Hey Tony!! - I'm really glad you found it interesting :-) It's a tremendous field of astrophotography and one that I think is growing rapidly! Thank you so much for watching, I hope you have a lovely day! Luke
What has put me off this so far is the sheer number of frames and the hundreds of GB of data to plough through...! It looks like your process works though. Nicely done - great M57 image.
Hey mate! It certainly makes a LOT of data!! at least when using a 'region of interest' crop of the camera sensor, file sizes can be kept down somewhat, but inevitably it still ends up being a chunk! :-D I wish i'd had a big scope for this experiment like my old 250 or 300mm newtonians, I think they'd have done real justice to it, still the Esprit didn't disappoint even running at 645mm focal length! :-) Thanks for watching!
Wow. I’ve been putting this off because I was so busy. Finally got time to watch it and I’m glad it was a long video. Totally entertaining through to the end. This technique is on the rise. Equally impressive is the work I’ve been seeing done with slow Maksutovs. Fine job. I am planning on putting some up as soon as my new mount comes in. Great video. Clear skies.
Hey Garnett! I hope that you are doing well :-) I'm so glad you liked the video mate! - I agree, the technique is becoming more and more mainstream, I could see it taking over from normal imaging if the equipment and software allowed it in the next decade or so! the benefits in resolution are wonderful :-) Thank you so much for taking the time out of your day to watch my video, I am very thankful to you my friend! I hope you have a tremendous weekend and a well earned rest! Best, Luke
This video just made my Saturday morning Luke. Where to begin, firstly video itself loved the editing(music, angles, bokeh) and just way it was all put together, really engaging. I'm sure that was a lot of work but we'll worth it given the quality. I learned a whole lot here about read noise and the concept itself was really well explained. First time I've come across it (although I've been in the game a whole 9 months lol). Really appreciate the shoutout mate and just love seeing how you used it within the video. Such a kick to hear it in someone else's video. No doubt for me you're one of the top astrophotography channels out there. Looking forward to seeing that new camera you've got coming mate.👍 Great image like the new icon. Cheers Ollie
Hey Ollie!! I'm so thankful to hear you enjoyed the video mate, absolutely chuffed in fact :-) Thank you very much indeed for sharing your music! It was a pleasure to have it in the video, I felt bad putting my voice over your beautiful piano work in truth haha! :D It did fit in quite nicely though I'd say! Thank you for the lovely compliment mate, I'll not be able to get my head out of the door now though as it's swelled up so much! :D Hopefully I'll have a decision made and the new camera ordered as soon as possible!! Can't wait :-) All the very best mate, I hope you have a lovely weekend! Luke
Wow, never heard of lucky imaging but I'm gonna give it a go. 5 min subs can be painful with aeroplane trails etc. Your vids are easy to understand and follow, thanks! Pete
Hey Peter! - I hope you have some fun trying them out! it can be really rewarding seeing the result from all those frames :-) the only downside is how long it takes to stack them all sometimes! Clear skies mate :-)
Been trying 5 second calibrated subs. Storage, grading and processing is a bit of hassle. Live stacking would solve that hopefully. Possibility for single chip for imaging and guiding with short exposures simplifies things a lot!
The guiding and imaging from the same chip is a super interesting idea, I know SBIG and similar had some cameras a while ago that had a built-in separate guide sensor next to the main imaging sensor but the only issue was it would be looking through any filters etc, making guiding while imaging in narrowband for example quite difficult, I'd love if the idea was revisited though! Thank you for the insightful comment!
