IKO - M33 LRGBHa Data Release - March 2021

[Grant]

Our latest released of data from the Ikarus Observatory project 🙂

The small print:

• 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.. This image was processed in the Pixinsight Weighted Batch Pre-Processor and comprises:

• Luminance 360x 5 mins
• Red 120x 5 mins
• Green 120x 5 mins
• Blue 120x 5 mins
• Ha 120x 20 mins
• Bias 101x
• Flats 21x for each filter
• Darks 21x 20 mins & 21x 5 mins

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

Details of the processing competition are here.

This is our first LRGB release - any feedback or tweaks you think we need to make to processing etc.. please let me know.

[matt_baker]

Just wondering if anyone else is getting issues with a radial Ha gradient? I can't seem to get rid of it in DBE at all

[Grant]

The Ha is a bit wonky - I've redone it by itself and been more aggressive with ditching some frames - I've uploaded it to http://ikiobservatory.com/data/M33_2020-03-05/ as the 'v2' ha files.

Hope that works better - sorry about that!

[matt_baker]

Cheers, Grant. Seems much better now, no need to apologise

Matt

[jager945]

This is fantastic data as always, Grant! The growing body of IKO datasets are part of my favourite testing datasets, as they are good and clean, but still have tiny flaws that come with the "mere mortal" nature of the equipment and terrestrial location.

This one in particular, is a great dataset to learn a rather specific compositing situation with; adding Ha detail to an object that mostly emits in other wavelengths.

I made a post on the ST forums on combining the Ha and visual spectrum data for this specific case. I hope OP and the mods are OK with linking to it here (given I'm a vendor etc.). If not, happy to post it elsewhere.

Thanks again & wishing you clear skies!

 

[Grant]

8 hours ago, jager945 said:

This is fantastic data as always, Grant! The growing body of IKO datasets are part of my favourite testing datasets, as they are good and clean, but still have tiny flaws that come with the "mere mortal" nature of the equipment and terrestrial location.

This one in particular, is a great dataset to learn a rather specific compositing situation with; adding Ha detail to an object that mostly emits in other wavelengths.

I made a post on the ST forums on combining the Ha and visual spectrum data for this specific case. I hope OP and the mods are OK with linking to it here (given I'm a vendor etc.). If not, happy to post it elsewhere.

Thanks again & wishing you clear skies!

 

No problem with the link - coincidentally, I was having a play with the demo of StarTools last night - would you be up for giving us a talk / presentation on it at one of our weekly StarGaZine talks? We've had demos of other software like APP, NINA, Pixinsight which has worked really well so I think StarTools would be good to get a demo of as well.

[jager945]

2 hours ago, Grant said:

No problem with the link - coincidentally, I was having a play with the demo of StarTools last night - would you be up for giving us a talk / presentation on it at one of our weekly StarGaZine talks? We've had demos of other software like APP, NINA, Pixinsight which has worked really well so I think StarTools would be good to get a demo of as well.

Absolutely! Sounds like fun. Do let me know what the procedure, preferred format and times, etc. are.

[The Admiral]

I'm just practicing with this data, but I must be doing something wrong! Which wouldn't be surprising since I've not worked on RGB images before and I'm trying to get to grips with Affinity Photo, which I'm pretty unfamiliar with. But, I seem to have a radial red gradient which I can't seem to deal with, and I haven't even used an Ha layer yet! So I really want confirmation that others have found the same, or perhaps some clues as to why I'm getting it.

Ian

[carastro]

I don't recall a radial red gradient.  I got the Ha gradient same as Olly.

Carole

[The Admiral]

14 minutes ago, carastro said:

I don't recall a radial red gradient.  I got the Ha gradient same as Olly.

Carole

Hmm . Thanks Carole.

Ian

Edited March 10, 2021 by The Admiral

[Skipper Billy]

Posted in wrong thread sorry - please delete this message.

