Well, tonight was supposed to be a test run of Stellarmate & guiding...
Stellarmate, well that generally worked out quite well.. the guiding on the other hand did not happen. I've subsequently learned you cannot configure guiding from the Stellarmate App rather, you need to be using a VNC window to configure guiding & initiate...
Oh well, learned some stuff.. Anyways, whilst I was kicking around in Stellarmate & decided to have a crack at Running Chicken.... it's not too bad but, it's not great either... first time I've imaged something a little dimmer.. learned that 90 second subs probably aren't quite enough.. nevermind...
Please, comment freely... I have much to learn...
80mm f6 triplet, EOS70d, 39 x 90 sec subs @ ISO 800. Stacked in DSS, processed in Startools & tweaked (alot) in Affinity Photo
Thanks for looking...
PS: It was nice & sharp, I just denoised it a fair bit to try & make it a bit more presentable...
Plenty of colour and and action there. With all those 90 sec subs at 800 I would be interested to see how it looks without the tweaking and denoising. I think it would look great.
Getting the guiding calibrated is a pain but once it works it is worth the trouble and makes things easier if you can go to 3-5 minutes , . You can always guide separately with PhD2 if the other systems fail.
A great start Carlton.
May I ask... did you use a feature in your processing that you sort to reduce the star size?
I ask because I sometimes use a feature in Gimp called "erode" which sometimes works but other times produces the effect I notice with your stars in your image where they seem a little squiggly...if you have use such a feature try avoiding it and it may repair your stars.
Also I have yet to take a sub with an exposure over 60 seconds but I certainly take a few...all I am getting at is 90 seconds should work for you...
You may care to try a 3x drizzle in DSS ..I am pretty sure it helps a lot but slows things down heaps and you end up with a 1.5 gig image which I crop in StarTools and binn to get it manageable.
If noise is a problem may I suggest that you dither and also take some dark frames.
In any event I think you have done a great job here and you can be very proud that you bagged your image.
Alex
Carlton
A nice image of the chicken, plenty of colour and well framed
It’s a fairly bright object at magnitude 4.2 so you could probably get away with 60 sec subs ( 1.5 to 2 hours worth ) at ISO 800 so it’s less demanding on your guiding
It’s amazing what you can pull out with 2 hours or more worth of 60 sec subs
Maybe give PHD2 a try , it’s been a proven performer for many many years on all types of rigs and is open sourced ( free ) It really just works !!! but like all guiding software it is governed by seeing conditions and the quality of your guide star. In 3 years of guiding with PHD2 I’ve never really had bad guiding with oval or eggy stars
Carlton...I still have not included auto guide in my mix as with short exposure subs you can get away without it..getting 90 seconds is great...and if the pa is a little off you get built in dithering to a degree. The other thing is take more subs so you can throw away subs that are not perfect...I find using the best ones really helps.
Alex
A great start Carlton.
May I ask... did you use a feature in your processing that you sort to reduce the star size?
I ask because I sometimes use a feature in Gimp called "erode" which sometimes works but other times produces the effect I notice with your stars in your image where they seem a little squiggly...if you have use such a feature try avoiding it and it may repair your stars.
Also I have yet to take a sub with an exposure over 60 seconds but I certainly take a few...all I am getting at is 90 seconds should work for you...
You may care to try a 3x drizzle in DSS ..I am pretty sure it helps a lot but slows things down heaps and you end up with a 1.5 gig image which I crop in StarTools and binn to get it manageable.
If noise is a problem may I suggest that you dither and also take some dark frames.
In any event I think you have done a great job here and you can be very proud that you bagged your image.
Alex
Thanks Alex,
I hadn't noticed those 'smears' until you mentioned it & I had a closer look... hmmm, not sure where I introduced them...
I'm going to do a reprocess from scratch... my subs look reasonably good albeit a little washed out, sort of bluish which, I think is a result of an almost full moon up & shining rather brightly...
