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I'll definitely be trying this method. Though my setup is approximately 100 ft from my front door, and it's not that big a deal to take the flat panel out there. It'd still be nice to do more from inside. Thanks for the informative video and keep them coming!
What I like about it is I can shoot my flats then transfer the flats and lights to the SSD and all I have to do in the morning is walk out and pick up the SSD. It's all ready to go. Very nice on buggy summer mornings and icy winter mornings.
Honestly i still prefer to sleep at dawn. I prefer to use a cheap flat panel like the one you have shown BEFORE the acquisition, while waiting the astronomical dark. ;-)
Hi there! Do you know if Affinity Photo 2 has a process similar to CLAHE - contrast limiting adaptive histogram equalization? I saw someone use it on their Andromeda and it really brought out the dust lanes. They are in the same bortle as me using the same device. I've really grown into affinity photo 2 to finish off my images and really don't want to have to bring it back into PI to handle that. Any ideas 🙂?
I don't know of anything like CLAHE in Affinity. Affinity takes the approach of giving you discreet tools to mix and match as you will, rather than scripts with predefined functionality. To accomplish something like CLAHE, I would divide my image into layers based on luminosity and operate on each discreet layer separately. Though I have found it to be more efficient to split the high and low frequency information and operate on that information discreetly.
@@SKYST0RY the high frequency separation method you showed seems to affect sharpening rather than contrast. How would you draw at the dusty details in the outskirts of Andromeda using frequency separation?
@@JoshuaAkonom Duplicate the high frequency layer. Sharpen one layer to bring out the best arms and sharpen the other layer to bring out the best core. Then selectively erase out any over-sharpened areas to reveal the less sharpened layer beneath.
Gaming computers make great, affordable photo/video processing computers. My system is 3 years old. It was close to top of the line at the time but now is just okay. Even so, it will process an average of 187 subs/2 hours. My recent image of the Tulip Nebula with almost 1700 subs took about 9 hours to stack.
I see on astrobin all the discoveries people make.Wondering what goes into doing all the research and determining that you actually discovered something new
Noting and cataloging discoveries is a huge topic. Suspected discoveries are frequently peer confirmed and then they have to be reported to the IAU for confirmation and registration.
It's been a really good summer. Lots of clear nights. Last winter, I was lucky to get two good nights in a month. Usually, winters are much better, though.
Yes. The half moon image in the video was done with the C8 with the reducer/corrector on. The moon fits the FoV of the 1" sensor perfectly at that configuration.
Thank you! All I do is a visual inspection prior to running SFS. Regardless of the myths that WBPP will remove satellite trails, satellites will leave "scars" in images, even if faint, so I manually remove them. And SFS doesn't catch the occasional double image. (I'm still not sure what causes the double image. I get one or two per night. I think perhaps a bug where NINA auto centers while shooting.) So a manual review is good. It only take a few minutes with Irfanview, then straight into SFS for final culling. Then into WBPP.
Do you debayer before visual assesment? The origin of my question is that my subframes before debayering looks so blocky i even doubt SFS is doing calculations the right way
whenever i import stacked tiffs into affinity they get a non destructive gamma correction that gets applied to the exported image, yours seemed to import without that, did you do something different?
I have never had this issue. I tried looking around the settings to see what's happening but can't find anything on it. Are you using 32 bit? That gives more export options so you may want to check that.
whenever i import stacked tiffs into affinity they get a non destructive gamma correction that gets applied to the exported image, yours seemed to import without that, did you do something different?
Do you mean the gamma correction is done in PI? At first guess, I am thinking you may not be operating in the same color space between PI and AP. I find sRGB is the most consistent. Make sure both apps are setup for the ICC color space. I also turn off any form of compression when saving tifs to avoid degradation, but I doubt that affects color space.
@@SKYST0RY When imported into Affinity the ICC Color Space washes out the colors of the image. It can be turned off but it seems to be applied regardless after exporting
@@shiny_pantz This issue is absolutely new to me. I've never heard of it before. Next question is are you working with images of the same bit size between the apps. If you are working with a 16 bit image in PI are you saving it as a 16 bit image and opening it as a 16 bit image. I really think this must be an issue of pallete, though.
