IKO - M16 Data Release - August 2020

[Grant]

Following the excellent talk last night by Dave @ Pixel Skies showing his process workflow for our M16 data I'm please to announce the first public release of the data

Some small print first though:

• We will be releasing all public data from the Ikarus Observatory project under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial licence. What this means is you are free to share, copy and redistribute the data as you see fit and adapt, remix, transform and build upon it but you must attribute 'Ikarus Observatory' as the source of the original data and must not use it for commercial purposes - i.e. no sticking images on the side of mugs and selling then

Beyond that, enjoy and have fun!

You can find out more about the IKO project here including details of the equipment used, observatory site etc.. We've done a few other test runs up to this point and have some more data awaiting release but we are starting with SHO Narrowband M16 data taken a couple of months ago. This started off as 100 hours in total but has been whittled down to select just the best frames - this is partly some learning on my part as I need to adjust the times we finish imaging runs to ensure it's within astro dark and the targets are high enough to get the best data. We've also cut out anything with any cloud passing through, issues caused by moon light, severe satellite trails and the like. This has left:

• Ha - 46 x 20 mins = 15h20m
• OIII - 29 x 20 mins = 9h:40m
• SII - 44 x 20 mins = 14h40m
• Bias 101x
• Flats 21x for each filter
• Darks 21x 20 mins
• Total integration time = 39h:40m

These have been stacked and calibrated in Pixinsight. The raw XISF or FITS files can be downloaded here.

Dave has also kindly shared his Pixinsight workspace with notes / icons / masks ready for you to play with, that's available here: iko_m16_20200817.zip but be warned, it's a rather large 3.8GB!

Details of the processing competition are here.

I hope you enjoy playing with the data and we look forwards to sharing more very soon!

[Grant]

Dave's StarGaZine video is here for you to follow along 🙂 

 

[DaveS]

I must be doing something stupid, as when I click on the .fit links I get a FITS header, followed by what looks like a PI process history, followed by random characters, with nothing looking like something I can download into a folder for processing.

[Grant]

6 minutes ago, DaveS said:

I must be doing something stupid, as when I click on the .fit links I get a FITS header, followed by what looks like a PI process history, followed by random characters, with nothing looking like something I can download into a folder for processing.

Try right clicking the fits link and the a save as - sounds like your browser is trying to open it as a txt file rather than downloading it.

I will look tomorrow, I should be able to do something to force download the fits files.

[DaveS]

Thanks Grant.

It did look very much as though it saw the file as txt and downloaded it as such

I right clicked and looked for a "save target as" but no luck.

Will try your suggestion.

[Grant]

I've made a tweak on the server which will force your browser to download these rather than try and open them.

[DaveS]

OK, thanks. Downloaded now, will have a play in AstroArt and Affinity.

[daz]

Grabbing the PI file now

[andrew s]

Grant if your using Voyager to control the rig it's very easy to limit the imaging on astro dark and or object altitude. I do this all the time and it works very reliably. 

Regards Andrew 

Edited August 18, 2020 by andrew s

[Spongey]

Is there a specific thread where we can post our renditions of this incredible data?

EDIT: Apologies, I've just seen the competition thread link in the original post.

Cheers

Edited August 18, 2020 by Spongey

[Grant]

5 hours ago, andrew s said:

Grant if your using Voyager to control the rig it's very easy to limit the imaging on astro dark and or object altitude. I do this all the time and it works very reliably. 

Regards Andrew 

Hi Andrew - we are still using SGP, we tested Voyager but I didn't like some of the ways it worked vs SGP so have stuck with that. There are similar limits in SGP, you just have to set them (d'oh!).

I'm now imaging multiple targets a night to ensure we get the target at it's best / highest.

[happy-kat]

The fit files are quite small size wise, downloaded nice and quick

[StevieO]

Excellent, I've been looking forward to seeing the data, especially as I have a Stellamira on order from FLO.

I use Photoshop for processing and it wouldn't open the FITS files, so I ran each file though Deep Sky Stacker one at a time and 'stacked' it, producing a TIFF file for each filter which can now be processed in PS.

