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View Full Version here: : Running Chicken - First light with a Cooled cam


Muzfox
07-03-2021, 02:26 PM
I recently purchased my first cooled camera, a Zwo 071mc Pro and I gotta say I love it! Being able to take darks whenever I want and build a library on it's own is amazing, but the clean results I was getting out of camera blew me away.

I only managed 2 hours on the chook unfortunately so I took this as a good time to practice my pixinsight processing in bi-colour. Taken with my 72ED Scope on HEQ5 mount, 071mc Pro, Optolong L-Extreme filter (also first light!) I got 24 x 5 minute subs and all were perfect. Unity gain 90 / offset 60, -5 degrees. Appropriate darks x 40, flats x 29 and flat darks x 29.

Calibrated and stacked in Pixinsight using WBPP script, first time using and it worked very well. From there tonnes of playing around and trying different things until I got some sort of result I liked. Lost a bit of detail in the process so I have to work on that. Need more data (and clouds to go away).

I've also attached my first light shot of the Chook from June last year using a modded 1100d, l-enhance filter and pretty much same everything else. Coming along slowly.

I'm thinking I want to get some moonless data with the L-Pro filter as well to add in natural star colours, never done that before so worth a try. Added a filter drawer to my rig so changing is easy enough, just have to rememember to get all the calibration files first.

jahnpahwa
07-03-2021, 03:28 PM
Absolutely nailed it :thumbsup:

RyanJones
07-03-2021, 04:00 PM
The bi-colour chicken is really quite cool. Well done Murray !

Andy01
07-03-2021, 05:54 PM
Looking good Murray, just watch those clipped blacks - more data will help there too :)

Muzfox
07-03-2021, 07:12 PM
Thanks Andy, they are just a touch above clipped but I did push them down simply due to the lack of data. When the weather gives me a break I plan quite a few more sessions on it, I'm in bortle 5 but looking in this direction it's 2/3 skies. Caught me a few times when exposures suddenly were not long enough.

Muzfox
08-03-2021, 10:58 PM
Decided to take my time and follow along with Mastering Pixinsight. I gotta say it's a great instructional guide, talk about a difference! No clear skies for the next week so I figure I'll keep playing with data and learning.

Robert_T
19-03-2021, 01:38 PM
I really like this Murray... I imaged this with same filter and similar camera, but for the life of me even splitting an recombining OIII and Ha I couldn't draw any colour other than red/yellow...any tips for the blue?

Muzfox
21-03-2021, 08:20 PM
I basically edited it enough in PI to get some colour separation. From there it's all photoshop to really push the colours to where I want them.

alexfine
21-03-2021, 10:16 PM
amazing

AdamJL
23-03-2021, 04:53 PM
oooo I love that edit!!

Definitely keen to see more from you and this target, Murray

RyanJones
23-03-2021, 08:09 PM
Cracker of a repro Murray ! I need to pull my finger out snd stack what I have on this one. You and others have set the bar pretty high !

Hotpies
24-03-2021, 10:51 AM
Love the re-processed version. Really pops. Beautiful picture :)

Alchemy
24-03-2021, 03:06 PM
I don’t think you ever stop learning, practice away and experiment, pixinsight has oodles of tools, I would like it a bit more if the interface was more like photoshop, I tend to use it for specific tasks and then back to photoshop, although some of the tools do a better result in pix, hooray for YouTube there’s something to cover every situation there.

Muzfox
24-03-2021, 03:51 PM
finally looks like I got some clear sky coming. Going to see how much data I can add in 3 more nights and see what difference it makes to the final. Also want to add some star colour with the l-pro as a trial. Fingers crossed :)