Leo Triplets LRGB

[wimvb]

1 hour ago, ollypenrice said:

Heheh, as downloaded the L was flipped horizontal for me for some reason. I sometimes work on new data in an unfamiliar orientation so as not to be comparing it with my own and I forgot to put it back! Guilty as charged.

That is sooo easy to fix that I'm embarrassed to tell you how I do it! I didn't do it all that well in this instance because I was working quickly, but all you do in Civilization (Photoshop!) is...

Make a copy layer.

Bottom layer active, top invisible.

Curves. Pin the background sky outside the big aura. Put in anchor points below it. Pull down the curve immediately above that then restore the upper curve to a straight line. Only look at the big star/aura that you are working on and get that right.

Top layer visible and active. Use a well feathered eraser slightly larger than the aura and apply it at 100%.

Olly

Edit, Why was it colour blotchy? My guess is passing cloud. How do you shoot your RGB? In a perfect world you'd do blue at the highest elevation and R and G lower down. However, in an imperfect world I suspect that scrolling RGB,RGB,RGB will give you the best result because you'll average out any inconsistency in the sky. I also have to ask: there is no possibility of local (observatory) light incursion? What was odd was the quite insistent large scale structure in the colour inconsistency. It wasn't so much a gradient as a shape.

"Layers! Onions have layers."  (where's an emoticon of Shrek when you need one?)

My guess would have been a thin layer of dew settling on the optics.

Anyway, thanks all for a pleasant sunday afternoon figuring this out.

[gorann]

3 hours ago, ollypenrice said:

Here's my go. The background was colour-blotchy, as Rodd said, and really did need to be told to behave! I used one pass of DBE, one pass of Background Neutralization and a bit of custom stuff in Ps. The galaxy data is great. I found star colour tending to be red dominated but that could just be the LP. This was done in PI and Ps.

I don't thnk you should give up on LRGB, Rodd!

Olly

 

I just saw two Netflix episodes on the TV where a murder case was finally solved, and meanwhile missed 11 new posts on this thread were Olly mysteriously solved the Case of the Bad Background. I am deeply impressed Olly! That is one of the best Leo Triplets I have seen and we others just have to try to figure out how you solved the mystery. Nearly perfect background and a very very nice and clear trail....

Cheers!

[Rodd]

26 minutes ago, wimvb said:

"Layers! Onions have layers."  (where's an emoticon of Shrek when you need one?)

My guess would have been a thin layer of dew settling on the optics.

Anyway, thanks all for a pleasant sunday afternoon figuring this out.

No dew when its 15 degrees F outside!  Brutal.  Could be clouds--though it was pretty clear (but I was not at the scope all night--just every hour or so).

[wimvb]

In my experience, clouds should show up in the subs, at least as an overall lightness variation. If this is the case, you could try to restack the image with fewer subs, selecting only the best.

Blink in PI is a great way to visually assess and select subs after calibration, but before registration.

[wimvb]

35 minutes ago, gorann said:

I just saw two Netflix episodes on the TV where a murder case was finally solved, and meanwhile missed 11 new posts on this thread were Olly mysteriously solved the Case of the Bad Background. I am deeply impressed Olly! That is one of the best Leo Triplets I have seen and we others just have to try to figure out how you solved the mystery. Nearly perfect background and a very very nice and clear trail....

Cheers!

The answer was given a few episodes replies later.

[ollypenrice]

36 minutes ago, gorann said:

I just saw two Netflix episodes on the TV where a murder case was finally solved, and meanwhile missed 11 new posts on this thread were Olly mysteriously solved the Case of the Bad Background. I am deeply impressed Olly! That is one of the best Leo Triplets I have seen and we others just have to try to figure out how you solved the mystery. Nearly perfect background and a very very nice and clear trail....

Cheers!

I didn't solve the mystery, I just knocked out all the suspects with a big iron bar.

Olly

[Rodd]

8 minutes ago, wimvb said:

In my experience, clouds should show up in the subs, at least as an overall lightness variation. If this is the case, you could try to restack the image with fewer subs, selecting only the best.

Blink in PI is a great way to visually assess and select subs after calibration, but before registration.

I used SFS and looked at all of them-I did not see any.  I usually take out subs with high FWHM values and low SNR (usually the cloudy ones).  I use blink too---not on this one though.  I think I will try that just to make sure.  Thanks.

[ollypenrice]

Shame about the wheel. The whole point about stacking is that you average out noise and build signal. If you could fix the wheel so that you really stirred up the colours as you image across the sky it might make life easier.

Olly

[Rodd]

1 hour ago, ollypenrice said:

Shame about the wheel. The whole point about stacking is that you average out noise and build signal. If you could fix the wheel so that you really stirred up the colours as you image across the sky it might make life easier.

Olly

I have sent the camera back to SBIG twice--each time they tell me it works fine.  Cables are fine.  Don't think a computer glitch could cause a mechanical problem like this.  Sort of at wits end. 