Great video! I will never be able to settle between fast scopes and insane focal lenghts. I now shoot with a 10" Newtonian 1200mm f/4.7 and it's in my opinion a very sweet spot between zoom and speed. Some 20 hours of exposures on a target with this scope outputs a shit ton of details. Would even go as far as upgrading the tube to a 12" Fast Newt 1200mm f/4.0 which would exponentially increase the light gathered. However I also crave a RC telescope that goes beyond 2000mm, just to have the power of imaging small galaxies. Do you think it would be worth the effort? Seems like not only do I need a new camera with large sensor and pixels (just as you explained in this awesome video), but at that focal if I'm not mistaken you kind of depend on good to excellent seeing, which I don't always have. What do you think? Also, you got yourself a new subscriber :D
Hello, and thank you! I think a RC for distant objects is definitely worth it. You'll have to spend more time on target, and success will depend more on the quality of your sky, for sure. But even OK seeing will be workable. Basically, the better the seeing, the fewer the subs you'll have to cull. Shoot shorter subs so you can be more aggressive with your culling. Good subs are the foundation of good images.
Wonderful narration! When I started narrowband astrophotography a long time ago (in July) it was my first target. Didn’t even know what I was imaging! Thanks for the great video.
An amazing video! Thank you so much for creating it. It gave me the inspiration to combine my 7h of M16 with my 5h of M16 from two year ago. Even though I have used my RC8 once and once my 150/750 Newton I was able to combine all the data. The combination of both data sets already looks amazing with just the screen stretch applied.
It is amazing what more time on target can do. I have found data reaches certain critical masses where even adding just another hour makes an amazing difference.
Siril likely has evolved somewhat since I made this video. I haven't used it in a year, though, since switching to PixInsight, so I haven't kept on its newer workflow.
Great video. Thanks for the inspiration. But... 5 days (nights) for 1 image. Wow, in my area in Germany that's basically 100% of the clear nightsky available over a year...
Thanks for finding this very useful tool in PI. It would be nice if the tool could summarize the first and second deviation value so one would not need to manually find the value. Unless I’m missing something from the charts. Also you need to be a little careful on your wording, the expressions are in the approval window so you are really trying to select data within the gray regions and cull samples outside the expression.
Great video. I’ve seen other videos about SFS but none that talk about the specific properties to use to cull your subs. I also found that you can use FWHMSigma <= 2 && EccentricitySigma <= 2 && MedianSigma <= 2 && Stars > (your lower limit) works quite well. It eliminates the step of searching for the value just below the Sigma 2. Let me know what you think about this alternate expression.
I also use that for a faster first selection, but I manually check those subs in the proximity of the 2 sigma mark. Hard to say bye to 300s or 600s subs 😅
It's a good idea. I often manually review measurements to make sure they are worth culling or keeping even despite the statistical measurements. Ex. If all the subs are good but some are exceptional, a statistical measure would show the good subs to be of less quality in comparison even though they are entirely worth using. So it is a good idea to watch the discreet numbers and even do a visual inspection prior to using SFS.
I tend to agree with @NotAmishAstronomer13. It can be difficult to get cooperative weather conditions for long integration times, so I am hesitant to cull any frames that may have salvageable data. There are great videos by Adam Block on the rejection algorithms used by wbpp.
great vid, I am pretty new to all of this and most videos start from the middle and even those who say from to finish miss out on a lot of things I don't know notting about like darks and flats and what ever. hope this will make me do something with my telescope. but a question, if I tray to get Saturn and I use a robotic telescope that can kinda track, do I use the same technic for stacking the pictures even if its a planet?
Thanks for all the great videos! One shortcut is that many parameters have a SIGMA suffix available. So one could say FWHMSIGMA < 2 to indicate all FHWM less than the top of the faint gray background instead of having to find the precise FWHM. ECCENTRICITYSIGMA works too.
I get okay, but not great, results with WBPP's culling. I prefer to keep the process much more hands-on. In fact, unless I have thousands of images, I give them all a visual inspection before even running them through SFS and manually remove images with satellite trails or vibration-based errors. Automation still promises more than it can deliver.
