M106. Eternal question: will more data improve it?

[Oddsocks]

23 minutes ago, Datalord said:

EDIT: I should mention that I masked the colouring on the second picture, because I really don't like what ST does to stars when saturating hard. I guess that is blunder from my sid

I was just going to say “Where has all the star colour gone?” when you edited the post.....

It may not be a problem specific to Startools, try reprocessing in the demo version of Astroart for comparison, the Astroart demo is not time limited so you can keep it on the computer for ever, you just can’t save the processing result, only visualise or screen capture. At least then you would know that the problem is in acquisition or in post processing.

Being critical, it’s interesting that the bigger stars show the same ‘elongated diamond’ shape that corresponds with the CCD inspector reports for tilt and also matches the orientation of those colour artefacts around the stars in the original processing version.

Masking the stars in Startools has hidden the problem rather than solved it and the image does lose something when all the stars are plain white, even so, the galaxies do look impressive. Personally, I wouldn't set the black level so high as it makes the galaxies seem isolated and detached and the colour is a little over-strong but these are just subjective observations, everyone views these things differently.

Many of the stars seem to show a ‘cross-hatch’ pattern, I’ve no idea where that is coming from, could be an integration artefact or a result of the very small star size that the RASA produces on a bayered sensor.

Certainly a few issues to resolve to get the best out of this telescope!

 

[Datalord]

26 minutes ago, Oddsocks said:

I was just going to say “Where has all the star colour gone?” when you edited the post.....

It may not be a problem specific to Startools, try reprocessing in the demo version of Astroart for comparison, the Astroart demo is not time limited so you can keep it on the computer for ever, you just can’t save the processing result, only visualise or screen capture. At least then you would know that the problem is in acquisition or in post processing.

Being critical, it’s interesting that the bigger stars show the same ‘elongated diamond’ shape that corresponds with the CCD inspector reports for tilt and also matches the orientation of those colour artefacts around the stars in the original processing version.

Masking the stars in Startools has hidden the problem rather than solved it and the image does lose something when all the stars are plain white, even so, the galaxies do look impressive. Personally, I wouldn't set the black level so high as it makes the galaxies seem isolated and detached and the colour is a little over-strong but these are just subjective observations, everyone views these things differently.

Many of the stars seem to show a ‘cross-hatch’ pattern, I’ve no idea where that is coming from, could be an integration artefact or a result of the very small star size that the RASA produces on a bayered sensor.

Certainly a few issues to resolve to get the best out of this telescope!

 

Yeah, I think the tilt is real, somehow, but it is exacerbated but how extreme the RASA is in gathering photons. It bleeds into everything.

The black level is not actually done in the usual PS fashion. ST is different in many ways, some great, some not so great. Personally I prefer a more distinct background, so that is debatable.

When you say cross-hatch, you mean this?:

If so, that is normal on the camera.

[gorann]

That is quite an improvement! Congratulations. Data rules as is often pointed out here to annoy us that do not have eternally clear skies. A great image ideed, with potential for some improvements from further processing. As you say you only did some quick'n'dirty processing. I assume the diffraction around those big stars are from the cables running from your camera and as I said you could tame it with Olly's method. I would also try a little bit of star shrinking to make the galaxies stand out even more, and mix in a bit of the star colour you had from ST (for example using layers in PS).

[Datalord]

By Public demand I sent it through a PS action to increase star colour a few times. This is the last I will do on this iteration, as the scope is ticking away for adding another 4 hours of data tonight.

[Datalord]

Alright, 17 hours of data. And yes, more data works. It also makes postprocessing a whole lot easier. Mind you, this below is still a relatively quick run through with ST and not the usual procedure in PS.

[Datalord]

Hmm, got myself a trial of PixInsight and huddled myself through this dog of a UI with tutorials to help. I think it might be better in some areas, but I'm not sure I think it is overall a better picture.