Pixinsight

[Galactic Wanderer]

Can anyone inform me on free downloads on Pixinsight? Thanks

[D4N]

Yeh they offer a fully functional trial version so you can be sure you want it before forking out for the full version.

[nightster]

It's a great non-hobbled fully functional trial. For me, the PI preprocessing functions are great. As is the Dynamic Background Extraction tool. It is quite a daunting program when first learning use the many free online tutorials to get started.

[Gina]

I've moved my reply to a new thread HERE

[Gina]

Could someone recommend tutorials for a complete PI beginner, please?

[D4N]

www.harrysastroshed.com

Really great tutorials.

[Gina]

Thank you

[Gina]

Been watching the stacking tutorial and that looks mostly alright.  I'll check it out shortly - need to transfer data across first.

[nightster]

.

[Starflyer]

Yeah, you can do what you're after without the additional module if you have an existing image (or Astrobin URL) to use as the centre point for your image.

I use the framing and mosaic wizard for all new targets and it's definitely worth the small additional cost.

 

Cheers,

Ian

[wimvb]

Besides Harrys Astroshed:

Light Vortex Astronomy:

http://www.lightvortexastronomy.com/tutorials.html

Richard Bloch:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zU5jJgjKuQQ

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9Ii-y5qOV5l1XmDY2andKw

Once you get familiar with the program, Alejandro Tombolini's processing examples:

http://pixinsight.com.ar/

[Gina]

Thank you Wim

[ngwillym]

+1 for Richard Block - a simple starter for 10 workflow

[Gina]

Phew!!! - Two points so far :- Harry's newbie tutorial doesn't match with what I've got in my version of PixInsight and Richard's looks very complicated but generally makes sense.  Mind you, I just don't know what I'm doing in DSS and it looks like PI is no worse and could be better.  DSS is only using half my Lights for some reason I can't fathom, yet examining them one by one I can't see any difference - they all look equally good to me and being so close in time I wouldn't expect much difference (30s exposures).  So only half my data is being used which is daft!

[SilverAstro]

18 minutes ago, Gina said:

 DSS is only using half my Lights for some reason I can't fathom, yet examining them one by one I can't see any difference - they all look equally good to me and being so close in time I wouldn't expect much difference (30s exposures).  So only half my data is being used which is daft!

A famous quote comes to mind - to lose one frame is unfortunate, to lose so many is downright ***

What I have done in the past with recalcitrant frames is put to them in a folder by themselves and then to try to stack them against each other in pairs to see how they go and then examine ie. choose one and try the rest in turn against it, etc. ( or choose a good one and try the rest against it ,  you get the picture I'm sure ) if you find a matching pair add a third &etc  ,

not something you want to do an a nightly basis, just for a diagnostic !

In my case it turned out to be a combination of too much frame rotation , I was able to stack the badboys by themselves and then rotate so they could then be added to the good set,  and sometimes lens distortions I cant imagine why yours are misbehaving   Good luck , , ,

 

[SilverAstro]

PS is it significant that it is close to exactly half, as reported previously, or are those the happenings  that got your attention ?

Is there any pattern, like every other one, or all of the second half,  I'm sure you have been asking yourself all this !

 

[Gina]

Yes, it's ridiculous!!  I could try just a few adjacent subs.  I have no idea which subs are used and which rejected.  Buy yes, it's always exactly half except for an odd number, of course.  When I had 8 it took 4, when I had 50 it took 25, when I had 112 it took 56.  I'm sure there must be a setting somewhere that says "What proportion of frames do you want to use" or something like that - but I've searched high and low but I can't find it.  Thought... I'll google

[Gina]

Google produced nothing but I went through DSS again and there it was - staring me in the face   Yes - set to 50% - ha ha - so I set it to 95% and fed in 50 subs resulting in stacking 47 which is indeed 95%   Now set to 98% and I'm using 112 Lights with my 3nm Ha filter.

Tried Richard's tutorial in PI and it was straightforward but I ended up with an error so have to sort that out.  I learnt a few things from his tutorial though about flats, darks and bias frames

[wimvb]

In Pi you can load your raws in the Blink tool and run them as an animation. If you create a preview, you can examine in more detail. A great way to sort and select subs.

(A more complicated tool is the subframe selector script, where you can sort subs based on various criteria.)

[Gina]

I've been looking through all the menus in PI and the amount it does is fantastic   The statement that PI was made for astro imaging whereas Ps is just a general photo processing application certainly reads true.  I think PI could be good and at around £230 (the exchange rate of euros to pounds and then add VAT makes the euro price ex. VAT convert to pounds inc. VAT almost 1:1) is not that expensive compared with telescopes and cameras etc.

[MattJenko]

You will find that once you get your head around PixInsight, you do everything in it and wonder how on earth people manage without it.

[wimvb]

6 hours ago, Gina said:

I think PI could be good and at around £230 is not that expensive compared with telescopes and cameras etc.

Exactly. It's just one more tool in the AP toolbox, a power tool.

[Gina]

Tried again with a different set of Lights - got same error saying "no calibration files" and it did nothing.  So I copied over the Bias frames I collected last night and included those - told me there were no Flats or Darks but went on to process, showing the workings in text window.  Went through all the Bias frames then analysed them 900 rows at a time until eventually it did them all and went on to process the Lights.  After some time it stopped and reported two errors relating to the Light files   I looked to see if it had at least saved the master bias file and it hadn't - in fact it hadn't saved anything!

These Lights worked fine in DSS under Windows on another desktop so I don't think there's anything wrong with them.  Maybe I'll try again with just a few Lights, otherwise I'm stumped.  I'll copy the error lines next time and post it.  Could also Google it.

I'm hoping the SSD will speed things up - there are suggestions on the PI web site to use the SSD in particular ways to increase processing speed.  I noticed as it was working that a processing file was over a GB.  Of course, I'm processing a couple of hundred files of 32MB so there's a lot of data.

I would really love to get this sorted out as PI does look very promising.  The little bit I've looked at is quite clear and easy to understand.  Ummm... well it seemed so but I could be missing something.  The calibration and stacking is certainly no more complicated than DSS maybe less.

[Gina]

I cut down the number of Bias subs to a dozen or two and the Lights to just 10 and ran it again.  This time it ran all the way through, returning to the control window.  Next I'll give it the full number of Bias frames with just 10 Lights and see how that goes.  The master bias file wasn't saved because I didn't have the box checked!

[Gina]

That went fine and there are saved files   Now to try with more Lights.