AAIC 2011 - I did get something out of it

[troypiggo]

Back at the beginning of June I (attempted) to shoot NGC6357. I threw everything I had at it, and the best I could process out of it was an absolute mess, I was ready to throw the data away.

Came back from AAIC 2011 with some new understanding of workflow, processes and tools, and thought I'd have another crack at it.

Here's the Ha, 7x5mins taken on the ED80. May not be the best, bit noisy, but I'm happy.

[multiweb]

That's very good indeed. What processing software did you use? Let me guess... Pixinsight? A lot of people came back as converts. I reckon they spiked all your drinks up there and made you watch subliminal video tuts. ;)

[Dennis]

Nice recovery Troy – I would be very happy with that result!

Cheers

Dennis

[peter_4059]

Well processed Troy. What steps did you throw at this version?

[gregbradley]

That's a great image.

Greg.

[Omaroo]

Great stuff Troy. Like everyone, I guess, I too came back with a "let's try that again on some old data" attitude. I've been mucking about again with PixInsight, that I've had for ages, and am acquiring a new appreciation for it after Rogelio's demos.

Let me guess though... you've used Photoshop here, right?:question:



...trussed to rickety wooden chair...dripping water...matchsticks under the eyelids...dank, smokey room with obligatory swinging lightbulb...

[strongmanmike]

Great result there Troy, you look to have handled the dynamic range very nicely :thumbsup:

Mike

[troypiggo]

Thanks guys. For me, one of the big things I took away from AAIC was my workflow and the order of processing. Mainly what to do when the data is still "linear", ie pre-stretching with DDP etc, and what can be done after when it's non-linear.



Thanks mate. Actually, you're right - I did use PixInsight for this. Was just playing around, trying to learn how to use it. But I have also been playing with MaxIm and PhotoShop this week as well. I got very similar results with MaxIm and PS. As per above, I think it was mainly a workflow improvement rather than the actual software used.

I suspect the PixInsight "revolution" was thanks primarily to Rogelio's workshop. I'm still getting used to it, but I do like it. I thought about it like this - you can get PS, and you'll probably get quite a few plugins/actions (eg Gradient Exterminator, Noel Carboni's, various noise reduction plugins, Focus Magic and the list goes on); but PI does all of that for probably not much more than the plugins alone, plus much more. It's written specifically for astro so features many nice inbuilt tools, using PS is kind of what we've all used til now because we had to.

The gradient removal tool appears very powerful (still getting my head around that one for the RGB to go with the above image), as well as the histogram stretch and noise removal. I really have only given it a few hours.

I'm still trying to learn the 2x2 binned RGB combination and blending with 1x1 Ha luminance, but with what I did get out of it last night, I think MaxIm's colours of RGB blending were much nicer, but that may be inexperience with both software and just a fluke. Will report back when I've played with each a bit more.

I also think MaxIm's calibration and stacking is much quicker/easier. That's not to say it's better, but with PI it felt like a few more steps, and a bit more manual input required. Guess that could be because it's more powerful or more flexible, but I can't tell.

One thing that did concern me with PI is that it crashed a few times on me last night. Next time I play with it I'll try to take more note of what I was doing at the time to see if it's repeatable. Was too tired when it happened last night. I'm using the Mac 64 bit version.



Thanks mate. I reckon I can tidy it up a bit more now. Really just an experiment.



This was an experiment with PI. Tried calibrating, aligning/registering, stacking/integrating (PI uses different words to what I'm used to), cropping, then pretty much just that histogram stretching tool Rogelio used to fix the black point and stretch, then played with the noise removal stuff with the inbuilt luminance mask feature. Don't think I've got it all right yet, but shows promise.



Thanks mate :)



See above, mostly PI for this one, only used PS right at the end to "save for web". No idea if PI can do that, too tired to find out last night. :)

I think I'm going to persevere a bit more with PI for the bulk of processing, then just PS right at the end if/as needed. Depending on how comfortable and quick I can get the calibrating and stacking side of things with PI, and depending on the results compared to MaxIm as per above, I'll have to wait and see where I draw the line between MaxIm for image capture and PI for processing.

But it's all a fun ride :D

[atalas]

Looks great,well done.

[troypiggo]

Thanks Mike :)

[Ken Crawford]

Very nice result with well defined details. Amazing region which looks like a nice tri-color NB subject!

[marc4darkskies]

Nicely done Troy!

Cheers, Marcus

[Stevec35]

Well I don't know what the original effort looked like but this is definitely an excellent result.

Cheers

Steve

[RBA]

From my own experience, earlier versions of PixInsight would produce "out of memory" errors when pushing the limits, but I haven't got one of those for a very long time. AFAIK, PixInsight is very stable, HOWEVER, I do know that the Mac64 version is still somewhat experimental due to interface issues.

In any case, if you ever run into a problem, head over to the PixInsight's forum (http://pixinsight.com/forum/index.php) and report it in the Bug Reports section. Usually you'd get a response fairly quickly.

[troypiggo]

Thanks for the encouraging comments, all. I've been down with the flu this week and can't for the life of me combine the RGB. Will have a go st it again when my brain is functioning again. If it ever does, that is. :)