The "No EQ" DSO Challenge!

[Filroden]

50 minutes ago, The Admiral said:

You must have been about the only one with clear skies last night. Looking good for tonight down south.

You're facing a challenging target here Ken, and your dogged persistence is paying off I'd say. The dark lanes look rather clearer on my tablet screen than they do on my calibrated monitor

Ian

These were from the five hours of data I got on Friday night. It was cloudy the last two evenings but only from sunset!

The image looks better on my iPad than on the PC. Likewise it looks better on the forum. I think I managed to mess up the red channel in processing hence the very brown cast and little of the brighter reds and oranges in the original. I may have to separate the red into large and small scale structures and process them before remerging them. 

[Nigel G]

I have had a little play around with different stacks of Rosette, the best I can do atm is the following. first the original image which was 60% of 245 frames, the second is 45% but after street lights out at 1am and no dark frames. Reminder- stacking 95% was almost impossible to process.

The colour is the most noticeable difference to me, and there seems to be a touch more detail in the 45% stack.

I have reduced the stars a little.

Nige.

[Filroden]

I love the colour and reduced stars but I think I actually prefer the first image. I think it's because I'm used to seeing the nebula in shades of red. Your second image almost looks like a narrowband in the Hubble palette!

i wonder if the two could be blended?

[happy-kat]

A never worry about aperture because members like Gina use a 135mm camera lens and that is likely 48mm aperture.

[happy-kat]

Today I followed the manual to the letter and it made no difference. Last resort is try to use the handset tomorrow and align it and see if then tracking is acceptable. I had really hoped it work OK withut doing that. I did take two images one with it on and one with it off too see if the trail legnth differed.

[Filroden]

That's not good. My mount occasionally refuses to track and even a reboot doesn't kick start it. I have to leave it and come back another day and it miraculously works again. Wish I knew what caused it and how to fix it.

Hope it works with the handset. 

[alacant]

7 hours ago, Filroden said:

second image almost looks like a narrowband in the Hubble palette!

...but far less jump-on-the-bandwagon-oh-so-predictably boring!

[parallaxerr]

What a difference a few degrees alt makes! OK, more like 35-40°. After imaging M33 between 60-70° last night I came down to take a quick peek at M42 @ approximately 30°, just look at the difference in LP! I know where I'll be imaging in future!

Had a super session last night. I ran with M33 for over 3hrs straight. Due to it being relatively small and having a good FOV with my setup, I allowed for a full 90° of field rotation as I can crop it out. I really wanted to see what a good amount of data could show, so far I've been processing mostly around one hours worth of data, but last night I gathered nearly 2hrs of subs.

Even better, due to the tweaks to my mount last week, tracking appeared to be vastly improved.  DSS only dropped 4 frames so I got 1hr54m out of a possible 1hr56m I plan to do exactly the same tonight, aiming for 4hrs of data on M33.

I've just run last nights data through ST to see what's there. I'm experimenting with the differences between AutoDev and manual Dev. AutoDev seems to bring out more data, but more noise along with it, whereas manual is cleaner but detail is subtler. Here's the result of a quick manual Dev, loading the FITS up again for AutoDev now, but it takes about an hour to load in ST @550mb

Final point to note - NO DARK FRAMES

Edited November 29, 2016 by parallaxerr

[Filroden]

That's one very large file size! I've just opened up the full size image so I could zoom in and there is a lot of detail there once you're able to adjust your histogram. Given your large field of view you could probably crop a little more and reduce file size/processing time. Can't wait for your next iteration

And that's some noticeable light pollution! Landscape photographers probably pay a fortune for filters to get that same effect at sunset

[parallaxerr]

6 minutes ago, Filroden said:

Given your large field of view you could probably crop a little more and reduce file size/processing time.

It's only the loading time that's an issue Ken, once ST has it open, processing is quick enough. Strange.

[parallaxerr]

And here's the AutoDev'd version. Struggling with colour a bit and as you can see, there's more noise...

I think I prefer manual Dev, if only I could pull a bit more detail out. Maybe more subs will increase SNR and enable me to do so.

 

Edited November 29, 2016 by parallaxerr

[parallaxerr]

Wow these images look ropey on my mobile!!!