Hi, thanks for the Video Luke. Still I would like to argue if 3sec or even 10sec exposures are lucky imaging. I honestly think there is much more details possible if you go for
Hey mate, hope you are well! - without a doubt the shorter an exposure the better from a sharpness standpoint, but at the end of the day you still need enough exposure to make the image even worth stacking, so there's always going to be a balance until we have cameras capable of 0e read noise! :-) 'lucky imaging' is a very wooly term which leaves itself open to personal interpretation of what you'd define as lucky! I've personally seen exposures as long as 5s display significant shot to shot variance in sharpness, indicating that they could still be sorted and stacked delivering sharper results than traditional approaches, I'd call that lucky imaging still personally, but I appreciate it won't fit everyone's definition 👍 I can't wait for newer cameras to hit the market in the coming decade perhaps which will allow us to go shorter than ever with our deepsky exposures, good times are ahead! :-D Thank you for watching and sharing some discussion!
Thank you Beatrice!! - It's wonderful to hear you've enjoyed the video and image! :-) I would love to revisit this subject with other scopes/targets/cameras as it's one that really interests me! Thank you for watching my friend! Clear skies 👍👍
Hey mate! :D Definitely check out a few of the channels on there who are fellow creators, I decided to start putting that list on at the end to say thank you and give credit to my channel members who are kind enough to give direct support! such a lovely bunch! Have a great day mate!
Beautiful result. Thanks for the great video that clearly explained the concept of lucking imaging deep sky object. I'd love to give it a go, my QHY294MM has fairly low read noise and very small pixels so seems well suited for it. I found out that with SharpCap I can capture a ROI in the centre and thus not have to deal with thousands of 47mp fits. Would have loved to see a side-by-side with traditional long-exposes stacked. My suspicion is with smaller apertures you might be diffraction limited so there's less to gain with lucky imaging.
Thanks so much for that!! I really appreciate the feedback, - I'll likely revisit this subject soon in the hope of making more comparisons and demonstrations :-) Cheers!
Brilliant video Luke. I'll be honest I'd never heard of lucky imaging before this so found it absolutely fascinating. Does this technique still require guiding ?
Hey there Paul! :-) I'm really glad you liked it mate! To answer your question, it doesn't need autoguiding! I used it anyway but arguably not using it can be better for this type of imaging as the small natural drift over time will act a bit like a dither over enough frames! Thank you so much for watching mate, I hope you have a brilliant day! Luke
Great video Luke! I'd never even considered lucky imaging for DSO's but am having some serious tracking issues with my mount at the moment so might be worth giving it a go while I try to sort that out. You got a great result and I think the saturation/colours look awesome. 😉😉
Thanks Riz! :D It can definitely save you a session or two if your mount is playing up mate! - I hope you get it sorted out soon man, and thank you for watching!
A huge part of the seeing equation is local. The telescope, and the immediate site. As a matter of fact seeing is mostly local, not the far atmosphere. Never the less lucky will work there too. If you null out the local seeing you would get many more diffraction limited frames.
Very interesting Luke! Not heard about Lucky imaging before, I can see the interest in it! Your image of the Ring nebula was brilliant! I too follow the Biscuit! Great channel! Loved to hear Ollies music! He’s very talented in music & Astro! Hope your new gear arrives soon! Keep up the good work Luke👍 Clear skies
Hey Simon!! - I hope you are doing well mate :D Lucky imaging is such a fantastic development, I can see it being the future of imaging in some capacity or another! - So glad you liked the video & music choices :D Ollie deserves more credit than he gets for sure so it's brilliant to see you're a fan of him too like me! I hope you are getting some clear skies mate, we don't have too long to finish off these summer targets now I guess! :-) I can't wait! All the very best, Luke
Wow, one of the best Astro videos I have ever watched on utube. Luke, you really are going to be one of the Astro greats. And I love my esprit 80, not imaged with it yet, doing some mods but can’t wait. Thanks for all the videos and tutorials, if you go Patreon I’m in 👍
Wow! That's such a nice thing to say mate, thank you very much indeed! :-) I really hope to keep things going and making content for a long time to come You'll have a brilliant time with your Esprit 80 when you start imaging with it my friend, incredible scope for sure! That's super kind of you say about Patreon! I just think I'm too small of a channel for it yet haha :D Thank you for watching! Clear skies :)
Really, really interesting video 👍 Was there some focus hunting or just bad seeing? 9.25", 10" and 12" reminds me of another video I watched recently, but we won't talk about that. I'll get my coat.
