LRGB data M31

[ollypenrice]

2 hours ago, wimvb said:

Not if you're from down under. 😉 Personally, I don't care too much about image orientation in astro images, unless there is a definite asymmetry. The horse head nebula should never be mirrored, for example.

 

Don't tell me you've never been round the back to shoot it from a different angle?

Olly

[ollypenrice]

6 hours ago, wimvb said:

Quelle horreur 

This actually took 84 seconds in Photoshop, just using a screen grab. (Yes, I timed it honestly!) 🤣

Give me the full two minutes and I could do it properly.

Olly

 

 

Edited September 13, 2020 by ollypenrice

[wimvb]

"You're da man", Olly.

[tooth_dr]

11 minutes ago, ollypenrice said:

This actually took 84 seconds in Photoshop, just using a screen grab. (Yes, I timed it honestly!) 🤣

Give me the full two minutes and I could do it properly.

Olly

 

 

What you can do in 84s, I couldn’t do in a life time 😂

[ollypenrice]

 

Sorry, please delete.
 

 

Edited September 13, 2020 by ollypenrice

[ollypenrice]

34 minutes ago, tooth_dr said:

What you can do in 84s, I couldn’t do in a life time 😂

It would take me 84 seconds to show you and the arduous four clicks involved might not be beyond you!

😁lly

Edited September 13, 2020 by ollypenrice

[Xiga]

On 21/08/2020 at 17:23, tooth_dr said:

I've attached my M31 data to see if anyone wants a go at it.  This would be of great interest to me to see how my processing can develop, especially around star management on the luminance channel.  I've attached the RGB data, focusing issues, so currently deciding on where to go in terms of focusers.

 

M31-tak-Lum-20s.fits 62.5 MB · 24 downloads M31-tak-Lum-120s.fits 62.5 MB · 25 downloads M31-ED80-Red.fits 67.6 MB · 28 downloads M31-ED80-Green.fits 67.6 MB · 29 downloads M31-ED80-Blue.fits 67.6 MB · 22 downloads

I decided to have a go at your data as well Adam (the weather's been crap, so it was nice to spend a bit of time on it). 

It was pretty tough to process, due to the varying gradient in the 2 panels, as well as the Green and Blue data being out of focus. I did it in bits and pieces over a few nights, so i'll do my best to recall as much as i can. 

APP used to remove gradients and do star colour calibration.

Then worked on a stars image, by manually stretching the Lum and RGB images (arcsinh stretching used for the RGB) and then combining them in PS. Because the Green and Blue channels were out of focus, i ditched the Green and Synthesized it using one of Carboni's actions in PS. I then reduced the star sizes in just the Blue channel. This yielded much more useable colours, which were used for the stars only. 

Then worked on a Galaxy image in PS by combining a bigger-stretched Lum with a more arcsinh-stretched RGB. Some colour adjustments in LAB mode. Once i was happy with the look of the galaxy, i  ran starnet on it and cleaned up the biggest artefacts using the Spot Healing Brush in PS. There were also some remaining satellite trails in the Blue and Green images, so i removed them using Carboni's Horizontal Line Reduction actions. 

I then layered on the Starless image (Screen blend mode) over the Stars image. Downward curve added to the starless image, adjusted to minimise any halos around stars. Contrast added to the starless image to bring out the dust lanes, and NR added to the starless image's sky background. Finally, i just did a Stamp Visible (to lock in the stars and starless layers) and then did some final tweaks using Colour NR, HLVG and Levels. 

ps - I noticed the Lum stack has stacking artefacts running throughout. You need to really zoom in to see them, but once you do notice them you can see that there are actually a lot of them. You might want to play around with your settings in APP to fix that.

Thanks for sharing the data! 👍

Edited September 16, 2020 by Xiga

[wimvb]

3 hours ago, Xiga said:

 

Excellent image, Ciarán. Leaps and bounds ahead of what I produced.

[tooth_dr]

4 hours ago, Xiga said:

I decided to have a go at your data as well Adam (the weather's been crap, so it was nice to spend a bit of time on it). 

