had a great night but wheres my colour gone in pixinsight

[iwols]

hi all had a great night set up well got pa good and guiding very good got 3x 5 min subs on the dumbell with lrgb and electronic filter wheel,came to process in pixinsight ,registered ect,used rgb masters in channel combination then used the histogram transformation but there is no sign of colour anyone any ideas please 

dumbell 5 mins.fit

 

and jpeg what it looks like cheers

 

 

[MARS1960]

I can't help there, i'm new to PI, but nice capture.

You can see the RGB from the stacking at the edges so it's def in there.

[iwols]

thanks everything was perfect till i came to processing

 

heres a link to my masters if that helps anyone helping me cheers

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/7radniu1k3ogwhx/AADa2IFA7iOJVckK4zqGs79xa?dl=0

[iwols]

looks like that is the problem theres a bug in sgpro that when you disconnect the wheel via usb, then reconnect it it moves the wheel, shows connected in the sgpro  program but when you use the sequencer it does not turn the wheel you have to disconnect it via the software then reconnect it ,then it works, its a bug somewhere,wasted night unfortunately,cheers 

[Oddsocks]

Don't you just love it when that happens!

Just for fun, here is your latest luminance image combined with the colour frames from your attempt at this target a few weeks ago. The target centring is different between your latest set of data and the earlier set so the colour data only covers a part of the new image but it is nice to see how your better calibration has reduced the image noise in the luminance channel. The brightest stars in the latest luminance channel are a bit oversaturated so next time out reduce the exposure time a little for luminance and take a few more subs to compensate.

If your filter wheel had played nicely I think you would have seen a big improvement.

Better luck next time!

 

 

 

 

[iwols]

thanks oddsocks,appreciate that probably reduce lum to 3 mins and rgb subs to 5 mins, looked like ide got some good images though,would i make the darks 3mins or 5 mins

[Oddsocks]

7 hours ago, iwols said:

would i make the darks 3mins or 5 mins

You take darks at both three and five minutes and load them both into PixInsight together. P.I. sorts them automatically into dark groups by time and creates separate dark masters. When you run preprocessing it uses the nearest master dark by time to calibrate the nearest light by time. If there are no exact matches in time for the darks and lights P.I. uses the nearest match by time.

You can take darks (and bias) anytime as long as you set the same camera temperature you normally use when out taking images. If the camera has a screw-in cover for the optical window fit it to take darks during the day time, if no window cover fit the camera to the scope, cover the scope and take darks indoors in a dark room at night. Take a set of forty bin 1x1 darks at say three, four, five and six minutes and save them to a suitable folder, you'll have one hundred and sixty frames in total. Then take a set of around eighty dark-bias frames and save those to a suitable folder. Next time you run a set of lights through P.I. load all the darks and bias you took at all the different times and after processing save the master darks and bias for future use. Then you can use the same dark and bias masters over and over again for months to come until you see the darks are leaving a few hot pixels uncorrected and you make a new set of darks etc.

When you load existing masters in batch preprocessing you need to tick the box "Use masters" and thats all.

This is the biggest time saver you can have in imaging. Take the darks and bias next time it is a rainy day or cloudy night, you can set up a continuous sequence and then leave the camera alone and go off to do something else.

Next time you are out imaging all you need are the lights and flats so you can take many more images in the time available on the good nights.

Because P.I. uses the nearest in time darks for calibration you only need a small library of darks to match a wide range of lights so you can tweak the exposure time of the lights a little if needed and P.I. will pick the nearest dark masters without any input from you.

If you image at other bin settings then you build a set of dark and bias frames at those bin settings too and load them all into the batch preprocessing tool together, P.I. will sort by time and bin settings and create extra sets of masters as needed.

Many beginners tend to ignore the master library side of image processing thinking it is a little difficult to deal with but they are missing out on such a huge time saver. Use master libraries of darks and bias and your productivity doubles on the few good clear nights we get. If your telescope and camera are permanently set up you can use master flats too leaving just lights to take, if you set up afresh each time then at least have master darks and bias available and make imaging a whole lot easier for yourself!

 

[iwols]

what a superb explanation and time saver,thanks oddsocks,just had a huion led panel arrive so once i figure out how to take flats properly ,i should be good to go(oh and that little thing called weather),appreciate that cheers

[wornish]

Just tried downloading your 4 files.  The Green and Blue fits files are fine but when I try and download the Red and the Lum files it says they dont conform to fits standard and converts them to txt files.  Very strange.

[iwols]

strange indeed? dave as oddsocks has used the lum file in the above image?

[Oddsocks]

1 hour ago, wornish said:

The Green and Blue fits files are fine but when I try and download the Red and the Lum files it says they dont conform to fits standard and converts them to txt files.  Very strange.

I think it might be a problem with Google drive, if you look at the file names after download they end in xxx.fits.txt  -  if you just delete the .txt extension and leave them ending .fits then you can open them normally in PI or Maxim etc.

[wornish]

Just tried to download all four again.  Same issue. Red and Lum download a lot quicker than Blue and Green but R and Lum have .txt added as an extension.   When I look at the .txt files it says they dont conform really weird.

I just deleted the extension and they do actually load into pixinsight as .fits so ...

I will see if I can get any colour out of them.

 

 

[wornish]

Processed your files this morning and like you I can't get any colour out !

Something went wrong in the capture process.