DSS & Comet Stacking - what am I doing wrong?

[rogerg]

Hi all,

I a have attempted comet stacking in DSS a few times and always failed. The page of instructions I have tried to follow is this:

http://deepskystacker.free.fr/english/technical.htm#cometstacking

My problems are:
1) I move the mouse to the comet and click on it but the target automatically selects a brighter star nearby. See attached screenshot where I have the mouse on the comet but it's selected a star. (you can't see the mouse because of screenshot not capturing it).

2) Many frames do not get included in the stack. These seem to be the ones with "NC" in the list. It seems no amount of selecting the comet or registering all images will include these frames when I choose the comet stacking method. See attached screenshot.

I have tried both:
1) open all files
2) check all files
3) click comet in each file one by one
4) stacking
and
1) open all files
2) check all files
3) register all files
4) click comet in all files
5) stacking

In the end I have always manually aligned the calibrated TIF files in photoshop and stacked that way, because DSS seems to just not work for me.

Obviously I'm doing something wrong, right? is it just me???

Thanks!
:)

[tilbrook@rbe.ne]

Hi Roger,

I had the same problem, eventually found out that you have to hold down the shift key when selecting the comet in each frame.

Most of the time it leaves a few artifacts to clean up one stacked, like false colours in the centre of bright stars and the centre of the comet.

Cheers,

Justin.

[rogerg]

Thanks Justin, I'll give that a try when I get home this evening.

[Screwdriverone]

Yep Roger,

As Justin said, you need to hold the shift key when you click (use the magnified view to get RIGHT on the comet nucleus) to enable the "fine" selection capability.

I had the same problem, until I fluked it as I thought it might be like disabling snap to grid on a graphic program.....it was......

I suppose we could RTFM???? :rofl: yeah right!

Cheers

Chris

[rogerg]

OK, so .... I have done the shift-click on the comet for every frame now.

And I've RTFM'd :) ... several times over several days in fact :mad2:

but .... now it's giving me "Only one frame (out of 25) will be stacked.".

The list of files has every file (light, dark and flat) checked. It also has a "+(C)" along side the #Stars count which is zero because they aren't registered yet (so I see "0+(C)" in the stars column So, it knows it's stacking a comet.

The stacking options are all as per recommended for a comet.

But for some reason it's choosing to ignore all except one frame :bashcomp:

[tilbrook@rbe.ne]

Hi Roger,

Go to the file where you keep your image files and delete previous stacking info files so you can start fresh.

You need to register the stars, but need to disable auto stacking before registering.

The other thing to check is in setting register settings, if there's not many stars for DSS to register set it to 10%. Sounds weird but this finds more stars. Then it may recognise more frames to stack.

If won't work then I've run out of idea's.

Cheers,

Justin.

[rogerg]

Solved, thank you. :thumbsup:

Not entirely sure what the correct sequence of events compared to other attempts was, but certainly this seems to have worked:
1) open files with no registration information
2) select comet in each with shift-click
3) register all images for stars
4) stack

Thanks!

[gbeal]

One thing I was going to ask.
When I go to click (whoops, Shift-Click) on the first frame, it asks me if I want to register the frames, some of the frames, or none of the frames.
I opt for register the lot. Is this correct, as it seems to apply the Bias and Darks etc then, and it seems later in stacking as well, I mean twice???? Is this OK?
Gary

[rogerg]

Gary, from my limited experience it seems I need to do both registering stars and comet regardless of the type of comet stacking method used, so I now do the same as you.

[jjjnettie]

Gary, let it register all the frames, make sure you don't have "stack frames after registering" clicked though.
After the they are registered, then go through and shift/click the comet and save info on each and every sub.
And isn't THAT a pain when you've captured 40 or 50 short subs. LOL

[gbeal]

Yep, not wrong there, a right royal pain.
I'll carry on doing what I have been then, seems the blunder it method works.
Gary

[h0ughy]

i did that and i still end up with rubbish - there must be something i am leaving on? can someone simplyfy it with a few screen shots that i can compare with my view? i have tried this at least 12 times:mad2::mad2: