Reality has kicked in

[Wirral man]

After taking some shots of Andromeda and processing i know where i have been going wrong and that is my location, after seeing some photos of others then seeing mine its clear to see how light pollution strips anyway all the colour and details!  so basically my expectations were far too high. 

90secs 90 subs 20dark 20flat 20bias

Action - RGB color andromada.tif

[SteveNickolls]

Hi, thanks for your post. Please don't get disheartened at your predicament with light pollution, try and treat it as a challenge instead. Light pollution is a scourge of our modern age unfortunately and the few really dark sites in the UK make them inaccessible to many of us apart from on holiday if we can so arrange them. There are many brighter DSO's you can hone your imaging and processing skills on though before deciding to perhaps move to narrowband imaging or employ CLS/UHC filters depending on the target and level of light pollution you face, I'd name globular clusters, the M42 region and Rosette Nebula to be on your imaging list as quite achievable even in a light polluted environment. Plenty to do :-)

Chin up.

Cheers,
Steve

 

[Cornelius Varley]

2 hours ago, Wirral man said:

After taking some shots of Andromeda and processing i know where i have been going wrong and that is my location, after seeing some photos of others then seeing mine its clear to see how light pollution strips anyway all the colour and details!  so basically my expectations were far too high. 

90secs 90 subs 20dark 20flat 20bias

Action - RGB color andromada.tif

Please post the image in jpg or png format so that the tiff file (400mb) doesn't need to be downloaded to be viewed.

[Wirral man]

2 minutes ago, Cornelius Varley said:

Please post the image in jpg or png format so that the tiff file (400mb) doesn't need to be downloaded to be viewed.

yes will do i done this before work and forgot it was a tiff will resave in cs2 tonight and repost

[RayD]

I'd be surprised if you have uncontrollable light pollution from 90s subs, unless you really are in a very badly light polluted area.

You may want to add some information about the equipment used (OTA, Camera, filters (if any)) so it is easier to see whether it may be something else before feeling too dejected.

Also let us know when you were imaging as if it was around the recent full moon, then in RGB or OSC you'd have little chance of success.

Hope it turns out to be something less sinister than impossible light pollution.

[Wirral man]

20 minutes ago, RayD said:

I'd be surprised if you have uncontrollable light pollution from 90s subs, unless you really are in a very badly light polluted area.

You may want to add some information about the equipment used (OTA, Camera, filters (if any)) so it is easier to see whether it may be something else before feeling too dejected.

Also let us know when you were imaging as if it was around the recent full moon, then in RGB or OSC you'd have little chance of success.

Hope it turns out to be something less sinister than impossible light pollution.

hi the image was done on Sunday night before the moon rose the session was using a skywatcher star adventurer with nikon d5300 with a tamron 16-300mm at 300mm f6.3 no mods no filters stacked with deep sky stacker image was saved with no adjustments then processed with cs2 Photoshop with annies astro actions.

I keep thinking its the software i have which is not giving me good results 

[RayD]

1 minute ago, Wirral man said:

hi the image was done on Sunday night before the moon rose the session was using a skywatcher star adventurer with nikon d5300 with a tamron 16-300mm at 300mm f6.3 no mods no filters stacked with deep sky stacker image was saved with no adjustments then processed with cs2 Photoshop with annies astro actions.

I keep thinking its the software i have which is not giving me good results 

Ok that's great.  When you post the image later we can have a look.

[steppenwolf]

Having had a look at your image, it is hard to see what is going on here - there is zero colour in the image! This is not just a light pollution issue.

Can you post up a single sub straight from the camera, please, no processing at all, just straight off the memory card? Can you also confirm that you haven't got the camera inadvertently set to mimic a mono image in the 'effects' menu?

[Wirral man]

8 minutes ago, steppenwolf said:

Having had a look at your image, it is hard to see what is going on here - there is zero colour in the image! This is not just a light pollution issue.

Can you post up a single sub straight from the camera, please, no processing at all, just straight off the memory card? Can you also confirm that you haven't got the camera inadvertently set to mimic a mono image in the 'effects' menu?

no the d5300 is set to rgb it shoots colour fine in daytime and low light is excellent..however one i do notice is when deep sky stacker is running with each pass the info of each nef raw image it says "grey" will post the single sub later after work so please dont forget me lol if i can sort this out i would be much happier...