I'd be interested to know if there's an easier workaround or if there's any loss of data doing it this way.

Cheers

StevieO

[TerryMcK]

Thanks for making the files available. I will have a bash at them. Thanks to Dave for an informative talk.

[DaveS]

1 hour ago, StevieO said:

Excellent, I've been looking forward to seeing the data, especially as I have a Stellamira on order from FLO.

I use Photoshop for processing and it wouldn't open the FITS files, so I ran each file though Deep Sky Stacker one at a time and 'stacked' it, producing a TIFF file for each filter which can now be processed in PS.

I'd be interested to know if there's an easier workaround or if there's any loss of data doing it this way.

Cheers

StevieO

GIMP 10.2.18 will open FITS files directly, and it's free.

[RayD]

On 17/08/2020 at 22:27, Grant said:

• Ha - 46 x 20 mins = 15h20m
• OIII - 29 x 29 mins = 9h:40m
• SII - 44 x 20 mins = 14h40m

Thanks, Grant.

Can I assume the OIII is a typo and should be 20 mins also, otherwise we have no matching dark frames.

Thanks for the time and effort put in to providing these data.

[Grant]

3 minutes ago, RayD said:

Thanks, Grant.

Can I assume the OIII is a typo and should be 20 mins also, otherwise we have no matching dark frames.

Thanks for the time and effort put in to providing these data.

Well spotted - typo fixed

[souls33k3r]

On 17/08/2020 at 22:44, Grant said:

Dave's StarGaZine video is here for you to follow along 🙂 

 

Cheers for the data Grant and it sure was an interesting episode. One thing I would like to say, the quality of the video was for me not good. I always want to bump it up to 1080p but this session did not have that option so all the formulas that Dave was typing (or had already typed) couldn't make sense of it. But it's good that he released the project so I can now check. But just a pointer really. Cheers mate. 

[Grant]

11 minutes ago, souls33k3r said:

Cheers for the data Grant and it sure was an interesting episode. One thing I would like to say, the quality of the video was for me not good. I always want to bump it up to 1080p but this session did not have that option so all the formulas that Dave was typing (or had already typed) couldn't make sense of it. But it's good that he released the project so I can now check. But just a pointer really. Cheers mate. 

That's odd - I just checked and 1080P is an option? Perhaps try on a different device or, it can sometimes take YouTube longer to process the HD version so maybe it wasn't available when you tried?

[Hughsie]

Thank you to everyone involved in the project. M 16 is one of my fav targets but I would struggle to capture it from my location.

Off to have a play with the data.

 

Cheers

John

[souls33k3r]

18 minutes ago, Grant said:

That's odd - I just checked and 1080P is an option? Perhaps try on a different device or, it can sometimes take YouTube longer to process the HD version so maybe it wasn't available when you tried?

Maybe I was just a bit too quick to view the session. Can confirm I can see the 1080p option. Cheers mate. 

[steppenwolf]

10 hours ago, StevieO said:

I'd be interested to know if there's an easier workaround or if there's any loss of data doing it this way.

There is a great 'workaround' although I'd call it a great third party 'feature' - FITS Liberator V2.3. There are newer versions BUT this version interfaces directly with PhotoShop as a plug-in allowing you to open (but not save) FITS files directly from within PhotoShop. I never leave home without it!

[rubecula]

Has anyone been able to open these files with CCDSharp?  On trying to open there was an "problem opening file" response with no explanation as to what the problem was.  I used FITS Liberator to convert to TIF and got exactly the same result.  This is with the latest download of CCDSharp on a Windows 10 machine.

Thanks,

[carastro]

Is there any chance of posting the downloads as Tiffs.  I can't use Fits files and I can't use XISF files.

I tried opening the Fits files in in both Astroart and Maxim and then resaving them as tiffs but the files are unworkable - i.e. will not stretch just a black image. 

Just installing Fits liberator, but disappointed I can't get the Tiff files directly after waiting all these months. 

Carole 

Edited August 21, 2020 by carastro

[carastro]

I have tried Fits liberator, and it has now opened it, but the image is overblown and clipped as soon as I open it.

Any-one any ideas?