Hey all,
As some of you know i am trying out startools as was recommended by everyone. I had a go at an old Orion Nebula dataset that i had from earlier this year when i began imaging.
Its not the best data but its been good to process. This was before having the EQ6R-Pro and when i had an eq5 that i retrofitted with steppers and a homemade controller/ascom driver to do the guiding. Its abilities were OK but very lacking in terms of DEC guiding! So i really pushed the mount by doing 360 exposures on this one.
I have really just followed the startools tutorial in terms of processing workflow but just made some adjustments to suit. I've definitely got a whole lot to learn on the program but to sign off on a "first try" here it is.
Anyway here are the details. I acquired this in Jan so my records might not be perfect.
Equipment
Equipment list is as follows
Skywatcher EQ5 (diy - stepper motors added and controller built with ascom driver)
Skywatcher 130P
Nikon D5600 (I've removed the stock IR Filter)
ZWO IR Cut Filter
Baader Coma Corrector
Guiding I'm using a Skywatcher 9x50 finder scope that i made up a sensor housing for with an IMX291 sensor
Acquisition
Capture details were as follows (Using BackyardNikon)
33 x Light Frames 360 seconds @ 200 ISO
45 x Light Frames 30 seconds @ 200 ISO
50 x Light Frames 15 seconds @ 200 ISO
I used a BIAS and FLAT stack on this one, unsure of exposure time for the flats. probably around 1/10. No Dark frames on this by the looks of it, i really need to get onto doing it more often, i can see a whole lot of Fixed Pattern noise
Stacking
I have used DSS to stack the images.
Processing
Gimp
It was a while ago but i would've done my normal routine as below. I also put the three stacks in and blended the layers together to form the HDR for the core.
Post stacking I put the image into gimp, cropped & scaled it. Stretched the levels > white balanced the levels > did a star reduction by fuzzy selecting the stars and using the value propagate function > performed some curve adjustments > removed gradients > added a little bit of saturation > final white balance tweaks.
StarTools
I have just followed the startools tutorial workflow found here.
https://www.startools.org/links--tut...ssing-workflow
I have only used the 360 second stack on this one and used the HDR function in startools to bring out the core. Also i have no idea how to deal with the diffraction spikes or whatever they are in the image so for now they remain
Cheers hope you all have some clear weather this week with the moon away for a few days.