To be honest, I really have no idea when it comes to processing...
Ps. I use PHD2 as an external guider controlled by Ecos if you are using that with the stellar mate. Needs to be started first.
Yeah, thanks Ray...
I sort of jumped in cold thinking I could do it all from the Stellarmate App.. turns out, configuring guiding isn't one of them yet...
If I use the NoVNC viewer on my tablet, I can access a more capable version of Kstars & Ekos which will enable me to use either Astrometry or PHD2...
It's in my plan for next time out...
Re: processing... as I mentioned to Alex.. I really have no idea what I'm doing... I'm trying to reprocess the data.. but, can't help wondering if I'm trying to polish a t... or not...
One of my subs below.... albeit in low resolution..
Carlton ..your sub looks very good and the stars are so much better.
In DSS your subs should now have scores..check them and drop low score ones..I think the score is just a star count but I think it helps...try drizzle it's only a box tick away. Save from DSS without using any adjustment within it...
My work flow for Star Tools is simple..develop (not auto) crop, lens with no adjustments so I am not sure of the benefit, bin ( your choice but lately because of my large files I go for 25%) , wipe..don't touch anything, develop, HDR optimise hard, contrast, sharpen ( no deconvolution) colour, track..which leads you thru noise reduction, be conservative, after maybe repair but most times not...save..into Photoshop and gimp.
Alex
Carlton ..your sub looks very good and the stars are so much better.
In DSS your subs should now have scores..check them and drop low score ones..I think the score is just a star count but I think it helps...try drizzle it's only a box tick away. Save from DSS without using any adjustment within it...
My work flow for Star Tools is simple..develop (not auto) crop, lens with no adjustments so I am not sure of the benefit, bin ( your choice but lately because of my large files I go for 25%) , wipe..don't touch anything, develop, HDR optimise hard, contrast, sharpen ( no deconvolution) colour, track..which leads you thru noise reduction, be conservative, after maybe repair but most times not...save..into Photoshop and gimp.
Alex
Thanks Alex, I will give this a go... I feel like I'm at the start of an extremely complex journey over land I've never been in, with multiple places I'm supposed to visit... but, I have no map, no compass & I can't see the sky..... oh, & I think they spun me round a few hundred times too, just for good measure...
I'm contemplating a move to Lightroom/Photoshop... on the basis that it is more commonly used & thus, I might be able to get guidance from the knowledge pool on this forum... I'm discovering that whilst Affinity Photo is good for most photography work, it's not quite so good for astrophotography...
Thanks Alex, I will give this a go... I feel like I'm at the start of an extremely complex journey over land I've never been in, with multiple places I'm supposed to visit... but, I have no map, no compass & I can't see the sky..... oh, & I think they spun me round a few hundred times too, just for good measure...
I'm contemplating a move to Lightroom/Photoshop... on the basis that it is more commonly used & thus, I might be able to get guidance from the knowledge pool on this forum... I'm discovering that whilst Affinity Photo is good for most photography work, it's not quite so good for astrophotography...
Cheers
I like Photoshop as in the old days that was it.
The dodge and burn features are very handy as you can brighten some areas, say where you can bring out a bit more nebulosity, and darken areas that are near blown out.
Layering is handy as you can have a super bright image and your normal image and using the rubber bring out a little more brightness in selected areas..or same for darker regions...
The key with Star Tools is generally to avoid altering the "dials" and always look at what is behind the question mark.
I think you could probably just use wipe (after develop is necessary) and noise reduction only in Star Tools and get most of its benefit.
That sounds good.
You can get yourself sorted in PHD2 first with calibration for guiding , still take some images while you are there and then use PHD settings in KStars ecos later as an external guiding application so you can apply dither etc.
