Rho Area from SPSP 2017

[multiweb]

This is the main shot I went for at the SPSP. Got 20h on it across 4 nights from Wednesday to Saturday night and a bunch of other filler shots waiting for Antares to get high enough around 10pm each night.

Taken with my old argon purged and electrical tape driven QHY8 OSC, an FSQ106N at prime focus (absolutely love this scope) on a G11. Guided with PHD on a lodestar/OAG and captured with Nebulosity 2.5. I did 80x900s. Seeing was ranging from excellent to very good across the week. 20kt jetstream up to 40kt on Saturday so very still on average. Transparency was ok but we got a lot wetter Friday and Saturday nights.

I used CCD Stack to calibrate, PI to bayer drizzle and do a final drizzle integration as I had enough subs to "plug the holes" left behind the debayering process. It worked remarkably well. My image scale is 3.02asp because of the short FL and the 7.8um pixels of my camera. Bayer drizzling gives me the equivalent of 1.5asp which gets rid of square stars. As I kept dithering during data acquisition. Although CPU intensive it helped a lot at integration time. Dithering also does wonders with data rejection and noise control.

I didn't do any sharpening or deconvolution as the data was good to start with. It might look a little soft and the stars a bit tiny but that's how it came out of the raw fits. Still a little noisy in the darker areas. I used Goodlook for the color balance.

I have various versions online that are too big to upload here.

Original 2xdrz file (http://www.astropic.space/astro/RhoOph_dzrx2_fff.jpg) [6080x4032 - 16MB]
1:1 version (http://www.astropic.space/astro/RhoOph_fff.jpg) [3040x2016 - 4.5MB]
cropped HD version (http://www.astropic.space/astro/RhoOph_cp_HD.jpg) [2353x1627 -2MB ]
Full field HD version (http://www.astropic.space/astro/RhoOph_HD.jpg) [1920x1273 - 2MB]

Enjoy the views. :thumbsup:

[trent_julie]

Lovely, I wish I could of been there.

[RickS]

Very dark and mysterious, Marc. Love it!

Cheers,
Rick.

[multiweb]

You missed a good one Trent. See you next year. :thumbsup:



Thanks mate. :thumbsup:

[LewisM]

Such a colourless region of the sky... :P

Ca, c'est magnifique Monsieur Aragnou!

[strongmanmike]

Great shot Marc, subtle and delicate...and look at those lovely wide field stars :love:...I'm really looking forward to getting my FSQEDX4 soon, just organising rings and OAG's at the moment :thumbsup:..soon....patient Mike, patient :P

Mike

[multiweb]

Merci mon ami. :thumbsup:



Thanks Mike.:thumbsup: You'll love it. Best thing since sliced bread.

[DJScotty]

Delightful image Marc. Beautiful colors.
Beautiful area of the sky

Scott

[multiweb]

Thanks a lot Scott. :thumbsup: Yeah it's a great area at any FL. Shame it's so faint.

[Retrograde]

Very smooth and subtle Marc. Really like it.
Was good to meet you again at SPSP if only briefly. We had a good few clear nights this year too which is always good. :)

[multiweb]

Thanks a lot Pete. :thumbsup: Yeah we really had a good run this year. Lot of fun and too short.

[SimmoW]

Obviously too much pollution- it's so smoky!

Lovely subtle effort

[multiweb]

Thanks Simon. :thumbsup: The fireplace at the house was going strong. :)

[Placidus]

A gorgeous image, Marc, and a pleasure to look at. Not strident but subtly nuanced.

The nebulosity in the centre says it all: so thick that there are no stars visible behind it at all, but lit from the front by one or two brilliant beacons. Elsewhere, threaded by delicate smoky wisps. :thumbsup::thumbsup:

[atalas]

:thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup:

[Camelopardalis]

That's a beauty Marc, nice one :thumbsup:

[Octane]

That's gorgeous, man. So, so smooth. All those exposures paid off.

