Quote:
Originally Posted by RugbyRene
Hi,
I have a new ASI2600MC and was wondering if it is possible to use it as a mono camera by using narrowband filters. I mean we have the L-Extreme, L-Enhance and OPT Triad filters which do that, but can we use Ha, Sii and Oiii filters separately to achieve something like a mono camera. I realise it will take longer to capture the data but other than that what are the technical limitations?
Rene
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Hi Rene,
Yes it is entirely possible. With each filter set of subs you will still get RGB data. Let say for example you’re using a 3nm Ha filter. Your blue and green pixels will still have data all be it very very low amounts and most of it will be noise. Subsequently your O3 filter will have data across the blue and green channels and very little on the Red. So remembering this it’s really up to you what you do to combine them. You can stack all three channels from each filter and save it as a gray scale image and associate the name of that image with which ever filter you were using to take them. Or.... you can use software such as Astro pixel processor to extract the channel from the RGB data and save the result as a gray scale image associated with the filter you were using. All you are doing which ever way you go about it is creating an gray scale image that you can then assign to a colour when you process. Remember that when imaging narrow band you are creating an image from data rather than “ taking a photo “. You are assigning data to a certain colour for no other reason that to create contrast between the different wavelengths so they can be clearly identified in the final image. The balance of these colours takes time to master and varies across different objects. Yes there is software that does a good job of doing some of the ground work for you but if you understand what the software is doing you can have much greater control of the final product and tailor your images to your liking. It will also give you a much greater understanding of what other images you see are composed of and help you to achieve similar results.
I hope this makes sense
Cheers
Ryan