Combining sources

[Anthonyexmouth]

How practical is it to combine data from different sources?

still pondering a mono or OSC cooled camera but cant quite afford a full filter set if i go mono. 

would it be possible to capture mono narrow band and combine with colour from a dslr until i get more filters. 

[david_taurus83]

Absolutely! I believe Adam @tooth_drdoes this.

[tooth_dr]

40 minutes ago, david_taurus83 said:

Absolutely! I believe Adam @tooth_drdoes this.

Cheers David. Yes it works very well

Examples:

Leo Triplets - mono lum and DSLR rgb:

Iris Nebula - mono lum and DSLR colour:

[Anthonyexmouth]

2 minutes ago, tooth_dr said:

Cheers David. Yes it works very well

Examples:

Leo Triplets - mono lum and DSLR rgb:

Iris Nebula - mono lum and DSLR colour:

how hard is the workflow to get this to work? good to know its a possibility.

whats your reason for doing it this way?

[tooth_dr]

1 hour ago, Anthonyexmouth said:

how hard is the workflow to get this to work? good to know its a possibility.

whats your reason for doing it this way?

it's not hard, I use APP, which automates most of the mismatching of camera sizes. 

Why? - I had an ED80 with a DSLR, and I then bought another ED80 and mono CCD.  Both of those cameras have similar pixel sizes - 5.4 versus 5.6.  Running the two together allowed me to gather a lot of data per night.  Now I have two mono CCDs, with filters, but TBH I'm struggling with RGB - focussing between 'parafocal' filters, clouds, lack of complete data sets, processing, colour balance, star sizes, etc.  I'm hoping I'll crack it soon though.

[Anthonyexmouth]

is matched pixel size important? what mono camera do you use?

[tooth_dr]

I’m using the Kodak KAF-8300 sensor. 

[Uranium235]

I use registar for the same thing. Though it's sensible to use a colour sensor that's larger than your mono (so no mono data is wasted).

It's also possible to combine different focal lengths and telescope types. This is data taken using a star 71 (widefield) and a 200pds and 130pds (newtonian) for high res details:

 

[Anthonyexmouth]

i'll be using an ED80 . cameras i'm considering are the asi183 or 1600. the 1600 is pushing the budget. realistically i should go OSC on my budget but i think i would be kicking myself wishing i'd gone mono as i do have the dslr to fall back on for colour

[ollypenrice]

It's an excellent idea which we do here all the time.

For a long time the 'combining' program of choice was Registar, which is what I still use. It handles pixel size, field curvature and every other obstacle in a click. Its recent rival is Astro Pixel Processor which I don't yet use but friends do. I think it can also be done in Pixinsight but don't expect to do anything in one click in PI!!

But the main message is, 'Do it.' It's perfectly straightforward and highly productive.

Olly

[gorann]

I agree, it is an excellent idea. I do something very similar although I collect the RGB with a cooled CMOS colour camera (ASI071MC) and lum (or Ha) with an ASI1600MM cool sitting on another scope side by side. I star align one image to the other using PI. Usually no problem but sometimes I need to scale up one of the images in PS to match the resolution before aligning them. Since the DSLR will probably be more noisy, it may be a good idea to treat that image with a rather big dose of NR (or a bit gaussian blur) before adding lum.