Bonamy

Thank you, that's very kind. The Integer Resample is basically bringing the file size back to the original capture resolution. The drizzle x2 helps the deconvolution step (BlurX), but from that point I prefer to revert to a more manageable pixel scale. The light bulb moment for the benefits of Drizzle was watching Russell Crowman on the AstroImaging Channel (https://youtu.be/5_Dg7bYu-E8?t=4819) Thank you. I'm not a fan of the Rotten fish name this nebula has, and like to think of it more as a whale from above leaving a turbulent wake in the water.

It was one of these nights where Clearoutside said it wasn't going to be clear, but it stayed cloud free all night. Usually the otherway round!

Thank you. Yes, I love the small galaxies poking through the dust.

Lovely detail there. Great job processing

This is my first attempt at running two rigs simultaneously on a single target. I used my Tak 85FSQ coupled with a 6200mm collecting luminance data, and combined this with a RedCat 61 collecting RGB with a 2600mc. I was lucky enough to have clear nights on the 3rd and 6th of November. With LDN1251 well placed all night it enabled me to get 10h of luminance and almost 19h of RGB data. It did leave me the nice problem of having to process a lot of 120s subs, but at least the computer warmed the house whilst it was processing. I processed in Pixinsight using a pretty simple workflow: WBPP Drizzle x2, BlurX, Integer Resample, Spectrographic Colour Calibration, StarX, NoiseX, GHS, LRGB combination, recombined the stars and finished off in Photoshop to adjust final levels and colour saturation. Surprised how easy it was to combine the two image scales and work with the data. The tricky part was running two rigs and having to setup from scratch each night.

Thank you.

Thank you. I've been going round in circles with the colour blending. It's really tricky to find true background in the RGB to get a clean set of samples for DBE, and I came to the conclusion that here is quite a bit of variation caused by the dust and the Ha. I struggled to bring out the Ha in particular, so boosted the Red channel with the Ha as well as a combined Luminance layer. I suspect that may have caused some of the issues. This is the RGB after stretching, background extraction (as best I could), and star removal. Very blotchy!

This has been one of the trickiest images I have had to process to date. The main struggle has been balancing the intense star field whilst trying to pull out the Ha data whilst maintaining the detail in the dark dust clouds. Aquisition was with a Tak 85FSQ on and SkyWatcher AZ6EQ6GT (recently upgraded with StellarDrive), approximately 4 hours of each L,R,G, and B with 8hours of Ha. I used Pixinsight to calibrate, and process each channel (DBE, BlurX, RGB combination, NoiseX, and StarX and GHS). I struggled to get the combination of Ha, Lum and RGB right in Pixinsight, so switched to Photoshop and used non destructive layers to get a blend I was reasonably happy with. Lovely part of the sky, with so much going on.

Making progress, had some good feedback so hopefully the issue will be resolved soon.

Still without a mount two months after the second failure. Very poor for such a high end mount.

Hello Chris, Lovely part of the world. I point my scope at the sky above the Waveny Valley. I hope the postman arrives today, looks like it may be a clear night. Bon

When it works it is an amazing mount. It is possible I'm doing something that has caused the problem, but I really do look after the mount. The only common feature between the two failures was that is was shortly after tracking the IIS. Also, I have not read about anyone having exactly the same issue. A few owners have had similar Lock Clutches Warnings. What is extremely frustrating is that I have to go via FLO to get any of the firmware or support tools because 10 Micron are not authorising my forum account. I can't even get help from the community.

I'm not sure if I have been very unlucky, but I'm having real issues with 10 Micron. It's a rather long and sorry tale, but the first GM1000 I received worked fine for 3 weeks, then started freezing on slews when building a model. Unfortunately this was in August when 10 Micron take the whole of the month off (no manufacturer support), ended up having to send the unit back, and get a replacement (which took a further three months). The replacement unit arrived at the end of last year, and worked well for a couple of months, but now has exactly the same error. FLO are being very helpful, but very disappointed with 10 Micron. They don't respond to emails, and still haven't enabled my account to be able to access the closed forums to download the latest firmware and or diagnostics tools. Great mount when it is working, but looks like they have some serious production and support issues. Has anyone else had smilier problems?

Thank you. I was lucky to notice it, normally looking away from the moon

Beautiful halo moon above Suffolk tonight. I tried to capture an HDR shot by combining different exposures, but was surprised it see how much smaller the moon was in the correctly exposed shots.