NGC7000 - Yet again!

[Grant93]

Hello everyone!

I know I keep revisiting this target, but I feel its necessary since it helps see any progress whilst being new to the hobby. Although probably for the last time this year, since it won't be in a very good place in a month or so time.

By far the most time I've spent on a target, Last one was my heart and double cluster at 3 hours 30 minutes or so, this one being 6 hours. Difference is I stood out there manually dithering the image for 3 hours, but with this one no dithering has been done, and you can definitely tell - can't wait until I finally invest in a guiding set up and can auto dither. Theres a horrible halo around stars which for the life of me I can't figure out why. The stars were so bad I cropped out Xi Cygni, which made for a small picture. Was also heavily cropped due to my camera rotated slightly between the two nights of imaging.. which is also why I couldn't use my flats.

This is probably the first time I've been able to pull up fine detail on an image, for example around the Cygnus wall area, although not brilliant. I feel this would be made 10x better with dithering, as I assume I wouldn't have to bin as much, and wouldn't have to add as much noise reduction. This is also the first time I used my HEQ5, 2 hours were imaged on the SGP (Only because I hadn't recieved my HEQ5 by then), and the other 4 on a HEQ5.

Let me know what you think, and any advice is welcome as usual

6 hours @ 40 seconds each

ZS61

Modded 600D @ ISO 800

SGP + HEQ5

Processed in StarTools

Edited November 1, 2021 by Grant93

[PeterCPC]

Re halos - is your 600d fully modded? i.e. does it still have some UV filtering? Dithering will help with the noise as you rightly say.

[Grant93]

5 hours ago, PeterCPC said:

Re halos - is your 600d fully modded? i.e. does it still have some UV filtering? Dithering will help with the noise as you rightly say.

Just the IR filter has been removed

[alacant]

8 hours ago, Grant93 said:

why I couldn't use my flats.

Hi

You still can and should use flat frames. Just take a set for each night. Pre-process each session's light frames with their respective flats. Then register them. Stack as normal.

Stars: make sure the second AutoDev includes at least one saturated star, but don't forget to leave some room for the fainter stuff.

Nice image.

HTH

Edited November 1, 2021 by alacant

[Grant93]

5 hours ago, alacant said:

Hi

You still can and should use flat frames. Just take a set for each night. Pre-process each session's light frames with their respective flats. Then register them. Stack as normal.

Stars: make sure the second AutoDev includes at least one saturated star, but don't forget to leave some room for the fainter stuff.

Nice image.

HTH

Yeah thats the trouble, I had a set of flats for one night, without realising it I rotated my camera on the second night, and tried reusing flats - The first stack with the flats didnt go well, had a very bright corner 😪

I did have the Xi Cygni in my picture, I cropped it out at the end, why will this help with the halos?

Going to keep having a go anyway, will try stacking in Siril also, Forgot about that until this morning!

Thanks for the advice

Grant

 

[alacant]

14 minutes ago, Grant93 said:

did have the Xi Cygni in my picture, I cropped it out at the end, why will this help with the halos?

No idea. Why did you remove it?

What will help with the halos is careful choice of the second AutoDev ROI, including the selection I already indicated.

If that's not what you're after, you then have st's Deconvolution (use the manual non saturated star selection) and as a final line of defence, the Shrink module.

Post your data if you like.

Cheers

 

Edited November 1, 2021 by alacant

[Grant93]

20 minutes ago, alacant said:

No idea. Why did you remove it?

What will help with the halos is careful choice of the second AutoDev ROI, including the selection I already indicated.

If that's not what you're after, you then have st's Deconvolution (use the manual non saturated star selection) and as a final line of defence, the Shrink module.

Post your data if you like.

Cheers

 

I removed it because it looked horrible after processing.. an enhanced version of the rest.

Ah I see, I'll try that with the ROI next time! Thank you!

Heres the data here you will see the massive accidental rotation, dont laugh 😅

6 Hour NAN2.TIF

[Budgie1]

I know you're working with StarTools but I had some time to play so I had a go with your data in PixInsight, just as a comparison.

I used as much of the image as I could, even with the rotation, and came up with this:

[Grant93]

9 hours ago, Budgie1 said:

I know you're working with StarTools but I had some time to play so I had a go with your data in PixInsight, just as a comparison.

I used as much of the image as I could, even with the rotation, and came up with this:

 

You did a much better job of the stars than I did! Did you feel there was a lot of noise to deal with?

Going to get a mini PC within the next month for unguided dithering (I think this is possible?), then within the next few months I'll get a guiding set up to do guiding and guided dithering which should help me produce clearer sharper pictures I would imagine.

[alacant]

Nice data. There is some lovely detail emerging. StarTools v1.8.518

I think the noise is under control. All I did was set a 2px NR after tracking had been turned off. TBH, I don't think it needs any. 

Cheers

 

[Grant93]

1 hour ago, alacant said:

Nice data. There is some lovely detail emerging. StarTools v1.8.518

I think the noise is under control. All I did was set a 2px NR after tracking had been turned off. TBH, I don't think it needs any. 

Cheers

Always so impressed with what you can do in StarTools.. Everything is so much sharper than mine. I need more practice

Cheers

[alacant]

2 hours ago, Grant93 said:

Everything is so much sharper than mine. I need more practice

JTOL and I doubt it, but I wonder if this has anything to do with OS? We're on Kubuntu 20.04.3. I know there are a few other st users on the forum @almcl, @bottletopburly but I don't know which they use. I've no experience of st on mac or windows and only a few pokes around on android.

