M33 - Short Sub Experiment

[mightymonoped]

 

I actually had the opportunity to capture more against this target last night, so I thought I would have a little experiment and use an exposure of 60s (given the light pollution from the fullish moon), but captured around 160x60s. 
 

I then processed this RGB capture together with the hour and a half of RGB from the other night. 
 

I wasn’t quite convinced by the colour calibration on any version that I produced (via APP and then via SPCC in PI ), so in the spirit of ‘artistic interpretation’ I registered both versions against each other and merged 50/50 in Photoshop. 
 

Here’s the resultant image (all broadband), around 1.5hrs in 120s combined with 160 x 60s subs. 

Skywatcher 80ED (gold)

ASI294mc pro

Optolong l-Pro

 

 

Tony

[peter shah]

Nicely done....I think the shorter sub lengths definitely  favour the CMOS

[tomato]

Great detail right into the core. For my taste I would boost the saturation a bit, to get more distinction on the blue star fields and red Ha regions.

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Very nice indeed. Given the low read noise of CMOS chips, little if anything is lost in shorter exposures. Stacking does take longer, of course.

[simmo39]

Yep V nice. Just shows what short subs can do. 

[MartinB]

You can go ridiculously short with most CMOS cameras, just a few seconds sometimes.  The issue really is managing the vast amount of data.  Whatever you did, it worked!

[mightymonoped]

19 hours ago, MartinB said:

You can go ridiculously short with most CMOS cameras, just a few seconds sometimes.  The issue really is managing the vast amount of data.  Whatever you did, it worked!

Thanks! Having a good processor and integration option helps too, I think. The combination of Apple M1 processor and Astro Pixel Processor does a good job on the initial stacking and integration. The combination of APP, PI and PS CC is s pretty formidable toolset. 

[Ouroboros]

I prefer what to my eye looks the more natural colour in your image, @mightymonoped.  It inspires me to have another go at the Triangulum this Autumn.

I daren’t reduce my sub durations given I use a 9/10 year old MacBook. It can take over night now to run a full calibration and stacking in PI for 2 minute subs.  Rather reluctantly I’m thinking of an upgrade to a new MacBook with M2 processor. 

[mightymonoped]

1 hour ago, Ouroboros said:

I prefer what to my eye looks the more natural colour in your image, @mightymonoped.  It inspires me to have another go at the Triangulum this Autumn.

I daren’t reduce my sub durations given I use a 9/10 year old MacBook. It can take over night now to run a full calibration and stacking in PI for 2 minute subs.  Rather reluctantly I’m thinking of an upgrade to a new MacBook with M2 processor. 

The Mac Mini I use made a huge difference to integration time (and that’s an older M1), so it may be a very worthwhile move. Can’r really speak to  integration within PI though as, although I have tried it, I am familiar and very happy with APP for the pre-processing side of things. 
 

Tony