[Stub Mandrel]

1 hour ago, parallaxerr said:

What a difference a few degrees alt makes! OK, more like 35-40°. After imaging M33 between 60-70° last night I came down to take a quick peek at M42 @ approximately 30°, just look at the difference in LP! I know where I'll be imaging in future!

When I asked advice on LP filters to remove sodium streetlight glow, I was pointed at a filter on eBay for £10. Not as good as the real McCoy but it made a real difference to my pictures.

[Nigel G]

23 minutes ago, parallaxerr said:

And here's the AutoDev'd version. Struggling with colour a bit and as you can see, there's more noise...

I think I prefer manual Dev, if only I could pull a bit more detail out. Maybe more subs will increase SNR and enable me to do so.

 

Have you tried binning 35% that can improve S/N ratio by a fair amount.

[parallaxerr]

2 minutes ago, Nigel G said:

Have you tried binning 35% that can improve S/N ratio by a fair amount.

Yes, the whole image is binned 50%.

[happy-kat]

I think you are being too harsh, even pixel peeping the noise is not obvious and the stars are a good shape.

[alacant]

19 minutes ago, Stub Mandrel said:

a filter on eBay for £10

Hi. I've a sneaky feeling that some outlets buy them in bulk, write Baader or Optolong on them and knock 'em out for 10 times more;) 

[alacant]

2 hours ago, parallaxerr said:

through ST to see what's there.

That's a really nice image crying out for the rather nice ST Life module. Worth a try?

[Nigel G]

Jon, I know what you mean about low alt objects and LP, I took 120 sub's on NGC 253 last night, it's max altitude was around 18 degrees, it was just above the houses to my south.

Really hard to get any detail at all, no colour. Pushing my luck, but you don't know until you try.

This was ISO 1600. with LP filter mixed subs 30s 45s and 60s total 1 hour 10 minutes, flats and bias, no dark. When I done the first auto dev I have never seen anything like it before  a bright burnt image with a multi coloured cigar shaped smudge. Its amazing what processing programs can do with a stack of rubbish

I'm stacking a different amount of subs atm 60 % to see if that changes and adding darks.

Nige.

[parallaxerr]

3 minutes ago, alacant said:

That's a really nice image crying out for the rather nice ST Life module. Worth a try?

Good shout. I'm going to re-run the manual dev as I prefer the result. I'll try the life module.

[The Admiral]

Great night last night, here's hoping for its equal tonight.

Last night I re-imaged my attempt on M45 of a couple of nights ago, and I think the conditions were rather better. I took 180 x 30s subs at ISO400 and stacked 132 of them in Astroart, after weeding out the clearly trailed ones, using the 60 x 30s darks I took at the end of the session. Here's my first go at processing this set, with I admit quite a lot of fiddling in LR at the end. I find it good it noise reduction, sharpening and selective colour enhancement, or at least, easier than to do the same in ST.

I was wondering about the reddish hue at the top and wondered if it was noise left over from the wipe. Here I've upped the red saturation to enhance its visibility. Having looked at Rogelio Bernal Andrea's superb image, which can be found here and here:

I think it's the dust cloud beginning to show.

Usual gear: Fuji X-T1 through an Altair 102mm f/7 Super ED with a TS Photoline 2" 0.79x reducer/flattener. Mounted on a Nexstar 6/8SE Alt-Az mount. RAWs stacked in Astroart, processed in StarTools, and finished in Lightroom.

Ian

[Filroden]

Looking great! Isn't is good we're now struggling to differentiate between LP and dust. A few months ago and we'd have removed it as an unwanted gradient. 

[The Admiral]

32 minutes ago, Filroden said:

Looking great! Isn't is good we're now struggling to differentiate between LP and dust. A few months ago and we'd have removed it as an unwanted gradient. 

Thanks Ken, agreed!

Here's the same but with less of the top cropped off.

Ian

[parallaxerr]

That looks great Ian. I can't comment on what should/shouldn't be there but the detail in the nebulosity is really fine

[The Admiral]

Thanks Jon.

It's getting a bit frenetic on this thread, and what with sorting out my own images I'll have to catch up later!

Ian