FITS Files from Lodestar C X2 Colour Question

[Bill S]

Had a first go with V3 of SL and it's great.

I looked at several objects and saved the resulting stacked images as both png and fits files. However when I open the fits files in Photoshop CS2 with the FITS Liberator plug-in or in FITS Liberator itself (my first go with these I must admit) the images are in monochrome. The png files are in colour.

Are fits files only monochrome or am I doing something wrong?

Thanks for your help.

[Hibou]

4 hours ago, Bill S said:

Are fits files only monochrome or am I doing something wrong?

That's normal. You are just seeing the intensities of the pixels through their filters. If you zoom right in you will see the filter pattern that must be interpreted by LL itself or e.g. by Nebulosity to see the different colour intensity. I am not familiar with FITS Liberator so don't know if it can interpret the filter pattern.

[Paul81]

Yeah I don't think FITS liberator handles bayer encoded FITS files. For info, the stacked FITS is in RGGB format, the raw FITS are in whatever format your camera is (lodestar-C is CYGM, ultrastar-c is RGGB).

[Bill S]

Thanks for the explanations Hibou and Paul81. Very helpful.

I managed to convince myself that the colour information is in the exported stacked FITS file by loading it back into StarlightLive using the command line instruction.

Yet another excellent feature of this program.