Hey Paul!! the video cam focus was hunting all over the place, it was driving me nuts!! :P a 9.25, 10 and 12.. I think I've seen that one too at some point, haha! Thank you very much for watching and for your support mate, It's hugely appreciated!
10:51 That bit of music sounds similar to the intro of Ryuichi Sakamoto's "Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence" Another lucky coincidence then. Sorry for the off-topic comment 😁
Hey there Edgardo! - Thank you for the comment my friend! :-) The piece of music there was played by my friend Ollie, he could well have drawn inspiration from the piece you mention - great ear if so!! :-) (He's got his own astronomy channel called Ollie's Astro over here on RU-vid if you wanted to check him out!) Clear skies! :-)
Brilliant work Luke I've not got a telescope at the min but going to try this technique with a 100mm prime lens and see how it compares with longer exposure
Hey Anthony! - I'm really glad you liked the video mate! :-) that will be an interesting experiment with your lens, well worth trying out! 👍👍 Wishing you the best of luck with it! Clear skies
@@lukomatico Thanks for the encouragement Luke I live in rural France ( bortle 3 skies) but this year we have not had much of a summer lots of cloudy days hopefully the autumn will be better for astrophotography
We need back to back comparisons between lucky imaged stacks and more traditional multiple minute exposures to best evaluate which produces the best end result. Also, sort out your auto focus in those indoor shots :)
Hey Andy! - I'll keep the advice in mind about more comparison content if that's what you'd like to see! comparisons however were not the aim of this video, so hence not included. RE: the autofocus, it's a bugger but there's not much I can do - do you have any suggestions? Clear skies!
@@lukomatico Yup, understood, all good stuff. For focus issues, I’d make sure the depth of field was decent, achieve focus, then disable auto focus, so long as you’re not moving about that much, that should give you more consistent results, avoiding focus seeking and the resultant focus breathing.
Thank you for the suggestions!! I much appreciate it :-) I was shooting with the DSLR at f1.8 which may have been too shallow looking back! I'll deffo look into doing it manually next time as it drove me mad to watch it back while editing, I kept basically cringing at how it was losing focus all the time haha! Thanks again for watching and for the quality feedback mate, I hope you have a wonderful weekend! Best, Luke
@@lukomatico Yup, I was watching it thinking that is one hell of a shallow DOF :) That defo contributes to the problem, it’s tempting to use the widest aperture you can just because you have it, everyone’s done that, experiment with more like f/4, depends on how far you are from the camera and the focal length ofc. I look forward to seeing your future videos to see if you crack it. Cheers, be well. Andy.
Such a fantastic video with bags of information. I can see from everything in this video it must have taken a lot of time and effort to put together and the fear I would have is it not working at the end and you had issues but got around them! Well done. My highlight apart from the image was your summary of Seeing, “The air blurs things”! Awesome and to the point.
Hey Marc! you are spot on, it really was a big effort to edit and record this one, as you create content yourself you'll know all too well how much of a time sink it can be! 👍 I'm so glad you liked the video mate, it's brilliant to hear!! All the best, Luke
@@lukomatico These types of videos though are absolute gems for the community as you're sharing stuff that's not obvious or easy to come by. Nicely done!
Great video as always mate 👍. Don’t know about anyone else, but the moment that music kicks in at the end, gets me giddy 😂. Simply knowing the results are about to drop on screen 😂. Great image and great information.
