing and limited capture quality. It'd just have been nice if you'd pointed specific things out and asked why they looked that way rather than bringing in your AI bogie man argument - I think we all know your feelings on AI by now*. stu *though some say there is a non zero possibility you are an AI, and as an AI, just jealous of other AIs doing you out a job. 🤪

except it was bog all to do with AI, as I showed the original stretched integrated image has the same structure.

I do the same usually in Affinity Photo tbh Olly, this was an experiment in doing it diffferent ways - I've been trying to use Siril more and more now I'm getting thee hang of it a bit, using Sirilic sometimes, etc. It'll be about the 10th redo with this image!! But I'm going to start again again again (sic).🥵 I'll just do it the way I usually do in layers - I think by the time I got to that I was sick of looking at the thing and didn't have the patience. I shall set it aside for a week or so then take my time doing it right from the start - which will also get rid of those red/ha bleed stars. THEN I'll enter it into the compo. Have no fear @wimvb I have never won anything and doubt this'll be any different. 😞 stu

Yeh, I did r1, thought I'd try more ha, then did r2. So lazily just typed what I'd did rather than final maths.

🙄 the ORIGINAL stretched stacked image. Oh look - a 'web' of features. Sorry my skills are not quite up to Hubble's. Oh,, and the 'Ha signal around them' - that's because I stacked the Ha as I said I did - and my guiding last night was terrible - it didn't affect the dim stuff as it got back on target but it did mean my Ha stars are rubbish. Hence some bright ones have a sort of Ha halo (like the one on the right above) - no AI bogie men for you to worry your head about. It's almost like, I dunno, I'm imaging it through 100 miles of turbulent atmosphere, and subject to limited seeing and general guiding issues and all the rest of the regular stuff we all are . jeez give me a break.

Yeh that's the bit I'm referring to. I'll try again. It's same in affinity I'm sure, I just need to walk back some layers. My problem is I often edit remotely , and never learn that fine stuff like this never views well over vnc. Thanks. Stu

That's vs Hubble. And as I say, the only thing I'm struggling with it getting rid of the red background extending from/around the Ha - but I didn't want to loose the fine bits I've got - though I did try in the noiseX second version, trying to mask and remove the red background noise a bit.

No ai tools used at all vlaiv. Other than noisex, which doesn't make things up so not sure what your referring to ? Unless it's the extended red, which I'm having trouble removing - tried in the noisex version. Also, I compared very carefully with hubble, and as I say, other than my lack of managing to clean down the edges of the ha its identical ?