Thanks for the tip, re: drizzling to get rid of the crunchy square stars. I suffer from the same issue at 3.5"/pixel. :)

H

[Andy01]

Subtle, delicate, ethereal - maybe shows people like (well -er, ahem) me that not all astro images need to have big, bold punch to be beautiful. ;)
Would love to that really big on the wall, and I love all those old yellow stars :thumbsup:

[multiweb]

Thanks a lot Mike. Glad you like it. I had a look at Rolf's magnificent shot of the same area as a reference. Aperture wins but I did get the stars in the same spots more or less ;)

Catch up soon. :thumbsup:


:) :drink::drink::drink:



Thanks Andy. :thumbsup: RGB has its advantages and when you have the opportunity to get out to dark skies then you can make the most of it. In particular reflection nebulae and dust show up nicely in color and all this info gets lost in NB.

NB is a different deal as you can use arbitrary color palettes. If you like punch in your pics then go for it. It's your pic and your rendition. As long as you work out the ratio between the various emission lines to be close to the reality.

You may find yourself slowly dialing down your processing in time as your processing style evolves and staying closer to the data. It's certainly been the case with me. But in the end it's whatever floats your boat and your interpretation.

[marc4darkskies]

Very subtle and beautiful Marc - nice job!

[multiweb]

Thanks H. Hope you're well and still looking up. Haven't heard from you in a while. :thumbsup:

I found this terrific tut couple of years back on the PI forums to do bayer drizzle. I attached the ratios I use for my QHY8 for color balance (CCD Stack). Also here's the flow I use (see attached). Follow it step by step and it'll work.

I have a link here to the DLL you need to use with the image container.
CFA2RGB (http://www.astropic.space/astro/CFA2RGB-pxm.zip)
That will work with the latest PI 1.8. Just unzip it in your PixInsight/bin directory.

Any question regarding debayering or integration settings just haul.

[multiweb]

Thanks Marcus. Nice catching up with Gail and yourself at SPSP. :thumbsup:

[Octane]

I'm well, mate. Capturing data each night. :)

That screenshot didn't make sense to me!

I have used drizzle in the past for when I used to bin 2x2 my RGB frames. I capture RGB in 1x1 nowadays.

If I drizzle everything x2, reckon it should fix the + shaped stars?

H

[multiweb]

ah... you use a mono with a filter wheel? Yeah, I use an OSC with a bayer matrix. So in your case you just use the standard drizzle integration once you have generated the drizzle files with the star alignment process. Lot simpler. To get the best result you need to dither your exposures during capture.

[Octane]

Yep, I dither between each exposure. :)

I'll go back and rework some data tonight. :)

H

[graham.hobart]

very cool!
can you tell me what oag you have?
i am building a similar system soon and will likely use one. with qhy 8 pro.
:thumbsup:

[multiweb]

Thanks Graham. :thumbsup: The OAG block is from the starlight xpress SXV-AO-LF (https://www.sxccd.com/sxv-ao-lf). It's a QHY9 on the pic but the QHY8 setup is the same. Only difference is the 13mm spacer in the front of the QHY8 so the lodestar can come in focus.

[Atmos]

Wonderful shots Marc :thumbsup:
I've always wondered how to Bayer drizzle! Never been happy with the Batch Preprocessing attempt at it so just ended up doing it the traditional way; calibration, registration, integration.

[RobF]

Very very nice work Marc!
Coming to Astrofest this year?

[multiweb]

Thanks Colin. :thumbsup: It works well but the more subs the better or you might get moire patterns.




Thanks Rob. :thumbsup: Sure am. Whole week :)

[Atmos]

I've got several sets of 19x300s from Tuesday that I might try it with.

[alan meehan]

Very nice indeed Marc good to catch up with you ,well have a beer in qld
AL

[Rod771]

Beautifully smooth, Marc! Great result! :thumbsup:

[astronobob]

Classic Target done very very well, Marc, loving them colours too, them orange/yellows are just awesome :thumbsup: :thumbsup:
Top Job !!

[Octane]

Marc,

Just reporting back; x2 drizzle integration has resolved my plus-shaped star issues.

I was wondering why I only ever noticed it on some images and not others -- it never appeared on images that were Drizzle'd. :)

Thanks!

H

[multiweb]

Thanks Al. For sure, looking forward to it. :thumbsup:

Thanks a lot Rod. :thumbsup:

Thanks Bob. Glad you like the colors. :thumbsup:

Cool - good to hear it works. :thumbsup: