Frankly awful M106 - Where am I going wrong?

[swag72]

There have been some great M106's posted here and I am embarrassed to post this in anything other than the 'HELP' section!

This is a culmination of over 14 hours worth of RGB data and frankly it's utter rubbish. I would have expected much better for these times.

I have tried to process in CS5, although a few bits are done in PI, such as DBE and channel calibration. The noise is awful, the background is an odd colour with red continually showing through, the galaxy is purple - I just can not seem to do anything with this at all.

So PLEASE, PLEASE rip this utter piece of rubbish apart - I just don't know what I have done wrong. I am beginning to think that if the data is this poor after 14 hours then my data collection must be at fault.

This is imaged with my Atik 314L and SW 120ED x0.85 so imaging at f6.3. There is also 70 x bias added, 30 x darks and flats for each filter. Imaged at -10 degrees.

[lukebl]

Crikey. If that's an awful picture, I wonder what your good ones are like. Wish I could do that. Here's a little tweak of the colours. Not easy with a low-res jpeg, and I'm sure someone who knows what they're doing will pipe up soon.

[Spikey]

Looks OK to me, the details are there. You're one or two steps ahead of me Sara so you tend to get my next problem answered, so thanks

Is it the colour you are not happy with?

I'm struggling myself with that part. I've now decided to exposure the RGB filters for the same length as the lights but use a quarter less of them in 2x2 if you see what I mean. I'm hoping that will colour things up a bit better or else I'll be 1x1 binning.

[swag72]

How did you tweak the colour Luke? I prefer that to my purple offering!

It's the colour, noise and just general lack of detail that I'm not happy with. Meant to say that this is all 1x1 bin. Wouldn't you expect more with over 14 hours worth of data? The focus has been pretty good on this run, although the red not so. But even so, still hugely disappointed.

[lukebl]

How did you tweak the colour Luke? I prefer that to my purple offering!

I just played around with the levels of the separate RGB channels in Photoshop. I moved the central point of the slider of the Blue channel a bit to the right, then ran HLVG to get rid of a green cast.

[Spikey]

I'm not experienced enough with CCD's yet to judge the data quantity but I now know what different beasts they are to a DSLR. But you do have an awful lot of detail in there. Look how defined the arms are.

However, I know exactly how you feel and I have been guilty of being lulled into a general trap of looking at works by members such as Olly and Anna and wondering why mine are nothing like. But in truth my processing skills are nowhere near the same ability and that let's my data down.

[lukebl]

I know how you feel too. There are so many great imagers here, that I often feel like throwing in the towel.

[Spikey]

I know how you feel too. There are so many great imagers here, that I often feel like throwing in the towel.

Ditto

[swag72]

Yep, me too!!!

So, any more help and guidance out there? Should the subs have been longer? They were at 420s

[JimStan]

My advice ( FWIW ) NEVER say you have an "awful" picture, and then post something that so many would DIE to be able to take. Ollie, Anna, and others are at the absolute TOP of the class, and almost anyone who posts on here, presents pictures that professional astronomers using million dollar telescopes, were NOT ABLE to produce as short as 20 or so years ago. If you don't believe me, take a look at some of the books produced by many professional Astronomer/Writers, including the beloved Sir Patrick Moore in that time period!

It is great to be able to ask for help, and to get it from so many really talented people using quite sophisticated and advanced tools and techniques.

Just don't tell people you are taking "horrendous" pictures, just because they don't come up to the level of achievement that you see some capable of attaining.

Clear skies !

Jim S.

[symesie04]

I have to say i think its pretty blumming good. However i havent yet got the kit together to start my imaging career yet so have no idea what to expect. However from reading posts by others i see a lot of talk about creating a seperate layer for luminous and adding it in bit by bit. Form what i can tell it seems to help both with noise and colour correction. Hope you understand what i mean because i dont lol. Sure Olly will pop in shortly and put issue in the spotlight.

[swag72]

@Jim - I understand what you are saying, but regardless of the stunning images posted by some on the forum, this image is not what I would expect nor is it one I am happy with. That is setting my bar - Based in part I suppose on the images I see here, but also a personal quest to produce something beautiful. So far, everything is falling very short of that mark indeed and perhaps my total continued disappointment is what further prompted feelings of despair.

