startools help

[spillage]

Hi All,

I have spent all day trying to clear up my data from last night. Followed so many guides and its seems everyone leads to failure. I have been messing around myself with trial and error and so far got the results below.

As you can see there is still loads of green mess that I cannot get rid of. I have also included a copy of the original image after DSS.

If anyone can give me any pointers that would be great.

I have done:

autodev

crop

wipe

autodev

then get lost and started playing around to get where I am now.

 

cheers all

Spill.

 

 

wp.FTS

[ChrisLX200]

Don't you have any Flat callibration files?

ChrisH

 

[happy-kat]

Don't use Autodev unless you have perfect data.

Crop first then bin if needed.

Develop a little by hand see what you have.

Move on to wipe etc. As/if needed.

[spillage]

I only ran this through DSS with dark and light frames. I have just made some flats so will run DSS again with some flats.

[tomato]

+1 for cropping the image first. From a stacked and debayered image I load in red, green and blue files, then crop. I do a careful manual develop then use wipe, experimenting with each function so I don't overdo it.

There are some good tutorials on YouTube and the StarTools site.

[wimvb]

Gentle stretching and some colour saturation is quite enough for your image.

I think that you tried too much here. I did some basic processing on your image in PixInsight, and pulled this out.

Two remarks:

1. you have quite a lot of dust bunnies, which I cropped out. Flats will help with this and with the vignetting in this image.

2. your stars are doughnut shaped, this can easily be avoided by using a Bahtinov mask. Better focus will also reveal more detail in the galaxy.

[happy-kat]

^ both of those findings would cause Autodev to create very strange results I think.

[happy-kat]

I did a quick crop, bin, manual develop and wipe then another manual develop in StarTools. I didn't go any further a look at colour etc.

Just sharing this as it clearly shows your dust bunnies and vignetting.

Perhaps you have a rocket blower you could use to blow off the dust bunnies plus taking flats will help.

Then I did a bit of colour manipulation first to aline the histogram then masked the wp to bring a little blue out.

[spillage]

Thank you all for your advice. I was only looking a cleaning kits for the camera this morning so will invest in one asap. I tried again last night with startools but had to edit very very slightly in gimp but I think the results are not too bad for a beginner.

Will wait for another good dark night without the moon and try again.

 

cheers all,

Spill

 

 

 

[happy-kat]

The rocket blowers just use air and your hand to squad swease the rubber bulb, don't get the compressed air can it is anything but air.

[cjdawson]

There's a very steep learning curve for astrophotography.  It's also a hard one to climb as it takes a long time to take a photo and develop the results.  What I've seen if your raw data looks good.   Having seen the results that other has manage to get with your data, there's an opportunity to practice developing the image and see if you can replicate their results.

Go careful with cleaning your scope.  The less that you have to do the better.  Dust bunnies are a hazard of the hobby and can't be avoided, there's always plenty of dust.  The less that you have to do to clean your scope the better.    Don't use compressed gas, they're too powerful, and could leave deposits on your optics (the propellant) in addition too much pressure could make pollen particles scratch that shiny surface.

 

Looking at your image, the donut stars are nice and round, so that means your alignment and tracking shouldn't be too far off.  I second the motion for a Bhatinov mask.  It will help you to get that focus spot on.  I've found that whilst learning, the best images are the ones with issues.   Reading the image will help you to see the problems that you need to overcome to improve.  Based on what I've seen here, I think once you have that focus issue solved you'll be jumping for joy with the images that you'll be getting.

[spillage]

Thank you all for your advice and words of encouragement. I was only looking a cleaning kits for the camera this morning so will invest in one asap. I tried again last night with startools but had to edit very very slightly in gimp but I think the results are not too bad for a beginner.

Will wait for another good dark night without the moon and try again.

I have been using a bhatinov mask but I think my focuser is not the smoothest in the world and on top of that I made the mask myself.

 

cheers all,

Spill

 

 

 

[happy-kat]

Looking at the size of dust bunny I am hedging my bets it is on the camera sensor.