Anyway, there is a file produced in the startools folder -on Linux at least- called startools.log. It records the steps you took. Maybe post -a link to- the contents? Here's the first bit of mine to the second AutoDev:

Image size is 5202 x 3464
--- 
Type of Data: Linear and was Bayered, but not whitebalanced
--- Auto Develop
Parameter [Ignore Fine Detail <] set to [Off]
Parameter [Outside RoI Influence] set to [15 %]
Parameter [RoI X1] set to [190 pixels]
Parameter [RoI Y1] set to [477 pixels]
Parameter [RoI X2] set to [4251 pixels (-951)]
Parameter [RoI Y2] set to [2955 pixels (-509)]
Parameter [Detector Gamma] set to [1.00]
Parameter [Shadow Linearity] set to [50 %]
--- Bin
Parameter [Scale] set to [scale 35.38% / +3.00 bits / +1.83x SNR improvement]
Image size is 1840 x 1225
Undo
Image size is 5202 x 3464
--- Bin
Parameter [Scale] set to [scale 50.00% / +2.00 bits / +1.00x SNR improvement]
Image size is 2601 x 1732
--- Crop
Parameter [X1] set to [95 pixels]
Parameter [Y1] set to [269 pixels]
Parameter [X2] set to [2021 pixels (-580)]
Parameter [Y2] set to [1488 pixels (-244)]
Image size is 1926 x 1219
--- Wipe
Parameter [Synthetic Dark/Bias] set to [Off]
Parameter [Gradient Edge Behavior] set to [Absorb 50%]
Parameter [Synthetic Flats] set to [Off]
Parameter [Sampling Precision] set to [256 x 256 pixels]
Parameter [Dark Anomaly Filter] set to [1 pixels]
Parameter [Gradient Falloff] set to [0 %]
Parameter [Synth. Bias Edge Area] set to [100 %]
Parameter [Gradient Aggressiveness] set to [75 %]
Parameter [Correlation Filtering] set to [Off]
Redoing stretch of linear data
--- Auto Develop
Parameter [Ignore Fine Detail <] set to [Off]
Parameter [Outside RoI Influence] set to [15 %]
Parameter [RoI X1] set to [0 pixels]
Parameter [RoI Y1] set to [0 pixels]
Parameter [RoI X2] set to [1926 pixels (-0)]
Parameter [RoI Y2] set to [1219 pixels (-0)]
Parameter [Detector Gamma] set to [1.00]
Parameter [Shadow Linearity] set to [50 %]

Edited November 2, 2021 by alacant

[bottletopburly]

I use windows 10

[almcl]

Me too!  64 bit pro version.  Think all OS versions of ST use the same algorithms?  Happy to be corrected, if this is not so.

[Grant93]

17 hours ago, alacant said:

JTOL and I doubt it, but I wonder if this has anything to do with OS? We're on Kubuntu 20.04.3. I know there are a few other st users on the forum @almcl, @bottletopburly but I don't know which they use. I've no experience of st on mac or windows and only a few pokes around on android.

I'm on Windows 10. Looked into Siril this morning, will give it a go stacking there also, after I learn how to do it..

Found that startools log, in a notepad with about 10 miles worth of scrolling 😅

[alacant]

10 hours ago, almcl said:

Me too! 

Is that the windows or the linux version?

10 hours ago, almcl said:

Think all OS versions of ST use the same algorithms?

Yes, I believe so too. Just trying to ascertain why the OP gets different results.

Cheers and thanks for replying.

[Grant93]

This time I used that newer StarTools software, the bleeding edge version - v1.8.512 (I noticed you have .518, so havent updated it fully). And got a result much closer to what I am happy with and to what I wanted. Not so disappointed with the stars in this one, and much sharper I think even though I binned more. Forgot I had the bleeding edge version, definitely my go to version now. Let me know what you think .

[almcl]

5 hours ago, alacant said:

Is that the windows or the linux version?

Sorry for the ambiguity; it is Windows 10  pro.

[alacant]

4 hours ago, Grant93 said:

Let me know what you think

Yeah, that's much better. 

Did you try the SVDecon [1] this time? Try selecting non saturated stars against a dark-ish background. Ten or so from random but evenly spaced areas of the image is all you need. You could also try SuperStructure darken at about 30 or so %.

Cheers

[1] Not sure 512 has it. 518 though definitely does. 

 

[bottletopburly]

My effort using 1.8.519 ,win10

 

 

 

[Grant93]

15 hours ago, alacant said:

Yeah, that's much better. 

Did you try the SVDecon [1] this time? Try selecting non saturated stars against a dark-ish background. Ten or so from random but evenly spaced areas of the image is all you need. You could also try SuperStructure darken at about 30 or so %.

Cheers

[1] Not sure 512 has it. 518 though definitely does.

Yes I did use SVDecon. But admittedly just used the standard, didnt change anything, I'll have to try that next time. I did use SuperStructure, I don't think I darkened it, but I lowered 'strength' (I think?) to about 40%, as 100% just took away too much of the sharpness.

Now I just need to learn how to use that NBAccent module .

10 hours ago, bottletopburly said:

My effort using 1.8.519 ,win10

Nice effort, I like the color of the nebulosity in this!