Processing Help!

[Likwid]

Hello,

I just upgraded my rig and there are so many different processes that go together, that I don't know where I am falling short the most. One thing that I do know, is that my editing could use a lot of work. I was hoping to see the potential that my images have so I can determine if my imaging is my biggest issue, or my post-processing. Attached is the *.tif straight from DSS. Could someone please work some magic on it for me?

Thank you very much!

Autosave.tif

[almcl]

Here's a very 'quick 'n dirty' process of your image in StarTools. 

You have some nice round stars and some good detail which, in my haste, I have slightly strangled - sorry!

There is quite a strong cyan colour cast in the DSS output and you may find it worth upgrading to the latest version, 4.1.1 (downloadable here) not sure if it will fix the problem, but worth doing anyway.

There is some 'walking noise' and while this can be addressed in processing software, it may be that by dithering, you will be able to eliminate it earlier in the process

I hope that some of the more knowledgeable AP people (doesn't include me, I am afraid) will be along with some other suggestions.

[alacant]

StarTools again, sorry. HTH:

[Likwid]

Oh wow, thank you! That is much better than I figured they would come out. When I was editing earlier, I saw those odd streaks. Should those go away once I start getting Flats and Dark frames?

[almcl]

The streaks may calibrate out with darks, but if you are able to dither that could also help to remove them at the stacking stage.  

[Likwid]

Ah, great. Thank you very much!

[wimvb]

Downloaded your tif just now.

First impressions:

1. hot pixels are in the same direction as the background streaks. Darks will remove them, if they match the light frames. This is quite easy if you have a cooled camera, but not so easy with a non-cooled camera

2. there's a satellite trail. This and the hot pixels can be removed if you use more aggressive clipping during image integration (stacking)

I advise you to restack the subs and use a more aggressive clipping parameter.

The walking noise (streak pattern in background) is best avoided by dithering during data collection.

I'll soon post the processed image.

[wimvb]

PixInsight. Since you captured quite a few faint fuzzies in the background, I tried to keep those. That's why I was easy on the background and noise reduction.

• Dynamic crop
• removed the worst of the hot pixel trails using DefectMap
• DBE to flatten the background
• Colour calibration
• Noise reduction (TGVDenoise on luminance, MMT on chrominance)
• Masked stretch
• Background desaturation
• contrast adjustments with CurvesTransformation.