[johnrt]

So I have just finished playing with the Lum, here is some very good data to be unearthed in there. I will start adding some colour this afternoon. But this is how far I have got....

Incidentally, the black point of the integrated stack is very high in the Lum, which is how I found my Lum images at 10 mins per sub until I added an IDAS LP2, I think it is caused by overall sky brightness. I think the addition of an LP filter will aid your LRGB imaging no end.

[Rodd]

9 minutes ago, johnrt said:

So I have just finished playing with the Lum, here is some very good data to be unearthed in there. I will start adding some colour this afternoon. But this is how far I have got....

Incidentally, the black point of the integrated stack is very high in the Lum, which is how I found my Lum images at 10 mins per sub until I added an IDAS LP2, I think it is caused by overall sky brightness. I think the addition of an LP filter will aid your LRGB imaging no end.

Thanks John,

You are absolutely correct about the sky brightness.  10 min lum is probably too long for my skies--at least in the northeast through to the southwest (through the south). But how would I add an LP filter to the optical path?  My nose piece does not have theads on the front .  By the way--how do you get the tail to stand out so much and the background to be so--well, unlike mine!  I know--PS.  

[johnrt]

39 minutes ago, Rodd said:

Thanks John,

You are absolutely correct about the sky brightness.  10 min lum is probably too long for my skies--at least in the northeast through to the southwest (through the south). But how would I add an LP filter to the optical path?  My nose piece does not have theads on the front .  By the way--how do you get the tail to stand out so much and the background to be so--well, unlike mine!  I know--PS.  

Hi Rodd,

Yes the Lum work is all photoshop after some DBE in PI. I used a little bit of Olly's technique with a little bit of my own recipe of targeted curves and screen layer blending.

The colour had to be told to behave, but it is very manageable once you have a quality Lum layer to work under. Here's the final colour version, hopefully it proves you have some quality data there and shouldn't even think about giving up on LRGB.

 

 

John.

[Rodd]

1 minute ago, johnrt said:

Hi Rodd,

Yes the Lum work is all photoshop after some DBE in PI. I used a little bit of Olly's technique with a little bit of my own recipe of targeted curves and screen layer blending.

The colour had to be told to behave, but it is very manageable once you have a quality Lum layer to work under. Here's the final colour version, hopefully it proves you have some quality data there and shouldn't even think about giving up on LRGB.

 

 

John.

Looks amazing indeed.  Don't know how to do that--and I am not sure there is all that much for to try.  I know I have seen decent images in PI.   I note that the stars are not as good as they could be--even in Olly's workup.  Allot of red rims.  Is that because of differences in the quality of the data between the various filters, or is it because this is just a quick exercise and the time needed to polish everything up was not expended.   Also--how about the LP filter--how to incorporate it.  It seems to be a rather slippery thing to figure out.  

[johnrt]

6 minutes ago, Rodd said:

Looks amazing indeed.  Don't know how to do that--and I am not sure there is all that much for to try.  I know I have seen decent images in PI.   I note that the stars are not as good as they could be--even in Olly's workup.  Allot of red rims.  Is that because of differences in the quality of the data between the various filters, or is it because this is just a quick exercise and the time needed to polish everything up was not expended.   Also--how about the LP filter--how to incorporate it.  It seems to be a rather slippery thing to figure out.  

I didn't concentrate very much on the stars I'm afraid to say, just some reduction and a colour tweak and attention to stop them getting too saturated, I'm sure better could be achieved with care.

Incorporating the LP filter is easy for Lum, you simply need to remove the Lum filter and put the IDAS or LP filter of choice in the wheel in it's place. Mine is the the front of my reducer, so stays in place for RGB and even Ha / OIII too

[Rodd]

1 minute ago, johnrt said:

I didn't concentrate very much on the stars I'm afraid to say, just some reduction and a colour tweak and attention to stop them getting too saturated, I'm sure better could be achieved with care.

Incorporating the LP filter is easy for Lum, you simply need to remove the Lum filter and put the IDAS or LP filter of choice in the wheel in it's place. Mine is the the front of my reducer, so stays in place for RGB and even Ha / OIII too

That sounds problematic for me.  It would mean I would have to shoot all new flats because I would have to remove the camera and open the filter wheel.  I don't ever touch the camera during a image project.  I have an empty space in my filter wheel (well actually it contains the Badder 7nm Ha filter--I typically use the Astrodon 3nm).  But then I would not be able to use the filter for any other colors or NB.  My reducer threads directly onto the nose piece (or a 1.5mm spacer I forget).  It changes if I use the field flatner or the reducer--bottom line though is the Reducer/flatner-spacer unit threads directly onto my filter wheel and directly onto the nose piece.  No threads in the outward side of the nose piece.  And I use a different nosepiece when I shoot with the C11Edge (smaller but still no threads).  If I place the filter in between the reducer/flatner and spacer rings, it will change the backfocus distance.  Also, I would probably need a custom sized filter--not sure if they make them to thread into spacer rings.  

