Help, Where's The Colour?

[StevieO]

Except for the first few months years ago when I took up imaging, I have shot in monochrome with narrowband or LRGB filters.

I recently decided to go 'colour' and this is tonight's first light with a new Zwo ASI2600C with an IDAS NBZ II  dual band filter. 50 x 2 min frames with 8" Hyperstar, stacked in Pixinsight and then again in DSS, when, to my surprise and disappoinment, the end result came out in greyscale. Either I've erred in my camera settings or in my stacking settings, can anyone advise me please?

 

Thanks

 

StevieO

 

[Ags]

What software are you stacking with?

[StevieO]

First Pixinsight WBPP, then, when that produced a greyscale image, I tried DSS with the same result.

[Vroobel]

Are you sure you used the OSC cam? 

 

[michael8554]

It's a mono image, increasing saturation had no effect.

If the Bayer setting was wrong I would expect to see the usual pattern on the image.

Michael

[Ags]

In DSS you need to go into settings and select debayering as an option. You can also select the Bayer pattern 

Edited September 12 by Ags

[Ags]

To me this looks like Bayer matrix loaded as mono. So have a look at DSS settings.

[Elp]

OSC data will process as mono until you enable a debayer option somewhere along the processing line, usually before registration. In the case of something like DSS you'd have to set your settings before starting the whole process. In Siril you enable the settings on the calibration tab prior to registering.

[Vroobel]

29 minutes ago, Ags said:

To me this looks like Bayer matrix loaded as mono. So have a look at DSS settings.

 

The observant eye of someone who is up to date with this. 👍 

 

[Ags]

Maybe upload a raw sub?

[StevieO]

Thanks to all responders for pointing me in the right direction. As this was my first time with a OSC camera, I didn't realise I had to check the CFA settings in Pixinsight WBPP or Options/Settings/Raw/Fits DDP to generate a colour stack. All done now, though it took WBPP 1 3/4 hours to process.

Here is a first pass at the final image.

All the best

StevieO

 

[Fegato]

Strange, as normally WBPP will recognise it's OSC from the FITS header and automatically check the CFA option. Does your acquisition software set up the FITS header properly?

As for processing time, I've noticed that processing OSC data does seem to take longer, even than a lot more RGB mono frames (even ignoring the debayering). I guess a lot of operations have to be carried out separately on all three colours and as they are all in a single file it makes it less efficient. Local normalisation seems particularly slow on an OSC stack.