Ouroboros

Welcome. I suppose it’s true to say we meet up in virtual space ie here! 😃

Exactly. This alone is the cause of much misunderstanding in the public imagination about science and the nature of scientific knowledge.

That’s a really interesting and eye catching image.

I prefer what to my eye looks the more natural colour in your image, @mightymonoped. It inspires me to have another go at the Triangulum this Autumn. I daren’t reduce my sub durations given I use a 9/10 year old MacBook. It can take over night now to run a full calibration and stacking in PI for 2 minute subs. Rather reluctantly I’m thinking of an upgrade to a new MacBook with M2 processor.

Picking up on some of your comments, @windjammer, I’ve had another go. I went right back to an earlier image just after stretching to non-linear. I applied some TGVDenoise to the starless image. Then used curves and colour saturation followed by a bit of local histogram equalisation. I combined the image with the stretched star image in pixelmath. Finally I used Bill Branshan’s star reduction script to dial back the stars. I could even apply a few more iterations of that I think. Anyway, I’m happier with the result. Cheers.

Good point. Both possibilities may present conceptual difficulties.

My goodness what a splendid image. You only get to appreciate the grandeur of the veil by seeing it an image on that scale. It’s not really very much data is it, if I understand your exposures properly. I guess this is down to the fast scope.

Are there any viable alternatives to the Big Bang theory? I am aware of the steady state theory for example. A perfectly reasonable theory, but one not confirmed by current observations of the universe. But are there any others?

Sorry for delay in responding. Busy yesterday. Thanks for having a go at my image. Yes, the images posted were screen shots and weren’t matched in size. You’ve done a good job in showing what’s possible, and certainly much closer to what I’m aiming at. I just have to work out how to do that in Pixinsight. Essentially it looks like you’ve done something like I was referring to earlier - retaining the brighter stars whilst suppressing the carpet of fainter ones. I’ll have another go later.

Thanks for your comments, windjammer. Yes, I think maybe I’ve over stretched the nebula given the quality of the data. I should probably back that stretch off a tad. I have also been experimenting with adding or stretching the stars in different ways. Simply adding fainter stars (xstars + 0.2*stars for example) doesn’t look right. What looks better is stretching the stars to keep the main stars bright whilst suppressing the carpet of fainter stars. The question is how to do that successfully? So far I’ve tried using curves with some success. Unfortunately, suppressing the faint stars also truncates the halos of the bright stars which gives them a slightly odd look.

I have been wondering why this image looks so poor given the reasonable appearance of the separate images: starless nebula and stars. I have recombined them using the formula ~{(~starless)*(~stars)} I read this is supposed to give a better rendition of colour compared with a simple addition of images in Pixelmath. Any thoughts on this? Here are screenshots of separate images: 1. starless 2. Stars 3. Zoom in on stars. Quite nice I think.

Thanks, @Elp. There appears to be a third option in that for some power line adapters the second adapter is also a WiFi extender.

OK. I assume that is used to get the home internet to a 13A socket close to where the telescope is set up outside. And then presumably either an ethernet cable is used to connect the power line adapter to the ASIair or over WiFi from the power line adapter?

Not my best effort, but it is my first (ish) light with my new AM5 mount. Taken with ASI2600 on my SW Evostar ED80. This was the first proper imaging run with this mount. I’d done a few test runs with it previously. I’m happy with the guiding. It’s a very nice little mount …. and a joy to carry outside and set up. I’ve had a few issues with my new ASIair and getting the mount and Air to play nicely, but I won in the end. For now! We all know that when the gremlins go away that they’re only hiding temporarily! Anyway, 41 of 60 x 120s subs were good. Cloud clobbered the rest. Processed in Pixinsight. Cropped, DBE, SPCC, , BlurXTerminator, NoiseXTerminator. Used StarXterminator to split stars from nebular to process each separately. Applied General Hyperbolic Stretch to both. Tweaked with curves etc. Recombined with Pixelmath. I’ve tried to reduce the star content of the image but it tends to look a bit insipid if I do that. I don’t think there’s enough nebular data to stand on its own.

