Since I paid £150 for it, I may as well use it properly

[Catanonia]

PixInsight that is.

Tough and steep learning curve.

Learning to ditch DSS for stacking and working through how to do this with image calibration, alignment and combination routines in PI.

Just done some lum data and I must say it looks much better than the results that DSS gives you.

A few questions please if you may.

1. Is Bias master my dark flats ? My flats were 14 seconds long and so I took some darks of 14 seconds.

2. When combining to create master darks, flats etc, I have been switching off the noise reducton. I assume this is what you are suppose to do as these are infact noise frames you want to subtract.

[johnrt]

Yes, turn off noise evaluation and set it to all "don't care - all weights = 1".

There is also a rule of thumb for pixel rejection - up to 10 or so frames use avge sigma clip, 10+ winsorized sigma clip and 20+ linear fit clipping.

Bias frames are your zero exposure darks. I tend not to use both dark and bias, just one or the other.

[Catanonia]

Yes, turn off noise evaluation and set it to all "don't care - all weights = 1".

There is also a rule of thumb for pixel rejection - up to 10 or so frames use avge sigma clip, 10+ winsorized sigma clip and 20+ linear fit clipping.

Bias frames are your zero exposure darks. I tend not to use both dark and bias, just one or the other.

Does PI have the ability to do Dark Flats ?

My flats are 14 seconds long each, so have noise in them.

[johnrt]

It doesn't have a dark flat routine as such, but I always bias subtract my flats before I combine them to make a master. That would do the same job, I think?

[Catanonia]

It doesn't have a dark flat routine as such, but I always bias subtract my flats before I combine them to make a master. That would do the same job, I think?

Thinking about it, the normal darks will contain the 14 second darks, so irrelevant.

I like PI, it is long winded, but you are in control of what happens unlike DSS

[Catanonia]

My 1st attempt of taking subs, calibrating, aligning , stacking and processing inside PI.

About 80% of the processing was done with PI and the rest with old familar CS5.

Didn't even touch DSS or MaximDL

Getting there

My seeing isn't good enough to bring out the flux, or it may have been the mist for the last few nights. I can just start to make out the beginnings of the flux in blue.

[johnrt]

Very nice, are you fully converted?

I find the DBE and wavelet tools to be worth the money alone.

[ollypenrice]

Well done Cat. I am very lazy and use familiar routines, using PI selectively. I don't like wavelets myself, I feel they have a standard 'look' which makes me feel they are creating artefacts. But BN, DBE and SCNR are all worth the price in my book. Oh, and colour calibration! And....

Olly

[Catanonia]

Thanks all, Olly, the new LHE is actually quite good. This is what I used rather than wavelets as I agree they look false.