With a DSLR ,I think Lightroom is great to start with as it will always give you a great looking image and is great for all of your day time photo imaging and image collation. . You can stack a lot of images in DSS ,stretch and calibrate channels a little if required or just export the 12bit tiff to a file and import to Lightroom to fine tune. Or stack more complex filtered images in PS . There are many users here and with tutorials on line to show how these things are done. The chicken is pretty faint in Nebulosity from a one shot or DSLR without long exposures or filters. I just tried that last night and I think I will need many more 2 min exposures even on a cooled one shot where the ASI1600 with a Ha filter shows up the chicken in three minutes on the preview at 75 gain. Pixinsight is an expensive learning curve and the other alternative if you have more data, but gives a very smooth result if you put the time in.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Outcast
Yeah, thanks Ray...
I sort of jumped in cold thinking I could do it all from the Stellarmate App.. turns out, configuring guiding isn't one of them yet...
If I use the NoVNC viewer on my tablet, I can access a more capable version of Kstars & Ekos which will enable me to use either Astrometry or PHD2...
It's in my plan for next time out...
Re: processing... as I mentioned to Alex.. I really have no idea what I'm doing... I'm trying to reprocess the data.. but, can't help wondering if I'm trying to polish a t... or not...
One of my subs below.... albeit in low resolution..
I started using Develop in Startools for the first few months as a novice but then took Ivo Jagers advice and tried “Auto Dev” for initial and final stretch.Its simply chalk and cheese , Auto Dev exposes so much more detail whilst keeping a lid on blowing out your image including stars. Auto Dev in version 1.5 is excellent and has an addition feature called shadow linearity
My general workflow is as follows -
Bin 50% default
Auto Dev initial stretch
Crop our stacking artifacts and dust donuts etc
Wipe
Auto Dev for final stretch and adjustment
Deconvolution
Sharpen
HDR
Life ( less more ) for background noise reduction
Colour
Stop tracking for noise reduction
Maybe Star filter
Save
NB: I find most default settings work well in Startools
Maybe because I push my gain so high but auto develop for me usually produces a near white screen ..it's an absolute blow out.
Maybe the high gain is why deconvolution rarely works well for me also.
Alex
In fact the final image I get in DSS is often so pale you can't see a thing...again probably due to the wild way I push the gain.
I have had a terrible time here..my roll off roof keeps going "off the rails" and I have been trying quick fixes and man it has been enough to pull my hair out...always something.
Alex
Different cameras with different settings are variable and suited to different software with different targets I suppose. The ASI 1600 is vastly different to a DSLR. I often save out of dss with no stretching of any kind if I can before combining on other software with the 1600 but need to colour align and stretch just a little with a DSLR . I found the 1600 works cleaner at a lower gain for longer subs than 2 or 3 minutes but if you have very short subs it might all be different. I would like to play with star tools but it crashes my Mac i5.
Alex, unless the object is very bright, like say the trifid neb for example, it
is normal for the DSS end result to show little or nothing, because it is intended that you use the tools within DSS to equalise the colours, adjust
the histogram, and saturate the colour to suit your preference. You can also
adjust the lowlights, mediumlights, and highlights to suit your preference.
You then have an image ready for any further tweaking that you may wish to do in PS, Pixinsight, or whatever. I being a computer dummy have never used anything else but DSS, except for an occasional little sharpen.
Sorry about any conceived hijacking.
raymo
I think there are two main issues with what I am doing, processing wise that is:
Firstly, whilst my subs do look good & I'm happy the data is clean & the tracking is good, there is simply not enough of them for this target.
Then, I am compounding issue 1 by trying to push what I have too hard to get a result...
I think I will sit on this data for a bit & see if I can accumulate some more... Assuming I can get guiding up & running, I can take some longer subs & combine the two sets of data...
Also, next outing I might see if I can give this light board a run & capture some flats as well...
I have approval for PS/Lightroom... which surprised me no end actually... so, might head down that path yet together with Startools... similar to Martin, I've found Startools very good, I think I've just tried to push it too far this time...
