PixInsight help - Processing SMC data

[Amra]

Hey guys, been a long time since I posted here and since I sat down to process some DSOs, but I always got good advice here on SGL and people have been nice to have a go at my data in the past, it's always fun for me to see what people can manage to pull out of the data.

I've recently been to Australia where I was fortunate enough to get a lot of clear dark skies in New South Wales in April & May. I imaged a lot of the amazing DSOs in the southern hemisphere and went home with dozens of GBs of data.

Now I'm slowly processing some objects in PixInsight, but I'm quite a novice at using the program, slowly making progress & learning though. I'm astonished by the program's ability to pull out details out of my stacks and the colour calibrating & noise reduction. I've been following this guide by Kayron Mercieca to process my data and I find the workflow easy until I stretch the data, there's just so many steps that I seem to lose patience and settle with the result I have, which while half decent, could probably be a lot better. If anyone else knows of some good resources, feel free to share. I think I need to become more comfortable with the different tools in the program and learn to use them based on the data at hand, rather than following a workflow like it's set in stone.

 

While I do get a lot of detail in my images, I can't seem to make them 'pop', they look quite dull to me and I would like to learn how to make them look more spectacular, I believe the data is there to make it happen, I just seem to lack the ability.

Here's one I processed in the past, AstroBin - Constellation Taurus and another widefield I processed recently of the Lagoon & Trifid Nebula - both of them have plenty of detail, but again as I said look quite dull. I think I might be overdoing noise reduction, since I noticed on my Lagoon & Trifid stack that it was quite free of noise and the noise reduction seemed to remove finer detail, so I used a lot less than that guide recommended, but this stack of SMC on the other hand has a lot more noise, I think because it was closer to the horizon.

 

Tonight I worked on a picture of the SMC. I'll attach a color & mono version. I would like some help with these and see what can be pulled out of the data. I feel like maybe I just need to spend a lot more time with PI to get more comfortable with it and maybe I lose patience too fast.

I've attached a PixInsight .xisf 32-bit file, calibrated & colour balanced & 16-bit .tif of the same data.

 

Any assistance would be appreciated.

 

200mm_a7S_SMC_DBE_DBE_ColourCal.tif

200mm_a7S_SMC_DBE_DBE_ColourCal.xisf

[wimvb]

Oooh, I must have a go at this. Clouds keep me from imaging, and that target is about as exotic as it gets "up here".

Will keep you informed if I manage to pull anything out of it worth showing.

 

Thanks for posting

[Amra]

Thanks for the reply!

 

Yeah, agreed, as someone even further up north than you, it was amazing to see & image these southern objects. I have data of the LMC as well, haven't worked on it yet though.

[wimvb]

Some questions about the image (xisf). I see from the FITS header, that the image is from 88 integrated subs. What was the sub frame exposure time? My guess is that it was quite short. And did you use the modded or unmodded version of your camera?

[Amra]

12 minutes ago, wimvb said:

Some questions about the image (xisf). I see from the FITS header, that the image is from 88 integrated subs. What was the sub frame exposure time? My guess is that it was quite short. And did you use the modded or unmodded version of your camera?

Yes, you are right, the exposures were 30s ISO2000. The reason I used 30s exposures was to avoid bulb mode, which introduces the 'star eater' issue in the camera's inhouse processing, I haven't actually researched this problem extensively yet as I've only had the a7S a few months.

 

My camera is unmodded.

[wimvb]

Here's a first quick 'n dirty. No deconvolution to get detail in the globular, no noise reduction, etc

DBE to remove a slight gradient in the lower corners

Background Neutralization & Colour Calibration

Luminance extraction

Colour image:

MultiscaleLinearTransform applied twice to remove the 3 first layers (blurring the image)

Masked stretch

A LOT of colour saturation, curve stretching and some more colour saturation, some of it with a luminance mask to protect the background

Luminance:

Masked stretch

HistogramTransformation & CurvesTransformation

LRGB recombination

The resulting image shows that there is quite some colour in the LMC and the stars. The globular consists of older stars which give a more yellow/orange colour.

I will probably redo this to get more definition in the globular and the LMC. Some stars came out a little too red, for my taste. Will try to control this a little better next time

Despite the short exposure time, there's a good amount of data to work with.

It's nice to work with data from a low noise camera once in a while.

[Amra]

Wow, I really like it, great colours. Well done!