Haha :D that's awesome to hear Will! - I'm really glad that you've enjoyed the video and reveal! I'm always worried that the thumbnails are too much of a giveaway but getting people to click on the videos is half the battle! :D Clear skies my friend! Luke
Hey there! - It's definitely still worth it to dither - I should have set up some sort of time based dithering (every couple of minutes perhaps) during capture as it would have helped a bit during processing :-)
Exaxe gets some very interesting results. I’d say the detail fades towards the edges, but wow, the detail in the center is astonishing. His m42 is unreal. I guess if you get that many frames the SNR is way in your favor and any bad seeing is essentially cancelled out. Interesting.
Hey Keith! For sure he concentrates his processing efforts on the target at hand and perhaps less so on the background, I see what you mean 100%! :-) I'd love to visit some other targets with this method as the seasons progress! Thank you very much for watching, I hope you enjoyed! All the best, Luke
@@lukomatico I’ve often wondered about how seeing affects my long exposures. I always thought surely it screws with the resolution, but what can you do about it? I didn’t think there was a way to get enough photons onto the sensor with short exposures, but I suppose when you get into the hundreds of thousands of subs, maybe there are enough photons.
It was a few videos consisting of 2-ish seconds per frame of video :-) taking normal 2s long photos would have worked just as well, but that would mean dealing with thousands of files rather than just a few video files containing all the data. Hope that explains it!
You weren't lying when you said about upping your content quality Luke! I was like - well it's already good already, but this blew me away with the research and experimentation put into it. Did you also script some of this as well? or do you have a really good memory lol Just really well put together and super right up my street with the lucky imaging. Basically loved it! I've been flat out at work and building a shed in the evenings but I meant to mention the new ASI485 and ASI482 to you! I thought these might peak your interest :D I did initially think the ASI482 would have the lower read noise with it's massive 5.8um pixels, However, I do notice the read noise is lower on the 485 which I didn't expect considering it has much smaller 2.9um pixels. I'm of course getting one, that goes without saying, and might opt for the 485 version as it gives 0.6"/pixels with the 200p which sounds perfect for Lucky imaging, and 4x the real estate compared to my 462 for framing those lovely galaxies. Which one are you getting? I'm guessing 485 as well right? Take care and fantastic upload, I told you that you're better than Trevor ;)
Hey Chris!! Ahh mate you are too kind haha! :D I'd love to make every video to a higher quality, I guess it'll end up being a bit of a mix though in the end! You've got me! - I did try scripting out some of this, it made it a little easier to get my thoughts out in a semi-coherent manner as I'm prone to a good ramble otherwise! :P On the note of the 485 and 482, they are interesting cameras! - regarding the read noise, the 482 is the better bet even though it's read noise figure is a little higher - the read noise is 2x higher than the 485, but the pixel size is 4x as large! making the 482 sensor 2x lower read noise than the 485 on a per unit of pixel area basis! :D As you mention though, getting a good sampling ratio is key! 0.6"/pix sounds like in the right conditions you could get phenomenal resolution! - worth a think about the 482 still though as 1.2"/pix is still good, files would be smaller and you could drizzle the data back up in resolution? so many things to consider! my head hurts... :P I've a heck of a mountain to climb yet to approach Trevor's videography skills haha, but man is that a head-swellingly nice compliment you gave, thank you!!! I'm going to continue scratching my head about the 482/485 choice.. hmmm, I don't suppose you have any idea when they are due do you? All the very best my friend, and thank you so much for your incredible comment! Luke :-)
@@lukomatico ah yeah, I wasn't dividing the read noise over the pixel area, Cheers for that, it makes sense now. This makes the decision tougher because I reckon you get around 0.6"/pixel with those fleetingly small moments of still seeing. (Yes you can drizzle like you say, but that's basically an educated guess algorithm) On the other side you get half the read noise, hhhmm? It's a bit vague but we should have them in about a week, maybe a touch longer.
Hey Isaac! I'm glad you liked how it turned out bro, I should really try this with a bigger scope sometime but still - it was fun and worked quite well regardless! :D I hope have a brilliant weekend man!!
