repro efforts...

[AlexN]

Since my first light of my ST10, I've been trying to fix up some of the images that were greatly affected by dew... this is really an intermediate repro posting, as its still not complete.. but I thought I'd post it...

Heres the M16 that I posted last weekend with funny looking squares and random blurryness throughout the frame caused by dew. the second image is the same data, except I set deep sky stacker to use only the best 50% of the frames... This resulted in the best 30x1min images going into this shot...

The third image was colourised using Noel Carboni's astro tools in photoshop.. Just a play around really.. not a big fan of it, but I figured I'd post it anyway...

In any case, There are no darks/bias frames applied here, as I wanted to test if I could get rid of the artefacts, I wanted to rule everything out... I will try stacking the same way again, but including darks and bias frames... Hopefully this will result in less noise in the image, but similar clarity... :)


Cheers for looking..

Ps. M8 and M17 are going to get the same treatment once I've figured out exactly whats causing the artefacts...
Alex.

[multiweb]

The second greyscale shot is superb. Terrific results. :thumbsup:

[TrevorW]

Maybe a tad 2 red IMO Alex

but nice

[AlexN]

Marc, Thanks, I think that by only using 50% of all the frames, its dropped out all the frames where the dew had formed on the secondary..

Here it is again, Darks and Bias frames applied... Not bad for 30mins data I think...

Trevor - Yeah, it is too red, but essentially, that was just a mess around just to see what the false colour tool did... I did nothing to it to correctly balance the colour, just thought I'd post it for laughs...

In any case, I HAVE to sort out this dew issue now.. this now shows my scope and camera combo is very capable of doing what I want to do, I just need to tame a few small issues to bring it right up to scratch... (oh, and organise my filters! :))

[kinetic]

WOW!!!!

Alex, I think you have arrived mate!
As Marc says...that mono is awesome!

Steve

[GeoffW1]

Please please change that avatar of yours Trevor.............it reminds me too much of so much.

:doh:

[AlexN]

Thanks Steve... I am stoked with it considering the first mono image was my original result with this data.. I almost considered deleting the FITS images and waiting until next time... The results now tell me that would have been a silly move!

Heres M8 reprocessed in the same way, with stronger data rejection settings.. M17 is in the oven cooking as I type this.. :)

Alex.

[Octane]

Alex,

That, my friend, is superb. It looks like a dream.

You're well on your way.

Regards,
Humayun

[AlexN]

Many thanks, Humayun.

And this is M17.. Thats a wrap for me tonight I think....

The final cause of the squares around stars after a very stringent investigation... The way in which I was converting the 32bit TIFF to 16bit for processing... :) I still had photoshop set to "Localised Adaption" from when I was last playing with HDR terrestrial imaging.. I changed it from localised adaption to equalise histogram and the squares dissapear, as did the odd looking fuzzy appearance of the images...

Seems first light went much better than I'd originally thought!! (WOOOHOOO!!!)

Cheers all
Alex.

[marc4darkskies]

Way to go Alex! :thumbsup: That last mono M16 shot is very good - lots of great detail! Now for the (real) colour?! :)

Cheers, Marcus

[AlexN]

Thanks Marcus... Colour is coming as soon as I get filters... These 3 were all taken with a 13nm Ha filter.... I will be ordering a set of 7nm NB filters to load into my CFW8A as soon as my bank account allows it... from my suburban skies, LRGB really isn't a good option, So I'll be going with NB colours for a while... then make the move to LRGB further off in the future...

Thanks again to everone who's commented.. Much appreciated.
Alex.

[Hagar]

Very Nice Alex. They are a world appart from the original posts.
Look forward to seeing more like these. Well done and a nice recovery.

[Matty P]

Very very nice Alex. Awesome results. :) Much better than the previous versions.

The detail in all the images are great. M16 is superb.

Well done. Looking forward to more! :thumbsup:

[ejcruz]

Alex you really getting the hang of that ST10, great images.

Cheers
Eddie

[Tandum]

Now your talking, those are a mile away from the others and unguided as I remember. Well Done.

[AlexN]

Thanks Doug, Matty, Eddie & Robin..


Eddie - Getting the hang of it? These are first light images! :) That said, the ST-10XEi is not too dissimilar to the ST-9E that I had before, Infact, once its connected, there is really no difference until you start processing, and even then, the difference is only that I'm processing a 3.2mp image, instead of a tiny 512x512px image!

Robin - Cheers mate.. Sometimes I don't mind these cloudy nights.. Gives me a chance to fix previous mistakes!! :)

[multiweb]

If you haven't try a long dew shield flocked with black fabric inside. I did that on my 5" newt with flute panel. It goes a long way to minimise dew on the exposed secondary. Worked great for me so far.

[strongmanmike]

Now that's better huh? You must have been overjoyed (and a bit annoyed) when you worked it out :thumbsup:

Mike

[peter_4059]

They are a big improvement on the initial images Alex. Well done.

[RB]

Alex the M16 repro with the darks and bias frames applied looks terrific !
Coming along very nicely dude.

:thumbsup:

[AlexN]

Marc - I've made a makeshift dewshield to test, should it work as well as I hope, I'll buy a good quality one..

Mike - Overjoyed and annoyed sums it up nicely... Overjoyed to see that the scope and ST-10XEi perform very well together. But annoyed due to the fact that we all know, first impressions last... I'm very happy that the fault was mine, and not the gear...

Peter - Cheers mate... I cant wait to work in some NB colours.

Andrew - Cheers mate.. I am very happy with my progress thus far...