Blotches on startools processed image

[AstroNebulee]

Hi

I am struggling to get rid of the blotches in the background in my images. I use startools 1.8 to process them but cannot get past the blotches. I realise may data isn't the best anyway and there are so many stars in the image too which doesn't help. I have tried everything startools has to offer, I know I'm doing it all wrong and very new at processing. If i could afford gradient xterminator I would. I do have topaz denoise but leaves the image looking to crunchy and I have an old version on photoshop cs4. Any pointers in my images would be gratefully received and I'm embarrased by them.  This is just over 2 hours 21 mins on IC 405 which I realise isn't enough data. I use a sw 72ed az gti in eq mode, with a asiair pro and zwo 294 mc pro, 180 sec subs and dithered. I've probably just stretched the bejeesus out of it!

Edit- stacked in DSS calibrated with flats, darks and flat darks, 30 of each.

Cheers

 

Lee

 

 

Ic405 Combined1.tiff Ic405 Combined.fit

Edited April 5, 2022 by AstroNebulee

[happy-kat]

what did you use to stack?

[AstroNebulee]

Ooops sorry I used DSS with the suggested settings in the star tools manual. 

[happy-kat]

I use selected stars to sample in decon though you have to look around to find green stars to use. I set to 0 airy disk radius and did an isolate pass then a dim small pass later.

Edited April 5, 2022 by happy-kat

[AstroNebulee]

5 minutes ago, happy-kat said:

I use selected stars to sample in decon though you have to look around to find green stars to use. I set to 0 air disk radius and did an isolate pass then a dim small pass later.

Thank you.  Yep when I'm in sv decon I use a few selected green stars too. After doing the SV decon and colour module where does the 0air disc radius, isolate pass and dim small pass come in? Sorry for sounding thick

[happy-kat]

both are In the super structure module

[AstroNebulee]

5 minutes ago, happy-kat said:

both are In the super structure module

Thank you again, I shall give this a go. Its such an amazingly star encrusted target this one. 

[happy-kat]

A first pass process and just fringe killer on the halos, careful use of a mask would have kept more of the nebulosity but I didn't use one

Edited April 5, 2022 by happy-kat

[AstroNebulee]

I think its because its such a starry target making it more challenging to process, well that's my excuse haha.  What bin value do you use, i generally use 50%.  I found that the correlation filter if i upped it in Wipe helps a bit with noise.

 

Edited April 5, 2022 by AstroNebulee

[happy-kat]

50% bin, Wipe took some tweaking as it was too easy to wipe the colour out

[AstroNebulee]

This is what i was left with after processing with star tools, just not happy with it, be it the data or my bafoonary.  Time to walk away from it for a bit i think get some air haha

[AstroNebulee]

Then this is what im left with after after a play in photoshop, still not happy, so away i walk for a bit been seeing this all day haha.

 

[scitmon]

You might want to consider using a star removal tool such as Star Tools to stretch your stars and your nebulosity serperatly.  Makes life much easier and you can control the background noise stretching easier too.  Here is my very quick go with Pixinisight, didn't do any noise reduction or deconvoluting etc.

 

Edited April 5, 2022 by scitmon

[AstroNebulee]

1 hour ago, scitmon said:

You might want to consider using a star removal tool such as Star Tools to stretch your stars and your nebulosity serperatly.  Makes life much easier and you can control the background noise stretching easier too.  Here is my very quick go with Pixinisight, didn't do any noise reduction or deconvoluting etc.

 

Thank you, that's a great image, I've got a lot to learn on processing, I did have a quick go at processing in siril and then photoshop and was looking much better for the back ground looking much more solid (similar to your process) but more practice needed in pulling more nebulosity out but with that comes the noise in the background. I'm going to preserve with the siril ps route. I expect I could do a stretch with film dev in Startools but it doesn't quite pull out the nebulousity enough, I feel its all about getting the balance with the data I've got. 

Edited April 5, 2022 by AstroNebulee

[AstroNebulee]

I think my whole issue with the blotches is I'm overcooking it in Startools. I've had a go with my usual stacker DSS then had a try with Siril and then photoshop, the background is much better now, even though the 'tail' of the nebulousity not showing as much but that would be solved with more integration time so I'm happy with this for now. 

I may try to use gimp as an experiment to my older copy of photoshop. 

Also go back into star tools and process it again with less of the auto dev. Anyway here it is. 