Thanks for the video. Since it's like everyone now is doing astrophotography, we need a niche inside of a niche hobby :-) Lucky DSS imaging has really captured my interest but there still isnt too much out there. I am really trying to put Dr Robin Glover theory into practice by taking alot of pictures in a short exposure of 1 to 2 seconds. I have a HyperStar on a C6 so this should make it a little easier. Since I live close to Chicago, IL, USA the sky glow is insane so I need all the help I can get!
I'm glad you liked it David!! - There's so many interesting techniques and avenues to explore these days, and likely loads more new ways of imaging yet to emerge! What a time to be alive :-) good luck with your imaging my friend 👍👍
Awesome mate, very well presented and produced. Your style is very easy to watch and understand and as a total beginner myself (two astro images lol), this means a lot.
Hey Craig! Thank you so much indeed mate, that's really good of you to say! :-) I am so glad to hear that it was easy to watch and understand for someone fairly new to astrophotography, that's simply awesome! - thank you for that brilliant feedback :-) Clear skies mate!
Hey mate!! That's a great target to do it with, I tried it a few years back on the Cat's Eye with a MUCH larger scope than shown here, a 300PDS, it worked fantastically well!! Thank you so much for watching! :D
Nice video Luke, what was your ADU above bias with those shots if you don't mind me asking. Based on the 1.25e RN at gain 300, your bortle scale, and focal ratio, the short exposures you were taking may actually be the correct length of sub exposure anyway.
Hey there Joe! - I don't know exactly off the top of my head RE: adu count, the histogram was off the left at least, but It's true that my light pollution makes it easy to swamp read noise! :D Looking at the 1600mm sub-exposure 'cheat sheet' then I probably wasn't too far off approaching a usable exposure - that said, longer subs definitely give a smoother result, there was quite a lot of FPN that I had to work with in this data that just doesn't show at all in longer subs, but it worked out well enough in the end :D Thank you so much for watching mate! I hope the skies are treating you well, looking forwards to your next work! Best, Luke
@@lukomatico Thanks Luke, I didn't even think of FPN, but I guess that makes sense doing it with a CMOS camera over a CCD. I'm interested to see if any of these astro companies start to make equipment designed for short exposure astrophotography soon.
@@JoesAstrophoto That really would be a dream Joe! - I love the idea of short exposure imaging like this, but just hate the amount of files you have to deal with, it's all very clunky at the moment I guess! :D The new ASI482mc planetary camera looks interesting with it's big pixels and relatively small frame size of 1920x1080, likely to be very sensitive so should be a good fit for lucky imaging, I'm giving it serious thought (also to double up as a guide cam, but there the big pixels won't help so much unless I got an OAG.. there's always something isn't there? LOL!) Thanks mate!
Another brilliant video Luke I have commented on your videos before from my other channel but thought I'd make one up that's strictly just for astro, look forward to seeing some more cheers. Tich.
It were a good astro buddy who called the observatory that when I posted it on Facebook , I think his exact words were "oh look a dumpy dalek" @@lukomatico we used to do a lot of outreach together mainly solar but sometimes we did them at night too, sadly he has passed away now but the name has stuck so it's a way to remember him by. I still need to get a permanent electric feed to it but where I live it's a bit awkward to do so an extension lead works just as well for now. Maybe I'll get some videos done at some point but the last image I did there was last week of the North American nebula & it's as noisy as hell so I don't think I'll bother with that one plus I'm having guiding issues so I think my mount needs looking at. Oh the joys of astro lol.
"Oh the joys of astro" Hahaha, I love it :D so true mate. I'm sorry to hear of your friend, but it's good that you have the gift of his obsy name for you to keep him in your memory, that's a nice story :-) Good luck on the videos should you choose to make some! I'll be sure to check em' out if you let me know! :D Clear skies mate!
