Processing Comet Image?

[CaptainShiznit]

Hey,

I captured 120x60s subs of comet 2019/Y4 Atlas last night. I wanted to make an animation of its movements across the star field. I have no idea how to process it. My usual process for DSOs is DeepSkyStacker and Photoshop, and lunar images with PIPP and AutoStakkert. I have no idea how to proceed with calibration files, colour balancing etc (I use a light pollution filter so everything is green). What's the simplest method to process the 120 frames and create a gif or avi?

Cheers

[Davey-T]

Calibrate and process all the individual frames, I then reduce them in resolution and size as no point having tiff sized images for animation IMHO others disagree 😂

I then use imppg to align and crop them all as it does the best job. P'Shop is pretty useless at this bit but the P'Shop animation does a good job of producing a finished GIF from the aligned images.

Dave

Edited March 31, 2020 by Davey-T

[CaptainShiznit]

14 minutes ago, Davey-T said:

Calibrate and process all the individual frames, I then reduce them in resolution and size as no point having tiff sized images for animation IMHO others disagree 😂

I then use imppg to align and crop them all as it does the best job. P'Shop is pretty useless at this bit but the P'Shop animation does a good job of producing a finished GIF from the aligned images.

Dave

Cheers Dave,

Sounds like a lengthy process? Would I have to use DSS to apply my calibrations to each sub individually? Is there a way for DSS to do this automatically rather than me doing it 120 times? How about histogram stretching/colour balancing? Is there a way to batch process or again is it a case of stretching 120 images? I'm still extremely novice at processing DSOs so don't have much experience beyond following a standard workflow.

Thanks again

Edited March 31, 2020 by CaptainShiznit

[Davey-T]

Don't use DSS but would have thought you can just calibrate the images and save them without stacking, I do it in Maxim then fiddle about with them on PS, I assume they're colour images ?

As you say it's a bit time consuming which is why I still have a couple waiting to be processed, there may be ways to batch process them but if they're taken over a period there will be differences in background levels etc so may still need tweaking individually depending how fussy you are, I generally aren't that fussy and run the first attempt through animation to see any really bad frames then work on those.

Dave

[CaptainShiznit]

21 minutes ago, Davey-T said:

Don't use DSS but would have thought you can just calibrate the images and save them without stacking, I do it in Maxim then fiddle about with them on PS, I assume they're colour images ?

As you say it's a bit time consuming which is why I still have a couple waiting to be processed, there may be ways to batch process them but if they're taken over a period there will be differences in background levels etc so may still need tweaking individually depending how fussy you are, I generally aren't that fussy and run the first attempt through animation to see any really bad frames then work on those.

Dave

Cheers Dave. I'll have a fiddle and might try Maxim.

[Craney]

A couple of suggestions which may help......

Doesn't  DSS  create a 'calibrated' file prior to stacking.   Can you copy these from the relevent directory after calibration and then try to GIF them...??

OR.....

If you cannot get the calibration part to work and you are dealing with the original files........

If you shot in Canon raw files (.CR2) . Then PS does not open them directly, but there is a converter that will change them into a readable format.  At this stage you can perform some basic processing. a-ha... but  if  you load all the files in at once you can do a global edit. ie. it applies the same processing to all the individual frames and you can choose the format you want the end result in.

If you shot in jpg or Tiff  format.  Load up PS. Pick an average frame and perform the required processing but record it as a macro.  Load all the files (lots of tabs !!!)  and hit the <actions>  button on each sub frame.  It will take 120 button presses but it is better than doing it individually.

Here is an example I did on the comet. Cloud was passing over and the wind was picking up....(usual desperation stuff !! ).  This was a mono image in .fits format.    I converted them to TIFF via PIPP. 

 I loaded the frames into PS and did a simple... auto tone... and then  <file save>  .  Then used PIPP again  to generate a GIF.      OK not the best quality output but still it is a result....

 

Hope this helps. Good luck.

 

 

Sean.

 

 

 

 

Edited March 31, 2020 by Craney

[CaptainShiznit]

@Craney that's incredibly helpful, thanks. I'm gonna give this a crack tomorrow.

Regarding DSS creating a calibrated frame prior to stacking, would this be in the registering phase? I'll have to have a check to see if I can pull calibrated frames out of it before stacking.

Thanks again

[Craney]

45 minutes ago, CaptainShiznit said:

DSS creating a calibrated frame prior to stacking, would this be in the registering phase?

I'm not an expert on this  ( famous last words !! ), but I have just tried stacking some old Heart nebula files to see.    

The original 'light' file was    Heart  ( ....  I included a bias and a dark  in the input files)

Upon registration, DSS creates a  file called  Heart.cal.     If you load this into DSS as another 'light'  without shifting the slider at the top right,  the background appears much darker than the original, as if the calibration files have been subtracted.

Give it a go and see what happens.   

 

Sean.

 

 

[fireballxl5]

There are two options I've used to animate processed comet and asteroid frames, the Blink process in PI and PIPP (https://sites.google.com/site/astropipp/)

Here's my PIPP generated animation of Comet C/2019 Y4 ATLAS using my 60mm refractor @ F10 with ASI071MC on my guided SW AZ-GTi, 50x180s from Thursday 26th March.

 

 

HTH, Andy

 

Edited March 31, 2020 by fireballxl5
embedded GIF

[CaptainShiznit]

Just found this setting in DSS which should help

 

[CaptainShiznit]

Thanks for the excellent advice on this one. I was able to extract the calibrated frames from DSS with the above setting (plus the debayering option). I then loaded one into Photoshop and recorded a new action of stretching it and dealing with noise. Then using File > Automate > batch, point Photoshop at the right folder and away it went. Took about 30 seconds per frame so about an hour of automation. I then created the following gif.

 

[Tangoringo]

Your perserverance really paid off there. Top stuff.👍