Helix progress

[oska]

After my first Helix effort I took on board all the generous advice given and started a long term Helix. So far I've got about 18hrs and this is the best 13.5hrs of that. I feel it might be about half way there. I don't want to resort to bludgeoning some 3nm Ha in there to get the outer brow and bags detail, but I might if it continues to force me to over stretch :lol:

EON85 on EQ6r & oag (yeah yeah, just practicing for the 8" sct)
ASI1600MC -10C, 139g, 30s, UV/IR cut

Stacked in DSS, coz PI had kittens at the size and multi-night cal.
Over stretched and tortured in pixinsight

Criticism and advice most welcome.

[xelasnave]

That is a great effort and must be very happy with such an excellent result.
Alex

[oska]

Thanks Alex, I'm somewhat happy as a progress report although it feels over stretched to me. To be fair I still feel I don't really know what I'm looking at.

[Stephane]

John, that is some seriously good data. Well done for persevering and getting so much of it. Some considerable detail is emerging too. With Pixinsight, I stack batches of maximum 200 frames and then use Pixelmath to combine the stacks if I, say, have 400 or 600. Doing DBEs on each 200 stack seems to produce better results for me too, although still too early for me to confirm whether that’s coincidence or not.

Have you heard of the GHS script (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wqPV6UHlOC0&t=2s)? It’s a script for stretching with far greater control. Personally, I’ve found my stars look a lot better since adopting that script in my workflow. I got the idea here (https://www.astrobin.com/7ez0pl/).

If you have $90 to spare, you might also consider purchasing NoiseXterminator (https://www.rc-astro.com/resources/NoiseXTerminator/index.php). Personally, I only use it at 75-80% as I find a bit of grain pleasing to the eye, but it does a tremendous job and doesn’t seem to add any artefacts. There’s a free trial, but a word of warning: once tried, there’s no going back to old noise reduction methods!

Again, great job on this image. It’s coming along really nicely.

Stephane

[oska]

Cheers for the insights Stephane, I really appreciate it ;)

I have seen GHS just this week (YT - Paulyman Astro, cheers Pauley) but I haven't really tried it yet, to be honest it kinda made my head hurt when I gave it a look-see :lol:

Thanks for the AB link VERY helpful and informative. I'll get right onto the Xterminator set, thanks.

It took me a moment to get why you would stack like that but now it makes perfect sense. Although several thousand subs makes it a bit daunting to do from scratch but I see the wisdom in not having to stack the lot again after adding a session alone never mind the gradients issues it solves. Brilliant :cheers:

[Nikolas]

Nice start :)

Logan Carpenter of Logan's astrophotography has just published a Helix with 40 hours of data it is one hell of an image and one we can all strive for
Logan's image is here (https://www.astrobin.com/9d17cs/)

[oska]

Thanks Nik, Logan's image is absolutely remarkable.

[AstroViking]

Looks great, John. Keep it up, and I can't wait to see how it turns out with more data.

[oska]

Thanks Steve, I check every 15 mins or so to see if this weeks of cloud has cleared yet :)