@symesie - I have tried to avoid taking luminance data as when I did it created a real mess of an image. I know that in UK it can give you a little more time as you can bin the RGB and take it quicker, but living out here, that is not a concern to me. So I decided to take just loads of RGB. It seems that a) it's not enough processing is falling woefully short c) or something else.

Back off to a dark corner to lick my wounds!

[Whirlwind]

Hi

I do think you are being too harsh on yourself, there is nothing wrong with wanting to improve and better what you can achieve, but sometimes it is worth going back to see where you started from. We all have to start somewhere!

With regards improving your image, at the resolution you have posted at it is difficult to say where something may have gone wrong. Really you need to look at the individual subs and see if anything has gone awry - for example:-

If a brief flurry of cloud affected some of your subs this could have an effect; or

How did you check focus (and how often) in case of temperature variations; or

Did you refocus with for the different filters (the scope is a doublet so if it was anything like my ED80 you need to refocus slightly for each filter). This could be made worse if the filters aren't parfocal; or

Maybe your seeing was just really bad when you took these images?

With regards your query on ADU in the other message, they don't seem too bad, but it depends on the maximum ADU you can get. If that is only 8,000 (very unlikely) then it is very bad, more likely it is in the 50k to 65k mark. The lower the better for the background ADU, but unless you are in an area with no light pollution, and imaging with no moon on the top of a mountain you would expect some background ADU of significance.

Ian

[Coco]

Sara you have set the bar very high for yourself, considering you arrived at this forum 13th January 2010 a novice in 2 years you sure do seem to be trying to rub shoulders with the best or the best, dont beat yourself up and please dont say comments like the image is 'rubbish' because it only intimidates other members.

[Cloudwatcher]

Sara you have set the bar very high for yourself, considering you arrived at this forum 13th January 2010 a novice in 2 years you sure do seem to be trying to rub shoulders with the best or the best, dont beat yourself up and please dont say comments like the image is 'rubbish' because it only intimidates other members.

Do you think 'the lady doth protest too much'.........

I have to agree that the image is certainly not 'rubbish' in fact having had a lunchtime play there is a lot of detail to be found on an expanded view. Originally I was just tweaking the colours etc. but when zooming in on the core one can see 'dust clouds'.......enhanced and rotated for a better view in second image.......a bit crudely done but interesting.

[martin_h]

I've had a play with it...just used Pixinsight colour calibration on it.

[swag72]

Thanks for replying and posting your edits - They certainly look better than mine! I think the problem may possibly lie in the DSS settings used after stacking, as someone else has played with my complete set of data and theirs isn't purple.

Sorry if anyone feels that I have intimidated any other member by posting an image that I am hugely disappointed in. That was never my intention and I think I'll keep 'my rubbish' to myself as much as I can.

Anyway, back to the drawing board now I am back from sunny UK. Onwards and upwards. I'm glad I've had a break from it all.

[Gina]

Hmmm... All these so-called awful images... I did once, a while back, grab a pretty poor M42. Since then I've been lucky to find the moon or sun even! But I think I've found the reason nothing appeared to be where it should be - the central bolt fastening my pier extension to the pier top plate has come loose and the polar alignment gone completely - like 10 degrees off! I have now moved the extension and mount back round to where it should be (as near as I can tell - I stuck an "N" on the plate where I had determined north to be by the sundial method). Now to find the right size spanner to tighten it up. Maybe the polar scope will show Polaris now

I've just got a QHY5 and attached it to my finder scope to use as a guider and this will also act as a remote finder. This should help find objects as I can take a wider image with the 400mm FL scope and half inch sensor than with my main scope.

So maybe soon I shall be back here with some images that need sorting out

[themos]

Sara, i sometimes find that bad calibration frames can ruin an image. I always do a pure-lights stack first, now, to see if I've pulled in enough detail. Then add calibration frames carefully.

[todd8137]

now if thats awful you must remember that its not ,its a great image and not every one can be a winner i did 2 hours stacked it all looked proper rubish ,unlike yours which is great

chin up