M33

[gonzostar]

Hi 

This is my  attempt with  the ZWO 385MC camera with a ir/uv cut  of M33 in  bottle 5 skies.  

Telescope used was the ES102mm APO AT f7 on a AVX mount

Settings used in sharpcap. 

Gain 135 

Integration time around  18 hours using 120s subs. Could it do with more subs? 

Darks and flats used, Finished in PS.

Of course pointers for improvement welcome

 

Cheers

Dean 

[paul mc c]

MiYou should keep your gain to 100 or 101, you should have a lot more detail with the time spent on this object.  This was under 7 hours using same equipment 

[gonzostar]

Thanks Paul Will try lower gain next time, What exposure did you use for your subs?

I did a redo Hope this looks better?

 

Edited November 19, 2023 by gonzostar

[gonzostar]

If anyone wants ago please. 

18hrs.tif

[paul mc c]

16 minutes ago, gonzostar said:

Thanks Paul Will try lower gain next time, What exposure did you use for your subs?

I did a redo Hope this looks better?

 

That's much better...I used 180 sec subs from bortel 8.

[gonzostar]

Thanks Paul I used 120s from a bortle 4/5 site. Do you reckon still 135gain is to high?

[paul mc c]

1 hour ago, gonzostar said:

Thanks Paul I used 120s from a bortle 4/5 site. Do you reckon still 135gain is to high?

Sorry mate,just re read your post..for some reason only known to my brain...I thought you used a 533 mc...🥴,still a great image...I'll get my coat.

Edited November 19, 2023 by paul mc c

[Red Chilli]

@gonzostar thank you for stack. This is my version

 

 

[gonzostar]

Wow, Thankyou. I prefer . I much prefer your version 👍 Which software did you use?

[Red Chilli]

Pixinsight and Affinity Photo. In Pix: blurx, starx, DBE, ArcsihnStrech, Levels, morphological transformation. In Affinity: levels, curves, saturation,colour balance.  

 

[gonzostar]

Thankyou, Will look into pixinsight. Like what you did with star reduction and pulling out the finer detail

[Elp]

FYI you don't need pixinsight specifically, although it is the goto astro software, many people process without paid for software, most of the above operations you can do within free software like Siril.

Creating good AP images takes practice and learned software skills which I'm sure you're keen to learn.

 

[TakMan]

I saw your post whilst working on another (none astro) Ps job and thought I'd give it a quick whirl before shutting down...
Nothing more than 10 mins. Nothing fancy. A few Noel's Actions. No starless processing.
Not as refined as Red Chilli's above, but hope it gives you an idea what your data holds if you don't have BlurX and the like.
Onwards and upwards, hey!
Damian

[gonzostar]

Thanks Damian for taking the time to process and share.  This looks awesome aswell. Just need more practice usind PS. Yesterday learn't how to do star reduction. Yeah onwards and upwards 😁👍

 

Dean

[AstroMuni]

On 19/11/2023 at 18:35, gonzostar said:

If anyone wants ago please. 

You have managed to capture a lovely image. There is a lot of detail in there and I'm sure experts in this group can tease it out.

Here's my quick attempt using Siril.

[vlaiv]

Here is quick processing in Gimp:

I think that data is not bad at all.

[happy-kat]

very rusty, a quick process, hope my data will be as nice

[wimvb]

On 19/11/2023 at 14:35, gonzostar said:

This is my  attempt with  the ZWO 385MC camera with a ir/uv cut  of M33 in  bottle 5 skies.  

Telescope used was the ES102mm APO AT f7 on a AVX mount

Settings used in sharpcap. 

Dean, I donwloaded the fit and have a few remarks before I start processing it.

There seems to be a rather large offset and some rotation between the various subs that went into this image. This is becomes apparent at the left edge and at the right corners of the stretched image. Do you use platesolving between sessions? Imo, if you don't you should start looking into it. I assume that you use a windows computer and that you already have ascom installed. In that case use NINA or similar software to control your mount. If you have to remove your camera between sessions, spend a few minutes to align the long or short edge of the camera sensor with the RA axis. Take a 30 s unguided exposure and 5 seconds in, slew the mount at 1 x sidereal in RA. This will create star trails in RA. Align the trails with an edge of the sensor. These steps will give you a better overlap between subs and maximise the usable area of the image. Second, the stacked image has a large offset. The average pixel value in the unstretched image is 0.11 on a scale from 0 (black) to 1 (white). My guess is that either the offset value for the camera at gain 135 is rather high or you have a lot of light pollution.

Edited November 26, 2023 by wimvb

[wimvb]

Here's my version in PI

Crop

Background equalisation

Colour calibration

Arcsinh stretch

Histogram and curves stretch (levels and curves in PS)

Colour saturation

Detail enhancement using MMT (multiscale processing)

[gonzostar]

Thankyou all for having ago with the data for M33. Its interesting also to compare the outcomes of various processing tools. They all look awesome. 

Wim, thanks for details very much appreciated. Yes I had to use camera out for planetary work also.

I dont use platesolving. Instead use sharcap reticle to center objects, and to control the mount I use Celestrons CPWI software. My skies are 4/5 bortle. So from what you are saying is that the camera's (ZWO 385MC) gain is to high at 135. I thought this was the optimum for this camera? Should i reduce for next project?

I'm very appreciative from the experts and thankyou for taking time to have ago. Certainly learning new things as I go along 👍

Dean

[happy-kat]

sharpcap pro has sharpsolve build in the platesolving works quite well on my test data

[wimvb]

38 minutes ago, gonzostar said:

So from what you are saying is that the camera's (ZWO 385MC) gain is to high at 135. I thought this was the optimum for this camera? Should i reduce for next project?

I'm not familiar with the uncooled 385MC. I use my 294MM at 0 gain in order to get the highest dynamic range. But it seems I'm quite alone in that. If I were you, I might test at lower gain, just above the hcg turn on value of 60. Each gain value has with it a unique offset. When the gain increases, this offset also needs to increase. I determined the best offset for my camera by shooting darks and measuring the lowest pixel values. As long as these were 0, I'd increase the offset and shoot again. For 0 gain, I use offset 8, and for 200 gain (nb imaging), I use offset 30.

But because your camera has a very small sensor, it's more important that you can use the whole sensor area for your stacked image. I would look into improving telescope pointing first.

[tomato]

Sorry a bit late to this one. Here is my contribution, processed in APP, PI and AP. Like @wimvb I saw some edge artefacts on the LHS and bottom RH corner which intruded on the FOV,  but rather than crop these out I tried to fix these with AP remove background tool, but I had to over darken the background to make them less noticeable. BlurXterminator and NoiseXterminator also applied in PI.

[gonzostar]

6 hours ago, tomato said:

Sorry a bit late to this one. Here is my contribution, processed in APP, PI and AP. Like @wimvb I saw some edge artefacts on the LHS and bottom RH corner which intruded on the FOV,  but rather than crop these out I tried to fix these with AP remove background tool, but I had to over darken the background to make them less noticeable. BlurXterminator and NoiseXterminator also applied in PI.

Wow this is absolutely amazing processing. You have extracted so much details Thankyou. Still so much for me to learn, will start with properly learning plate solving