Lodestar-mx2 image smoothing via LL

[nytecam]

Been using the SX Lodestar-Mx2 double-speed mono camera for 4 months now on DSOs which has given me time to access its qualities - they're near perfect !    No artefacts, ampglow or dead columns with less hot pixels than my old Lodestar-M but twice the effective speed so images are captured in double quick time.  It seems to trump other new chips used in video cameras currently.

There just one issue, and a very minor one, the grittyness [like film grain of old] of the sky background in raw images !  As the images are downloaded in a loop, under close inspection the background shows 'grain' is constantly shifting proof it's noise and not a permanent artefact.   

The other night I did an experiment to see the minimum number of stacked frames using LL v0.9 that was needed to essentially elliminate the grain effect - I found just 3 mean stacks did the job as image below.   The top enlarged cropped row show stacks of 1 [=raw image], 2 and 3 [top right]. Below 

of main image is unstacked eg raw and right side x3 mean stacks all of 15sec exposure.  

There are probably other effects resulting from LL v0.9 that may help smoothing the images which can then take much more aggressive post proccessing and maybe superior to additive stacking to go deeper.  However I think Paul's LL s/ware in mean stack mode does a 'mean' job for the Lodestar-Mx2

[Paul81]

Very pleased to see the stacking is having the right effect! 

It is quite surprising how a lot of the noise disappears even after just a few exposures.

[nytecam]

Very pleased to see the stacking is having the right effect! 

It is quite surprising how a lot of the noise disappears even after just a few exposures.

Yes Paul - the random Mx2 background noise disappear after just 3 or 4 mean stacks in LL v0.9 - well done