Nessie sighting!

[Ain Soph Aur]

Nessie spotted in Loch Orion!

Mono SX-825, MN190 f/5.3, SLL v3.2, x^0.25, mean, 2x2 bin, 10 x 2 min

Screen shot for those interested:

[Ain Soph Aur]

On a serious note, not that Nessie isn't a serious topic. I have had the image processing app PixInsight for a while but have hardly used it, and do not have any experience yet on real post-processing stuff. My main use is to invert galaxy images, annotate, etc. Not really post processing as most astrophotographers do. After dozing off letting this image go past the 5 stack I intended to 10, I shut down the scope and went to bed. This morning I noticed that SLL was still up with this image, and got the bright idea of saving this image with 'Export Current Stacked Imaged (FITS)'. I just took that image and opened it in PixInsight and did an auto-stretch and saved and here is the result.

 

I've been comparing the manual stretched version from SLL to the auto stretched via PixInisight. Thoughts?

Here is the original unstretched stacked image fit from SLL: Nessie in case anyone want to try their hand with SLL.

[cuivenion]

Very nice image, great to be able to see such faint objects from our back gardens.

[Ain Soph Aur]

Yes, indeed. It is an astro-renaissance in my opinion.

[Paul81]

Wow that is a superb HH! Did you use any filters?

Nice to see PixInsight (the 'proper' program) result isn't too dissimilar. Offline tools will always have far better image processing capabilities than what I can put in SL for live use, and this was the reason for allowing you to save raw exposure FITS and the stacked result as FITS. I try to keep a 'keep it simple' at the scope philosophy for SL, but then if the user wishes, they can apply more sophisticated techniques offline with the great applications available to the deep sky imager folks. Still, its nice to see SL stands up reasonably well against a heavyweight like Pixinsight! :-)

I have been playing around with an auto mode (for V4) recently which applies stretch and colour balancing automatically. Planned for V4 is also an 'Image Enhancements' tab with wavelet based denoise and sharpening to hopefully tease more detail out of the short exposures.

[roelb]

Hello Brandon,

Very nice image. I personally like the first 'SLL' image more than the 'PixInsight' processed one.

I want to try some other histogram stretch but cannot download the un-processed 'fits' file (a 'txt' file comes out ).

Roel

[Ain Soph Aur]

Hi Paul. That image is without any filters. So far I've not made much use of the 'save stacked fits', but am definitely planning on doing some experimentation.

Hi Roel. i originally also liked the first one best, then noticed how well PixInsight handled the over-exposed areas at the bottom of the image with just the 'auto-stretch'. 

Very much looking forward to Paul's various new features!