8-Bit Shuffle - Sun white light woes, 14/12/2013

[Luke]

I had some fun and games trying to process this image taken yesterday under what seemed decent conditions!

I just could not get it to sharpen up at all without it falling apart! Turns out I had managed to lose 8 bits and was editing the 16-bit stacked image in 8 bits...   Capture itself was in 8-bits.

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14/12/2013
Onyx ED80 / Grasshopper 3 (ICX687) / Lunt 1.25 inch Herschel Wedge / Solar Continuum / UV/IR block

[David Smith]

Well a great result at the end Luke, well done. Only clear skies here was around 9 am when the sun was too low to do anything with

[Bizibilder]

You got one more image than most of us!!

[Montana]

Still a cracking sharp image I love the divided sunspot, next time round will it be 4

Alexandra

[Steve Ward]

Great disc that ... 

I always lose some I guess using Gimp which only handles 8 bit , but as I have no idea what 8-bit or 16-bit means I don't let it worry me ... 

[Luke]

Thanks all

David, similar story here, no Sun for me today!

Steve, that's interesting, I could do absolutely no sharpening in 8 bit and my stack was pretty blurry (I don't use Regi wavelets at the moment) - I probably overstack most times and start more blurry than I need to - this one was a stack of about 650 frames

Are you using wavelets in Registax before going into Gimp? I guess that is done in 16-bit if so? I was really surprised that sharpening was dead for me in 8 bits.

[Steve Ward]

Hi Luke , 

I always give it a Wavelet first and then in Gimp I use a gentle Gaussian Blur to remove the very fine "graininess" and then a couple of very soft UnsharpMask passes.

Never tried sharpening a stack entirely in Gimp , will have a play in the morning to make sure I've not been missing a trick ... 

[DrRobin]

Very nice Luke, even with 8 bits missing.  Looks slightly more promising for me tomorrow?

Robin

[Luke]

Thanks, Robin, good luck with some clear tomorrow.

I didn't make it clear, but I did find the missing bits (they were down the side of the sofa), and sharpening worked again as per usual

Maybe it's just that my stack was too blurry and the gamma a touch high for the sharpening to get hold of in 8 bits, I stacked an unusually high number of frames as the quality graph and images in AS looked better than usual.

Steve, I'd be very interested to hear how you get on. It's a bit of a dark art at times for me.

[DrRobin]

Ah yes, they always turn up down the back of the sofa.  Apparently I have fridge blindness, it stops me finding anything in the fridge.  Pity Mrs DrRobin doesn't have telescope blindness, but for someone with no interest she can spot a [new] telescope or accessory from about 3 miles away.

Robin