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IC1396 Narrowband.

SlipperySquid

By SlipperySquid
in Imaging - Deep Sky

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SlipperySquid

SlipperySquid

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Hi again all,

Well with all the clear nights we have been having and the time away from work I've had no time with imaging due to the endless BBQ's but with sheer determination and a complete disregard for my own safety (made the missus go to a party last night.....without me :)) I have managed to get two full nights imaging on one target, that being IC1396 in the constellation of Cepheus. I have always wanted to bag this one as I spent many a fruitless night trying to capture this with my DSLR to no avail, so I'm pretty chuffed to have finally managed to bag some usable photon's.

Oh and another first for me is the use of "FLATS" and what a difference they make! no complicated lightboxes or photoluminescent plankton spread thinly over glass for me! pointed the scope straight at the old computer monitor and adjusted the exposure time until I managed to acquire the correct level.

So over the last two evenings I've been trying to get some usable data but as is the norm in this hobby I'm plagued with things that want to slow me down :eek: software refusing to work, mount throwing a hissy fit and the fact that the Elephant doesn't rear it's head from behind a massive tree until about 23:30

I have managed to get 120 minutes in each channel taken in 10 minute subs with the colours mapped as

SII=red

HA=green

OIII=blue

All frames have been calibrated with darks/bias/flats and then stacked with MaximDl and just for that extra touch I even had and African Witch doctor sprinkle voodoo powder from his "semi leather joojoo bag" just to make it extra special.

Scope used was the ever faithful Megrez 72mm perched atop of a temperamental HEQ5 using the Atik 16HR and Astronomik narrowband filters.

Image processed and aligned within photoshop and slightly cropped to remove the frame overlap and this is what I got.

I know some people hate the Hubble colours but I'm a big fan and find that they can bring out a lot more detail than just leaving the standard colours on show AND I don't have to faff about worrying about light pollution ;)

I waffle to much!

Matt.

Edit: First piccy shows the image that I manually aligned in photoshop and the second image a manual 2 star alignment in Maximdl(Now that I can do it properly!). Also have done a couple of colour tweaks on the second image and Peter Shah's star reduction action.

post-17960-133877598083_thumb.jpg

post-17960-133877599632_thumb.jpg

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SlipperySquid

SlipperySquid

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Because I've been having problems with maxim aligning the images???? Don't know why but it just isn't doing a good enough job! it doesn't seem to rotate the images correctly and only aligns the central field of view? unless I am doing something wrong?

Matt

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roundycat

roundycat

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Are you using v5?, I found v4.58 much more user friendly but I have got my head around v5 now. I use stars in diagonally opposite corners. The small number 1 and 2 that appears against the cursor is useful. Do you have it set to Bi-Cubic resample? Once aligned I always set the output to SD Mask, with dithering this helps to clean up the background.

Dennis

Edit: if you are stacking 12 subs in MaxIm that bit must be working ok? Are you just using PS for the colour alignment?

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astro mick

astro mick

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Hi Slippery.

Thats a stunning image,nice to see you were in Cepheus last night.

I know nothing about the Hubble Palette,but have seen some photos,and your image,definately ranks alongside.

As to my own efforts,they were only 15 min exposures,and i think i may have over done the proccessing.I,ll give it another go and send one to you.

However for me i think its on the right track.

Good to see you back.

Mick.

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Darth Takahashi

Darth Takahashi

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Great image Matt, glad to see that your making the transition to the dark side so easily, I still foundly remember the days that you were messing around with the Nikon trying in vain to capture this images... Well it wasn't all wasted, since the techniques you learnt are paying dividends now.

Fantastic image, really great.

I too have the same issues with MaxIm it cant handle image rotation so don't worry its not only you! I register my images now with PI which does a great job of alignment. You can align TIFF too and then use them in PhotoShop etc...

Well done

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SlipperySquid

SlipperySquid

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Hiya Dennis,

Yup, using the newest version 5 of Maxim and I'm pretty sure I use the same settings as your goodself but I will double check! It may have something to do with the stars being different sizes in each channel due to the narrowband filters? but I do use maxim to stack and calibrate the individual channels and then just align the rgb with photoshop.

Thanks for the comments Mick really appreciate them! Great to see that you have finally got some images done and with the correct colour too :) The last couple of months must have been a nightmare for you? But at least you're getting a usable images from the CCD you have at the moment? I swear this hobby is more hard work than it's worth some times ;)

Clear skies all,

Matt.