[wimvb]

1 hour ago, Rodd said:

Thanks John,

You are absolutely correct about the sky brightness.  10 min lum is probably too long for my skies--at least in the northeast through to the southwest (through the south). But how would I add an LP filter to the optical path?  My nose piece does not have theads on the front .  By the way--how do you get the tail to stand out so much and the background to be so--well, unlike mine!  I know--PS.  

Is it possible to have a lp filter in the wheel, at the lum position? You'd only need it in that position anyway. Or am I completely wrong here? I'm not convinced that combining lp with narrower filters makes any sense, so you wouldn't need it together with rgb.

Just my € 0.01 (not even 0.02, I'm ignorant in matters concerning lrgb ccd)

[johnrt]

3 minutes ago, wimvb said:

Is it possible to have a lp filter in the wheel, at the lum position? You'd only need it in that position anyway. Or am I completely wrong here? I'm not convinced that combining lp with narrower filters makes any sense, so you wouldn't need it together with rgb.

Just my € 0.01 (not even 0.02, I'm ignorant in matters concerning lrgb ccd)

The IDAS also helped my RGB a great deal, so ideally you would have it in front of the wheel, but as Rodd can't the replacement of the Lum would do.

 

24 minutes ago, Rodd said:

That sounds problematic for me.  It would mean I would have to shoot all new flats because I would have to remove the camera and open the filter wheel.  I don't ever touch the camera during a image project.  I have an empty space in my filter wheel (well actually it contains the Badder 7nm Ha filter--I typically use the Astrodon 3nm).  But then I would not be able to use the filter for any other colors or NB.  My reducer threads directly onto the nose piece (or a 1.5mm spacer I forget).  It changes if I use the field flatner or the reducer--bottom line though is the Reducer/flatner-spacer unit threads directly onto my filter wheel and directly onto the nose piece.  No threads in the outward side of the nose piece.  And I use a different nosepiece when I shoot with the C11Edge (smaller but still no threads).  If I place the filter in between the reducer/flatner and spacer rings, it will change the backfocus distance.  Also, I would probably need a custom sized filter--not sure if they make them to thread into spacer rings.  

It's a 1 time only replacement Rodd, the Lum is redundant after you replace with an LP filter.

[Rodd]

7 minutes ago, johnrt said:

The IDAS also helped my RGB a great deal, so ideally you would have it in front of the wheel, but as Rodd can't the replacement of the Lum would do.

 

It's a 1 time only replacement Rodd, the Lum is redundant after you replace with an LP filter.

I will call Televue and see if it can fit on a spacer ring.  But the SBIG nosepiece that I use with the C11Edge is another story--Do other people with SBIG cameras use the LP filter for RGB as well as lum?  The equipment I use is not unusual stuff--but I seem to have unusual issues.   

[gorann]

Well, after first going totally astray with this data I started off from scratch, working more on the lum data. This time, for some reason the background colour behaved quite well. I also used Olly's technique with stretched layers to bring out the trail. Finally, I gave the stars a tiny bit of Gaussian blur (0.4 pix) before I increased the star colours with Noel's Actions, thereby reducing the red rings that Rodd dislikes. All in PS of course - never had any PI on my computer (does it exist for Mac?).

Regarding the LP filter, the best must be to include it also for the broadband colour filters since they do not block light pollution (unlike NB filters). Would it not be possible to replace those nosepieces with threaded ones?

[gorann]

By the way, here are the variety of IDAS P2 filters you can get from http://www.sciencecenter.net/hutech/idas/lps.htm

[Rodd]

22 minutes ago, gorann said:

By the way, here are the variety of IDAS P2 filters you can get from http://www.sciencecenter.net/hutech/idas/lps.htm

Great job with the image Gorann.  And thank you for the filter info.  i will look into this matter--I will need to confer with a couple of different manufacturers.  I appreciate your input.  

[wimvb]

38 minutes ago, gorann said:

All in PS of course - never had any PI on my computer (does it exist for Mac?).

Yes. Well worth the investment

[gorann]

Rodd,

another thing with LP is that you may do better with many shorter exposures, but maybe someone already said that on this thread, which is soon into 4 pages, so you can see that if you want attention in this forum the best is to post images that clearly have some problems!

[gorann]

13 minutes ago, wimvb said:

Yes. Well worth the investment

Maybe one day Wim, when I know all the trick in PS. I have to say that I have not noticed that PI people post better images than PS people, or vise versa. But I am impressed by those handling both!

[Rodd]

7 minutes ago, gorann said:

Maybe one day Wim, when I know all the trick in PS. I have to say that I have not noticed that PI people post better images than PS people, or vise versa. But I am impressed by those handling both!

But for what its worth, which might be nothing other than another meaningless statistic--there are certainly more people using PS (at least on SGL and I think elsewhere too)--and very definitely more people using ONLY PS than those who only use PI.   If there was not a subscription requirement, i would try to learn PS too.  Both is best from what I can gather.