 

Edited March 10, 2021 by Skipper Billy
Posted in worng thread - sorry - please delete message.

[matt_baker]

I think a great idea for those who want to use MureDenoise in PixInsight for linear noise reduction would be to provide the stats by taking a flat and a dark for each filter then using MureDenoiseDetectorSettings script

[JemC]

☹️  Well I've had a look at this but i'm afraid all it's told me is I am not ready for a mono camera just yet 😀 

[ollypenrice]

3 hours ago, The Admiral said:

I'm just practicing with this data, but I must be doing something wrong! Which wouldn't be surprising since I've not worked on RGB images before and I'm trying to get to grips with Affinity Photo, which I'm pretty unfamiliar with. But, I seem to have a radial red gradient which I can't seem to deal with, and I haven't even used an Ha layer yet! So I really want confirmation that others have found the same, or perhaps some clues as to why I'm getting it.

Ian

The red channel was, I think, stronger than the green and blue but, like Carole, I didn't find a gradient.

Olly

[ollypenrice]

Where is this noise people are discussing?

Olly

[matt_baker]

2 minutes ago, ollypenrice said:

Where is this noise people are discussing?

Olly

There's not much noise at all but mure denoise works with the sensor's characteristics to perform noise reduction using sample flats and dark frames. It can often give nice results if used correctly.

[The Admiral]

11 hours ago, ollypenrice said:

The red channel was, I think, stronger than the green and blue but, like Carole, I didn't find a gradient.

Olly

Thanks Olly. Well I suppose that could explain it, not so much a gradient then but an excess of red in some of the fainter parts not being balanced by the green and blue? I clearly need to delve deeper into the art of RGB(Ha) processing . Still, got to start somewhere and the IKI data is as good a place as any.

Ian

[ollypenrice]

1 hour ago, The Admiral said:

 Still, got to start somewhere and the IKI data is as good a place as any.

Ian

Indeed it is. If you use Pixinsight just run the RGB through Dynamic Background Extraction to balance it. In Ps or similar, you can use the black point in Levels to get the top left of the histogram peak in each channel aligned to the same position. That should get you pretty close.

Olly

[The Admiral]

1 hour ago, ollypenrice said:

Indeed it is. If you use Pixinsight just run the RGB through Dynamic Background Extraction to balance it. In Ps or similar, you can use the black point in Levels to get the top left of the histogram peak in each channel aligned to the same position. That should get you pretty close.

Olly

Thanks Olly. I don't use Pixinsight or PS, but I'm just out of the trial period for APP and am just checking out the features in Affinity Photo v1.9. My only experience is with OSC, so with RGBLHa I'm rather stumbling in the dark . But then that's what learning is all about!

Ian

[dannybgoode]

1 hour ago, The Admiral said:

Thanks Olly. I don't use Pixinsight or PS, but I'm just out of the trial period for APP and am just checking out the features in Affinity Photo v1.9. My only experience is with OSC, so with RGBLHa I'm rather stumbling in the dark . But then that's what learning is all about!

Ian

*Puts on sinister but inviting voice and whispers* Try PixInsight.  Go one - you know you want to *end voice effects*.

Genuinely though, makes processing LRGB images at least very straightforward.  Particularly in situations like this where you have the subs all pre-processed and stacked etc.

[The Admiral]

34 minutes ago, dannybgoode said:

*Puts on sinister but inviting voice and whispers* Try PixInsight.  Go one - you know you want to *end voice effects*.

Hmm, no thanks. Been there, done that .

To be honest, I don't do enough of it to make it worthwhile, and at the moment I don't foresee moving away from OSC.

Ian

[happy-kat]

I'll be having a go using startools to do rgb+ha, be interesting to see how goes.

[The Admiral]

4 hours ago, happy-kat said:

I'll be having a go using startools to do rgb+ha, be interesting to see how goes.

Yes, I noticed Ivo had posted above saying that he had written on how to combine the data on the ST forum.

Ian