I did the Fornax galaxy in late 2014 with my old scope (150mm f/5 Newt) from the suburbs, wasn't overjoyed with the result. Did it with my new scope (200mm f/5 Newt), sharper, but conditions still made me unhappy and gradients were a bit rubbish, so I've tried merging the two, just in Photoshop before reducing the noise in them. Slightly better, slightly more detail in the arms, and almost worth sharing
4 hours of 5-min exposures on two scopes, details in the larger view.
Some really good detail in that image but a lot of noise. you have captured a lot of data which should have helped with the noise, do you have an idea what temp the sensor was during imaging? darks might help a bit too if you didn't take them.
I second Aidan, it looks like you have captured many photons, noise is difficult to get rid of at times though. Good calibration images can really help with this.
NoiseWare might help it.
I have the Free Community version if you want, it's no longer available from the site and it only allows a jpeg result but it would reduce the nosie considerably. You could consider buying the real thing then.
PM me if interested...
Thanks all for the kind words - and yes, noise was the key issue. The gradients are mainly due to stray light in my neighbourhood that I can't quite remove (though maybe with more skill I could!), but the noise was an unavoidable consequence of pretty hot, hazy nights - the overnight min temps were 18.1C and 22.7C, so at late evening imaging time, likely very well over 20C for both. Not the best for uncooled DSLR work! To be honest I'm surprised I could get anything much out of them There were darks and flats removed for both.
I'm gradually learning a fair bit more about PI's noise reduction tools, and so I'm not going to explore into other NR techniques now, despite the kind offer Brent (). It's such a learning curve, that I feel I should get on top of one (or at least reach the limit of my skill) before trying another method, at least for now.
Andy, under those conditions and uncooled I reckon you've done a bloody great job with it, it's one of my favourites and you can see why in your image.
No problem Andy although it is standalone and so easy to use. You don't lose or damage your original and it could be interesting to see what the pic could really look like.
Great shot Andy, considering the circumstances you were under, temperature wise.
With my Pentax KD100, I had difficulty with noise reduction in summer, dark libraries weren't much good, so I resorted to "on the fly" camera noise reduction. That was better but reduced imaging time obviously.
Anyone else tried merging from two scopes in PI or PS?
Yes, I've combined data from a FSQ-106ED and QSI-683 camera with data from a Ceravolo 300 and FLI PL16803 with decent results in PI. I used combined stacks from the two systems, registered them with StarAlignment and then used ImageIntegration to get a noise-weighted combination.
Thanks Bill, that's a tough tactic, with losing so much time!
Rick, interesting tip - I had a wee shot at that method, the star matching didn't quite work out so well this time and I didn't prod the matching settings. PI is probably the way to go, with a bit more patience
Rick, interesting tip - I had a wee shot at that method, the star matching didn't quite work out so well this time and I didn't prod the matching settings. PI is probably the way to go, with a bit more patience
Try turning on Distortion Correction in StarAlignment, Andy. No guarantee, but it may help...
There were darks and flats removed for both.