Cheers 

Lee 

Edited April 8, 2022 by AstroNebulee

[bottletopburly]

my effort in Startools 

Edited April 9, 2022 by bottletopburly

[AstroNebulee]

22 minutes ago, bottletopburly said:

my effort in Startools 

Thank you, looks great, you certainly got more Hydrogen alpha out of the tail. I shall give it a go again in Star tools, and not push it as much in the auto dev and not do to much fiddling in the modules, cheers 👍

[AstroNebulee]

Just a refresh on my processing of IC405.

Autostretch, bin 50%,crop, in Wipe I set the correlation filter to 1 pixel and vignetting, film dev (edit the second autodev yeilded to much stretching and horrible results) contrast, HD, sharp, sv decon just selected 1 star, colour using stars as samples, shrink in tighten mode with halo extend to 7 pixels, in super structure increased saturation to 170%,small noise reduction.

I'm gimp I did a star reduction, then photoshop for a high pass, then astroflat pro, small noise reduction with astro tools.

A lot of bits of software and I know I'm goofing about but happy with the process I'm getting.

Just need to colour calibrate my laptop as I didn't look like this on there. 

Cheers

Lee

Edited April 15, 2022 by AstroNebulee

[The Lazy Astronomer]

55 minutes ago, AstroNebulee said:

Just a refresh on my processing of IC405.

Autostretch, bin 50%,crop, in Wipe I set the correlation filter to 1 pixel and vignetting, not selected a roi and increased ignore fine detail in second autostretch, contrast, HD, sharp, sv decon just selected 1 star, colour using stars as samples, shrink in tighten mode with halo extend to 7 pixels, in super structure increased saturation to 170%,small noise reduction.

I'm gimp I did a star reduction, then photoshop for a high pass, then astroflat pro, small noise reduction with astro tools.

A lot of bits of software and I know I'm goofing about but happy with the process I'm getting.

Just need to colour calibrate my laptop as I didn't look like this on there. 

Cheers

Lee

That's looking pretty nice on my phone - this region seems a bit underwhelming in broadband tbh; it really shines in Ha, but this is better than what I managed, so good work 👍

[AstroNebulee]

38 minutes ago, The Lazy Astronomer said:

That's looking pretty nice on my phone - this region seems a bit underwhelming in broadband tbh; it really shines in Ha, but this is better than what I managed, so good work 👍

Thank you. Yep I agree it's a bit underwhelming, I've seen others in narrowband imaging, so I thought I'd give it a go in broadband just to see what is possible. Its a very dense star studded area too. 

[bottletopburly]

14 hours ago, AstroNebulee said:

Just a refresh on my processing of IC405.

Autostretch, bin 50%,crop, in Wipe I set the correlation filter to 1 pixel and vignetting, not selected a roi and increased ignore fine detail in second autostretch, contrast, HD, sharp, sv decon just selected 1 star, colour using stars as samples, shrink in tighten mode with halo extend to 7 pixels, in super structure increased saturation to 170%,small noise reduction.

I'm gimp I did a star reduction, then photoshop for a high pass, then astroflat pro, small noise reduction with astro tools.

A lot of bits of software and I know I'm goofing about but happy with the process I'm getting.

Just need to colour calibrate my laptop as I didn't look like this on there. 

Cheers

Lee

That’s better looking good 👍 

[AstroNebulee]

15 minutes ago, bottletopburly said:

That’s better looking good 👍 

Thank you, I have to edit this I didn't do a second autodev as I said, it was a film dev as trying again this morning yeilded a horrible result using second autodev. So edited the previous post. 

[bottletopburly]

6 minutes ago, AstroNebulee said:

Thank you, I have to edit this I didn't do a second autodev as I said, it was a film dev as trying again this morning yeilded a horrible result using second autodev. So edited the previous post. 

Any problems email ivo Jäger @jager945 direct super helpful guy 👍

[ollypenrice]

I downloaded the files at the top of the thread but surely they are not the unprocessed linear stacks? My honest impression was that they'd been given an inappropriate stretch and some brutally invasive noise reduction. I think you need to take the data back a few steps because what you posted for download is already very badly damaged.

Olly

[vlaiv]

14 minutes ago, ollypenrice said:

I downloaded the files at the top of the thread but surely they are not the unprocessed linear stacks? My honest impression was that they'd been given an inappropriate stretch and some brutally invasive noise reduction. I think you need to take the data back a few steps because what you posted for download is already very badly damaged.

Olly

Try fits (right one out of the two posted) - it seems linear.

Here is quick process in Gimp after background removal in ImageJ:

I did nothing to the data except for bin x3 and background removal - just levels / curves in Gimp. Interestingly star field looks far richer than in any other processing above.