first light - LodestarLive v0.9

[nytecam]

Here's some of my shots via v0.9 from last night - used 30cm f/3.4 SCT+SX Lodestar-C. Colour via LL is still very weak so 2x100% boost via PaintShopPro. Exposure data in file name and M57 shot enlarged to test resolution.  Hope they are of interest - more to follow. 

Well done Paul - just magic

[Stargazer33]

Nice shots! Interesting colours too. Am I reading that right, that the stacks are only 12 x 10 second frames? I didn't realise that you could get so much data on these objects with such short exposures. Your camera must be very sensitive.

[nytecam]

Nice shots! Interesting colours too. Am I reading that right, that the stacks are only 12 x 10 second frames? I didn't realise that you could get so much data on these objects with such short exposures. Your camera must be very sensitive.

Thanks Bryan - yes these 'unfiltered' cameras are very sensitive and you're correct about exposure.  Old Meade LX200 scope drive playing up last night hence brief subs eg 12 x 10s averaged which smooths the resultant image and minimises artefacts and allows a strong post contrast stretch. 

Colour rendition different from SX s/ware and quite tricky to colour balance - the background [sky] and foreground [stars] have a different colour bias so difficult currently to correct but I'm sure all will come well with practise and some tweaks - thanks again for your interest.

Here's faint PNe NGC 6781 in Aquila in 8x10s averaged and M13 1x10s single exposure ! 

[Paul81]

Great stuff Maurice - nice to see another set of results coming through from the live stacking! 

Out of curiosity, what kind of colour correction do you do in the SX s/w and photoshop? I'll soon be starting at looking at the colour correction controls for Lodestar Live so would be handy to understand more what kind of corrections people tend to use.

I see in another post that SX are bringing out a colour X2 version - I am already saving!

[nytecam]

Great stuff Maurice - nice to see another set of results coming through from the live stacking! 

Out of curiosity, what kind of colour correction do you do in the SX s/w and photoshop? I'll soon be starting at looking at the colour correction controls for Lodestar Live so would be handy to understand more what kind of corrections people tend to use.

Hi Paul - in SX Lodestar s/ware there's a LP check box in the Synthesize Colour image option which for me is permanently 'ON' and produces a neutral grey image background eg removing the orange/brown LP colour cast  always present here.  I don't do any further colour balancing - only colour saturation and contrast including gamma stretch and tweak, if needed, in old PaintShopPro [PSP] v4 [no end date!]   

I noticed the LL colour images from last when boosted in PSP had a background [sky] and  foreground [stars] has difference colour casts that I couldn't, so far, correct.  Hope that helps

BTW- the mean and median stacks even with 10s subs smoothed the images beautifully allowing considerable stretching without artefacts - the summed images soon burnt out !  Keep up the amazing work

[NickK]

If you know the relative response curves for the sensor - you could simply program them in.

[Martin Meredith]

Great shots and amazing to think what can be achieved in 10-120s. The unstacked M13 in 10s is remarkable. Hmmm -- I can feel some resolution-envy coming on 

Martin

[nytecam]

With the L-Mx2 mostly on e-finder I used the L-C on main scope night before last in brief session with LL v0.10 on M27 and M57 using the 'sum' stack option - still find it difficult to colour balance the shots.

Included moon via e-finder @ 170mm fl and main scope 30cm f/3.6 @ 1100mmfl