[steppenwolf]

5 minutes ago, Wirral man said:

however one i do notice is when deep sky stacker is running with each pass the info of each nef raw image it says "grey" 

What is really strange is that the image appears to have been de-Bayered as there is no matrix visible in your image. However, it would appear DSS is not de-Bayering the image correctly for some reason. That single sub example would help to diagnose this for you.

[RayD]

Just downloaded the .tif and, as Steve says, it doesn't really look much like a light pollution issue, more capture/processing.

You have an issue with spacing it seems as your stars are a bit eggy in the corners, but that is unrelated and fairly easy to resolve.

Personally I would say at this moment don't worry too much about the light pollution, that doesn't seem to be an issue here, and for 90s subs you've actually done pretty well with the data.

[happy-kat]

What ISO did you use?

[SteveNickolls]

38 minutes ago, Wirral man said:

I keep thinking its the software i have which is not giving me good results 

Hi,

it is fair to say a lot of improvement for a given image can come out of being familiar with the software you use to stack and process, it will involve some time and practice while  not one piece of software works for everybody. DSS has it's own, shall I say, 'peculiarities' and learning curve but my own use of DSS is geared towards producing a master image to be used in StarTools and for that you don't want DSS doing anything untoward in the background while otherwise stacking and there are a number of settings to master to your requirements. It sounds as if you are doing this though in DSS. Joseph Ashley, author of, "Astro-photography on the Go, Using Short Exposures with Light Mounts" has a whole chapter devoted to using DSS in his book and I recall two editions of the Sky at Night magazine not too long ago had an exposition on its use.

Others here will be able to assist as regards PhotoShop.

Cheers,
Steve

[happy-kat]

^ ditto what Steve has said. My own processing knowledge keeps growing, invariably there is more than one way to do something and software weakness I am finding is not the scape goat, but learning, reading, trialing are the main stay of improving.

[Wirral man]

the iso was 1000 and i dont use deep sky stacker for anything but stacking i save the image then use cs2....when i 1st downloaded dss i do remember changing some settings i think i will uninstall then reinstall it to reset to default because when i do try to process the only way i can pull any colour is using hue and saturation and it makes it looks blue or green

[happy-kat]

It is normal for the raw files to say gray mine do.

Ideally you want to use the autosaved fits file, or at least the autosaved tiff file.

The histogram on the night should drive the ISO you select for the aperture and exposure length used, 1000 may have pushed the peak too far right.

[Wirral man]

39 minutes ago, happy-kat said:

It is normal for the raw files to say gray mine do.

Ideally you want to use the autosaved fits file, or at least the autosaved tiff file.

The histogram on the night should drive the ISO you select for the aperture and exposure length used, 1000 may have pushed the peak too far right.

the histogram was right in the middle and i save 2 versions from dss one with adjustments embedded and one without both are 16bit tiff..i hope someone can hit the nail on the head!!

[happy-kat]

The histogram on the back of the camera at time of taking the exposures.

[happy-kat]

example < click link

[Wirral man]

ah right sorry misunderstood will post a nef file with all info later for everyone to see and try and see what is going on..also just found this which i cant belive https://www.dpreview.com/forums/thread/4221483

[RayD]

28 minutes ago, Wirral man said:

ah right sorry misunderstood will post a nef file with all info later for everyone to see and try and see what is going on..also just found this which i cant belive https://www.dpreview.com/forums/thread/4221483

It is possible, but with very good processing.  As I said, you seem to have nice data, and with short subs shouldn't really have LP issues, so once it is identified what's gone wrong and where you should be able to produce a really nice image.

[Wirral man]

1 hour ago, RayD said:

It is possible, but with very good processing.  As I said, you seem to have nice data, and with short subs shouldn't really have LP issues, so once it is identified what's gone wrong and where you should be able to produce a really nice image.

i hope so ray its 230pm for me i will be home at 5pm just to recap you want just one orignal raw image?

[RayD]

4 minutes ago, Wirral man said:

i hope so ray its 230pm for me i will be home at 5pm just to recap you want just one orignal raw image?

I think if you can link to (dropbox or similar) a number of RAW files then people can have a go at stacking them to perhaps see where the issue lies.  Not necessarily all 90, but say 20 or so.

[RayD]

Just out of interest, have you tried stacking without calibration frames to see if the colour is there in that stack?

[Wirral man]

45 minutes ago, RayD said:

Just out of interest, have you tried stacking without calibration frames to see if the colour is there in that stack?

no i have followed the general rule