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SlipperySquid

SlipperySquid

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Cheers Neil!

Aye, the good old days of the Nikon :) running out of battery power, having to sit there with the IR remote ;) all good fun......but the "Dark Side" is so appealing and once you cross over there's no going back! :eek:

At least you where there to give encouragement and tips mate I really appreciate all your help.I really don't think I could have got this far without it! You still up for France? Will we need mountain wear :D or should I just skin a couple of goats?

Clear skies mate,

Matt.

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Darth Takahashi

Darth Takahashi

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Cheers Neil!

You still up for France? Will we need mountain wear ;) or should I just skin a couple of goats?

Clear skies mate,

Matt.

Lets skin a couple of goats because we need to save the money for more dark side equipment, as you know its all consuming! :)

Yes I'm still up for France, send me a PM and I show you how to build your own auto-focuser on the cheap. :eek:

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RobH

RobH

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Very nice result Matt :)

Re. aligning in Maxim.

I use the automatic satr alignment, and on something like the 16HR chip it gives no trouble at all.

Once the individual stacks have been made, I open the 3 images up in Maxim again and then auto align them to whichever is the best framed.

Unless there is a major rotational difference, I've never had a problem.

Cheers

Rob

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perfrej

perfrej

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Regarding the star alignment... I started my astrophotography quest with Nebulosity2 and found it good. Then I moved to Pixinsight and wow, what a difference. You can throw any rotation, skew or shift at it and it will always align perfectly - with no user intervention at all. You should try it!

All the best,

Per

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MartinB

MartinB

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You've really got this narrow band thing sorted Matt, that's a beauty.

Bob Franke has some excellent routines for tweaking HST colour - Creating Hubble Palette Color Mapped Images Not that your image needs tweaking but it's good to play around.

I liked the waffle by the way!

Now onto maxim. V5 is brilliant. Rule 1 only run one alignment. Don't align the 3 channels seperately and then align the combined channels. Frames are aligned to a reference image and the alignment process, no matter how good the algorithm, bicubic or whatever, the image being aligned is degrated. You don't want to be aligning twice and certainly don't want to be aligning high quality combined images. Prior to aligning choose your highest quality image and set this as the reference image. The subs in all the groups should then be aligned to this reference.

The best alignment method in Maxim is photometric. This is the most accurate alignment method I've come across and should cope with any sensible amount of rotation. You need to have the included Pinpoint LE up and running which involves downloading the GSC star catalogue. You also need to have connected the scope, with the correct parameters inputted, using the dome set up. When you come to combine, each sub is plate solved and this includes data on the precise rotation of each sub.

Failing this auto 2 star will often work but if it plays up I have never known manual 2 star alignment fail - when I've used it properly. The problem is that it can be surprisingly difficult to find the same stars for the different subs especially since you shouldn't use the obvious, very bright stars since they are likely to be saturated (which ruins the centroid accuracy).

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Darth Takahashi

Darth Takahashi

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The best alignment method in Maxim is photometric. This is the most accurate alignment method I've come across and should cope with any sensible amount of rotation. You need to have the included Pinpoint LE up and running which involves downloading the GSC star catalogue. You also need to have connected the scope, with the correct parameters inputted, using the dome set up. When you come to combine, each sub is plate solved and this includes data on the precise rotation of each sub.

I remember discussing the plate solving in MaxIm at SGL6, still haven't got around to trying it though! I've tried the manual 2 star alignment and concur with your assessment fully... Very difficult to do in practice.

I keep everything in 32bit IEEE floating point format right up to the very end before moving to PhotoShop when I convert to 16bit integer format etc...

Any program that understands FIT should be able to maintain the 32bit floating point format.

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SlipperySquid

SlipperySquid

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Sure that's not an oil patch on the drive after washing the car?!? ;)

Good photo!

Shhhh you'll give away the secrets :)

Thanks all for the comments and tips I appreciate them all :eek:

I also found out what I was doing wrong in maxim :D I was using the nice big bright stars for manual alignment.....I know...I'm a fool. :)

After taking the tip about using the smaller stars (Thanks Martin) it aligned nicely and I decided to reprocess which brought out a bit more trunk detail, I also messed about with the colour again and came up with the second image which I have now included in the original post, so a side by side comparison can be seen.

Thanks again all,

Matt.

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