The SMA extension cable sounds a natty idea. Thanks. I’ll play with connecting to my home router. As it happens I’ll have to get an extender for that anyway to reach the garden.

Well, my iPad says it’s up to date. Version 16.6. Now, whether that’s the latest ‘latest’ I don’t know. I think it depends on the age of the device. I’ve tried it with my iPhone, which isn’t ideal because of the smaller screen, but I can usually change settings slightly more easily on the phone. So, if I can’t change settings on the iPad I go in with the iPhone. Same age device, same version operating system I believe. Silly init? As for drop outs …. does anyone know if running the ASIair in station mode and using home internet is more stable?

I am hugely disappointed with the way ZWO have allowed the ASI to become such an unstable system. When I first started using tge Air it was a joy compared with the frustrations of the methods I’d used previously. It just worked. I’m now on my second ASIair Plus, this one for use with my new AM5. It’s been plagued with difficulties. I have reported this elsewhere. The difficulty is in changing settings on my iPad’s screen. I swipe a voltage output on and it immediately returns to the off position. Same for turning on dither. Similarly with turning on the camera’s dew heater. It appears to be on, but on leaving and then returning to the main camera’s menu I discover it’s off again. FLO has suggested there’s an issue with touch screen sensitivity on certain tablets. Though it seems odd that it’s suddenly started happening. It’s certainly true that if I persist then I can eventually change the setting. It’s slightly but not much better when using my iPhone. Frankly it’s annoying and time wasting. I have also had more disconnects than I used to. Frankly I could no longer recommend the ASIair to someone thinking of buying one. Whereas in the past I’d have had no hesitation in doing so. What’s happened? Have ZWO over reached themselves? Or some key coding people left? What happened?

You will find help here, but to learn Astro processing you have to be prepared for a long journey. I agree that ASIStudio isn’t that great. It has the advantage though that at least you’ve got it on your computer and using it will probably show you what your data looks like. I’ve just watched this video and it seems to enable people to do some basic processing. I use Pixinsight, but I started by using Photoshop, the latter I just happened to have already. Both are quite expensive. There are some free apps like Gimp for which you will similarly find video tutorials. Do some searching and you’ll find other apps also recommended by SGL members.

Don’t worry. The data is there. As @The Admiral says, the data is low value and needs to be enhanced (stretched) in an image processing application. I don’t use ASIstudio, but I just went into YouTube and searched for ASIstudio tutorial and a number of tutorial videos appeared. Coincidentally I also imaged NGC6888 last night and my data looks just like yours. It’s currently being stacked in Pixinsight. I only managed 41 viable subs out of a total of 60 subs due to intermittent cloud. It’ll be interesting to compare. Good luck.

Yes, tricky isn’t it knowing how much to dial down the background? My preference is for the second version, although possibly at the expense of some extremely faint red nebulosity. I guess you’d only really be able to pull that out with hugely more subs. It’s very nice to see a wide field of these nebulae though. You’ve captured them very well.

…… and you are correct. Now why didn’t I think of that? The STF takes its setting from the image it is tracking. So I will now apply that to a histogram to fix the stretch. I haven’t been doing much or indeed any processing for a while and unfortunately my “forgetting curve” for Pixinsight is very steep. Thanks Scotty.

Is there a way to retrieve STF settings previously applied to a linear image when the STF process has now been closed? I’ve tried unsuccessfully to recreate the STF settings on a clone of the originally STF’d image. Pixinsight must “know” what the original STF settings are because the image has been saved, closed and reopened to appear on the screen with those original settings applied. They don’t seem to be in the header or history explorer data for the file. It’s no great shakes if this is not possible. I’ll just have to try harder to reproduce a pleasing stretch. I just thought someone might know. Cheers.

🤔 https://youtu.be/Wvx0esVGKwY?si=T8ZEb9T3cX3kc0rg

Nice one, @Paul Holdsworth. Is that with your 150P? You’re right, I think the centre is a tad blown out. Colour’s good though. Any mileage in revisiting the stretching of the image do you think?

PS. Sorry, forgot to add I hope your probs are solved quickly.