It was pretty tough to process, due to the varying gradient in the 2 panels, as well as the Green and Blue data being out of focus. I did it in bits and pieces over a few nights, so i'll do my best to recall as much as i can. 

APP used to remove gradients and do star colour calibration.

Then worked on a stars image, by manually stretching the Lum and RGB images (arcsinh stretching used for the RGB) and then combining them in PS. Because the Green and Blue channels were out of focus, i ditched the Green and Synthesized it using one of Carboni's actions in PS. I then reduced the star sizes in just the Blue channel. This yielded much more useable colours, which were used for the stars only. 

Then worked on a Galaxy image in PS by combining a bigger-stretched Lum with a more arcsinh-stretched RGB. Some colour adjustments in LAB mode. Once i was happy with the look of the galaxy, i  ran starnet on it and cleaned up the biggest artefacts using the Spot Healing Brush in PS. There were also some remaining satellite trails in the Blue and Green images, so i removed them using Carboni's Horizontal Line Reduction actions. 

I then layered on the Starless image (Screen blend mode) over the Stars image. Downward curve added to the starless image, adjusted to minimise any halos around stars. Contrast added to the starless image to bring out the dust lanes, and NR added to the starless image's sky background. Finally, i just did a Stamp Visible (to lock in the stars and starless layers) and then did some final tweaks using Colour NR, HLVG and Levels. 

ps - I noticed the Lum stack has stacking artefacts running throughout. You need to really zoom in to see them, but once you do notice them you can see that there are actually a lot of them. You might want to play around with your settings in APP to fix that.

Thanks for sharing the data! 👍

Nice one Ciarán!  What a fantastic write up too.  I have stopped dithering due to losing too many RGB subs on the second scope. I think I might need to start dithering again. 

[Xiga]

3 hours ago, wimvb said:

Excellent image, Ciarán. Leaps and bounds ahead of what I produced.

Thanks Wim. More than likely just a reflection of the extra time I took with mine

2 hours ago, tooth_dr said:

Nice one Ciarán!  What a fantastic write up too.  I have stopped dithering due to losing too many RGB subs on the second scope. I think I might need to start dithering again. 

Have you thought about using the Nikon for colour Adam? Until you get auto-focusing up and running on the 80ED, it would eliminate any possibility of ending up with some colour channels being out of focus.

If you can find a way to get Dithering working on a 2 camera setup it would definitely be a big help (although I can imagine it's not an easy task to get working). I think you said that APT can do this, is that right? Perhaps one option would be to use SGP to get everything framed and focused, then just when you're ready to start capturing, switch over to APT to let it capture and dither? Not sure if that would work or not.  I wonder what other multi-rig users do for this? I know @tomato has a triple rig, maybe he has a better working solution?

Edited September 16, 2020 by Xiga

[tooth_dr]

12 minutes ago, Xiga said:

Thanks Wim. More than likely just a reflection of the extra time I took with mine

Have you thought about using the Nikon for colour Adam? Until you get auto-focusing up and running on the 80ED, it would eliminate any possibility of ending up with some colour channels being out of focus.

If you can find a way to get Dithering working on a 2 camera setup it would definitely be a big help (although I can imagine it's not an easy task to get working). I think you said that APT can do this, is that right? Perhaps one option would be to use SGP to get everything framed and focused, then just when you're ready to start capturing, switch over to APT to let it capture and dither? Not sure if that would work or not.  I wonder what other multi-rig users do for this? I know @tomato has a triple rig, maybe he has a better working solution?

I have used APT for multi camera dithering.  It might be a bit of a faff with the coolers, as they will go off when SGPro is turned off and need to be restarted in APT and I’m not sure they like that. APT does better framing now so I might try it. 

[tomato]

I’m afraid my triple rig is in name only, the RASA is very close to hitting the instrumentation mounted inside the dome at the top, so I cannot risk imaging automatically with the refractors, so the RASA comes off when I’m using the dual rig. 
 

I think you would be quite brave to set everything up in SGP then switch over to APT, one integrated imaging software package, let alone two, throws enough curved balls in a single session to keep me busy.