[Gavin1234]

Finally got some clear skies, sorted out my new alignment issues and got a couple of images last night.

These have just had a quick stretch so far because I had to leave for Melbourne this morning. A lot more noise than I would have thought and I need to remove the rings from the stars in the helix picture amongst plenty of other things.

I’ve settled on gain of 160 and 5 min subs for both of these targets as a standard approach. I feel like only now after months of learning that I’m consistent enough to really start building up data to eventually end up with a good image.

The horsehead is about 15 x 5 min subs and the helix is about 40 x 5 min subs. I’ve used 250 bias, 50 darks and 50 flats. Calibrated and stacked to masters in PI. Any thoughts on why I would have so much noise in the picture at this stage? I would have thought that with 40 x 5 min subs it should be much cleaner at this point. Possibly a calibration, integration issue? I’m just learning that process with PixInsight at the moment.