Sharpstar 61 EDPH II first light

[OK Apricot]

I bought this lovely little scope from @Stu1smartcookie before christmas and this is the first real opportunity to image properly - I'd otherwise been out for a few tens of minutes since getting a filter drawer and 2" filters, testing for tilt, backspacing etc. All looks very well overall. I believe there is a degree of CA visible using IR cut, but I can take that. What a pukka little thing .

31x300s with darks, flats and dark flats. Tried to restrain myself during processing as I feel like I've recently been asking too much of the data that I gather. Sampling at 2.89"/pixel I could've probably drizzled this, no?

Thanks for looking!

[teoria_del_big_bang]

Very nice 🙂 

Steve

[Richard_]

What a gorgeous image! Lovely depth, detail and colour here.

The star shape looks fine to me. I wouldn't bother with drizzling unless your stars are looking more square in shape. Below is a gif from Jon Rista showing standard stacking versus drizzle stacking and is a good example of the block shaped stars I mentioned. 

Source: https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/547559-what-are-the-benefits-of-drizzling-a-little-visual-example/

 

Remember, drizzle stacking quadruples your resolution (ie doubles pixel count in x and y direction) which will have a knock on effect to processing time in your image editing software of choice. 

[OK Apricot]

Thank you! 

@Richard_ it doesn't take much zooming before you see the stars take on a more blocky form. It would indeed take my 9MP image and make it 36MP, probably too much for my current laptop to handle 😂. That said I should be getting a new more powerful one soon. 

[teoria_del_big_bang]

If you are one that likes to zoom in then yes drizzling would probably help the star shapes, however, looking at the whole image then I doubt you would actually see much improvement unless you intend to print it at a much larger scale.

How did you process this, if you have PI then that looks like an image that BlurXT (sorry I know this has been hyped to death the last few weeks) would add some further enhancement to.

Steve

Edited January 10, 2023 by teoria_del_big_bang

[Richard_]

32 minutes ago, OK Apricot said:

Thank you! 

@Richard_ it doesn't take much zooming before you see the stars take on a more blocky form. It would indeed take my 9MP image and make it 36MP, probably too much for my current laptop to handle 😂. That said I should be getting a new more powerful one soon. 

Yeah I know what you mean, it's all down to preference! Give it a go and see if you can see any improvement 🙂

[OK Apricot]

54 minutes ago, teoria_del_big_bang said:

How did you process this, if you have PI then that looks like an image that BlurXT (sorry I know this has been hyped to death the last few weeks) would add some further enhancement to.

Steve

I have neither the money nor the minerals to explore the idea of Pix yet 😅. I use DSS and Photoshop which I'm starting to get comfortable with, a consistent workflow and all that. It's on the cards for future though for an easier imitation hubble palette from OSC. 

[teoria_del_big_bang]

8 minutes ago, OK Apricot said:

I have neither the money nor the minerals to explore the idea of Pix yet 😅. I use DSS and Photoshop which I'm starting to get comfortable with, a consistent workflow and all that. It's on the cards for future though for an easier imitation hubble palette from OSC. 

Ha Ha, yes I know  what you mean, but I won;t go there, apart from some minor enhancements BXT may give you it looks like you are managing just fine with the processing anyway 🙂 

Steve

[geeklee]

14 hours ago, Richard_ said:

Remember, drizzle stacking quadruples your resolution (ie doubles pixel count in x and y direction) which will have a knock on effect to processing time in your image editing software of choice. 

I don't know if DSS has the option, but APP (AstroPixelProcessor) allows you to effectively Drizzle "x1".  I find a very slight bump in star sizes but a better shape (I occasionally use it) and still native resolution.

You can also just resample a drizzle x2 image back to native resolution before processing. 

Saying that, I can't remember the last time I saw a drizzled image (i.e. x2 x3 etc) that wasn't just a higher resolution blurrier version of the original, with no extra detail I couldn't already see before. 

Great start with the "new" scope @OK Apricot

[Magnum]

Sharpstar sent me replacement improved lens cell to fix the CA, since then they have sent out loads of replacements to people that can prove they have CA and request them. and since then Cuiv the lazy geek did a video on this subject though he didn't compare on the same target, so I made a more direct comparison blink video between my original and replacement lens where I hot swapped the objective while imaging m44.  https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/784573131 make sure you view full screen in highest resolution. As you can see the original had blue fringing on the stars and the replacement has none.

And all new ones sold in the last year should come with the improved lens. 

 

Lee

Edited January 14, 2023 by Magnum