New processing of Andromeda, now with Siril.

[Felias]

Not being very happy with the curves in PS and the colours in my previous processing of Andromeda (https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/382537-two-versions-of-andromeda-any-advice/), I decided to try SiriL. I did the stacking (took a whole night, how can it be so slow when DSS takes 20 minutes?) and the post-processing in Siril, then cosmetic retouches and denoising in PS. I have tried to keep more natural colours, less saturated, trusting the photometric calibration in Siril.

I think it looks better than my previous attempts, any advice?

340 x 30s shots, plus darks, flats and bias. WO Z61 on a star adventurer, no guiding. Canon 77D.

And a version with a bit of star reduction, I'm not sure if it's an improvement:

Edited September 15, 2021 by Felias

[Jerry Barnes]

Good, I'd be very happy with that.

[frankvstar1]

  I am using an Evostar 72 and I tried  Sequator to get my stacked image. It was the first time I could clearly see the spiral bands and I was thrilled even though it no wheres as nice as your photo/ but it keeps me interested. BY the way your final image looks great to me, I would be happy beyond belief !!!!!!!!!!!

[Dazzyt66]

I use Siril all the time and have done 600+ 30s subs in around an hour start to finish including all the conversions using an 8gb i5 laptop and a MacBook Pro. Not sure why it would take that long, I guess it all comes down to how you preprocess and stack everything. Great images btw I’d be more than happy with those.

There’s a fantastic tutorial on using Siril here - I follow these steps and get the best images I’ve  ever done (although that ain’t many 😂)!

Daz

Edited September 16, 2021 by Dazzyt66

[AstroNebulee]

It looks brilliant, well done. I didn't see the previous version, this is amazing though, you can't beat the star reduction, it shows so much more of the galaxy in its own right, top work 

[Stuf1978]

Looks great. I echo what Daz said though, I sometimes use Siril for stacking and it's no slower than DSS.

[teoria_del_big_bang]

All versions I have seen look fantastic, and I think a lot is down to personal taste.

My preference actually is the very first version, but like I say that's just me. I really like this version because the core is not over bright yet you still have all the outer detail showing.
Arguably, maybe the stars look better on the last version, but honestly I would be happy with any of them 🙂 

Steve

[Felias]

Thank you all for your encouraging comments! ☺️

12 hours ago, Dazzyt66 said:

I use Siril all the time and have done 600+ 30s subs in around an hour start to finish including all the conversions using an 8gb i5 laptop and a MacBook Pro. Not sure why it would take that long, I guess it all comes down to how you preprocess and stack everything. Great images btw I’d be more than happy with those.

There’s a fantastic tutorial on using Siril here - I follow these steps and get the best images I’ve  ever done (although that ain’t many 😂)!

Daz

 

11 hours ago, Stuf1978 said:

Looks great. I echo what Daz said though, I sometimes use Siril for stacking and it's no slower than DSS.

As for Siril, thanks for the input. I don't know the reason, I'm using a laptop, but it's pretty decent (i7, 32 GB of RAM), so it's puzzling. Both DSS and Sequator are fast, but Siril has taken almost a day to process what the others can do in half an hour. I followed the instructions in the webpage, which are quite straightforward, so I don't know. I'll watch the video and see if I can find a solution, thank you! 👍

[LuckieEddie]

The time taken in Siril could be down to storage I/O throughput. I've got an old 2008 MacBook running Linux but with its SSD a typical stacking time is 10-20 minutes. The same stack, same Siril version, same OS on my work laptop (2019 i7 16GB) is 10 hours+ if the images are stored on it's HDD, and about the same time (10-20 minutes) if they are on it's SSD.

[Felias]

4 minutes ago, LuckieEddie said:

The time taken in Siril could be down to storage I/O throughput. I've got an old 2008 MacBook running Linux but with its SSD a typical stacking time is 10-20 minutes. The same stack, same Siril version, same OS on my work laptop (2019 i7 16GB) is 10 hours+ if the images are stored on it's HDD, and about the same time (10-20 minutes) if they are on it's SSD.

I see. If that's the case, there's not much I can do, there's never enough space in my SSD. I'll keep exploring options... Thank you!

[alacant]

On 15/09/2021 at 01:58, Felias said:

SiriL. I did the stacking (took a whole night, how can it be so slow

Hi

I'm sure the developers would be interested to know.

Even on a modest i3, there is good throughput. Ubuntu though;)

Cheers

[Felias]

17 minutes ago, alacant said:

Hi

I'm sure the developers would be interested to know.

Even on a modest i3, there is good throughput. Ubuntu though;)

Cheers

Good point, thanks. Mmm, I haven't used Linux in a decade at least, maybe I should go back...