Sh2-171 The Teddy Bear Nebula

[Mal22]

First DSO attempt - Sh2-171 The Teddy Bear Nebula

Advice very welcome! I didn’t have a field flattener when I captured the data last month so stars stretch toward the edges. I’ve cropped it, and I have a flattener now for future data. 

Processed in Pix Insight. First time using it but followed a tutorial on YouTube. Mostly went fine but couldn’t get Photometric Colour Calibration to work - tried loads of tweaks but wouldn’t plate solve! 

Zenithstar 73 scope 
EQ5 mount 
ASI294MC Pro 
L-Extreme filter 
ASIAir
51 x 300 secs Lights 
25 x darks 
25 x flats
50 x bias

[ONIKKINEN]

For a first go this one is excellent, well done!

I actually took a very similar looking image a while ago with a scope 3 times the aperture as yours, so you have managed to capture a lot of good nebulosity here.

For processing, it seems like you're on the right track here and i cant spot any obvious issues. Maybe there is a little bit of greenish hue mixed with the nebulosity, which you may or may not want to get rid of and could remove itself had you been able to do the photometric calibration (often doesnt, in that case -> SCNR green, try to not use it at the full 1.0 scale and give lower values a try first). By the way the new way to do a photometric colour calibration in PixInsight has been made more difficult to do because the user interface development team of PI want to make everyone suffer and now you have to solve the image before you can use the tool. The tool will always just throw an error of "no platesolve available" or something if you dont do it before hand. Go to script-> image analysis -> image solver and run that tool. Then the SpectroPhotometricColourCalibration tool should work.

[Mal22]

@ONIKKINEN Thanks for the feedback! I’ll give SCNR green a go and see how it changes. 

I had tried Image Solver to fix the problem and while it ran the script fine and solved the image, PCC still wouldn’t plate solve even when it was using the data from Image Solver 🤷‍♂️ 

I did drizzle the image x2 when I stacked it so I halved the pixel size when inputting the details, which I think is the correct process. I’ve lowered the star magnitude, forced plate solving, still doesn’t work. 

I’m also processing some Markarians Chain data and PCC also won’t plate solve that… I’m thinking it might not be connecting to a database, or perhaps I need to download one and sync it somehow. 

[tomato]

As I understand it, if image solver successfully platesolved the image, then SPCC uses these co-ordinates to find the required stars from the installed database to do the calibration, so SPCC is not performing a plate solve.

What error is SPCC displaying in the process console?

[Budgie1]

On 23/04/2023 at 14:43, Mal22 said:

ASI294MC Pro 

L-Extreme filter 
ASIAir
51 x 300 secs Lights 
25 x darks 
25 x flats
50 x bias

With the ASI294MC Pro, you're better off not using Bias calibration frames. They are reproducing what the Darks are doing and I found with my ASI294MC Pro they actually caused remnants of the amp glow to be left behind.

Just use Darks, Flats & Flat-Darks.

[Mal22]

On 24/04/2023 at 21:53, tomato said:

As I understand it, if image solver successfully platesolved the image, then SPCC uses these co-ordinates to find the required stars from the installed database to do the calibration, so SPCC is not performing a plate solve.

What error is SPCC displaying in the process console?

Hi @tomato I’m away with work for a couple of days but when I’m back I’ll run it again and take a screenshot. The error message is definitely along the lines of failure to plate solve, even when using the data from Image Solver

[Mal22]

7 hours ago, Budgie1 said:

With the ASI294MC Pro, you're better off not using Bias calibration frames. They are reproducing what the Darks are doing and I found with my ASI294MC Pro they actually caused remnants of the amp glow to be left behind.

Just use Darks, Flats & Flat-Darks.

Thanks for the tip! I’ll run a stack without the bias frames and see how it looks