Hey Tich! - I just wanted to let you know that I did see that you'd left comments on my latest video but it seems to be automatically being deleted :-( I have this channel and your 'Tich Wykes' one both as approved commenters so I'm not sure what's going on - I'm sorry about that anyway mate, I just didn't want you thinking I'd ignored you or something :-) All the best, Luke
@@lukomatico No worries mate if you can let me know if this works then that would be great, I think a comment may have been deleted as I posted a link to my mates blog about the ASI air plus that he tested recently so thought you might have been interested, so maybe youTube thought I were a spammer? I did enjoy your last video about the ASI air plus btw would love one myself but budget is holding me back, although I did read that QHY are building something similar so there's hope for me yet, well if it will operate my old ccd that is lol.
Another fantastic video Luke. Very informative and something new to try out in the future.You said you were going to up the quality and this certainly delivered,great stuff and an amazing final result on M57.
Hey Jon! - I'd love to make all my videos to this kind of standard (or higher!) but I guess it'll not be possible 100% of the time, that said I'm happy that I didn't rush this out just to combat the feeling of pressure to release content faster :-) It's great to hear that you enjoyed the video, that's all I could really ask for! :D Thank you so much for watching, and for supporting - It's hugely appreciated! All the best, Luke
Hey Flemming! - A dedicated astro camera is a really fun thing to own if you love astrophotography!! :D I'd recommend it always! I'm sure your Nikon D700 can still take a nice pic or two though! :-) Clear skies my friend
@@lukomatico Hehe yep. Though the Nikon D700 doesn't provide true raw images, and clips the black. Also it's really weak in the reds. So that MC 533 looks pretty tempting :D
In planet imaging, key point is how many images will be rejected below some quality point. Sometimes it could be 95%, and almost always more than 80%. How many images survived from those 2500? I have started (April 2022) astrophotography from EAA. Then, I started (July 2022) to keep individual EAA frames, and analyze them. Only -10-20% of images were true lucky (below expected threshold). Exposure were 5-10 sec (actually correct ones calculated by Sharpcap) So, 360 frames per hour, 36 survive. I could say, 7000-10000 such frames are needed and only 700-1000 will be selected for WBPP. This will be true lucky imaging. I learned about Pixinsight and NINA in October 2022, these approaches never overlapped, but I will return to lucky imaging that I have used with EAA.
Very well explained Luke 👍👍 I did the same before I had an equatorial mount and telescope, I then used my Canon 1DxII and Canon 600mm f4 L lens on a normal tripod. Because of the tripod I had to follow by hand, so I had a manual dithering 🙂 And because of the long lens and had to hold on a shutterspeed of about 0.8 to maximum 1 second. With those settings I had to shoot a few thousand images, for M31 for example I shot 3275 images + darks, flats and bias extra. Also I kind of lucky imaging I guess but forced to because lacking material to follow the stars ;-) Can't put a link here to show you the result but for me it looks ok, I'm curious what you think about that
Hey Siegfried! :-D 600mm F4, that's a big chunk of glass!! 150mm of aperture on a lens is crazy big :D I'd love to see your image! if you send it over to the email address in my 'about' page on youtube, it'll be under 'business inquiries' - I hope to see it! That's a huge amount of frames to have stacked, I bet it took an immensely long time. Thank you for sharing! Luke
@@lukomatico Yes Luke that 600 f4 is a big relatively heavy lens that i use for my wildlife shoots. I really love the quality of that lens, it's so crisp and sharp. Sometimes I still use it to shoot astro. Will send you the image this week, hope I don't forget
I keep trying to figure out if I should use a guide cam on my own SC 8" scope even though I'll only do lucky imaging. I get contradictory info on it. Any thoughts?
Hey there mate! - There's definitely some advantages to guiding even with shorter exposures, if nothing else it will allow you to periodically dither your exposures to stop pattern noise building and allow fainter details to show through without being obscured so harshly by noise :-) a worthwhile investment of time and money I'd say to get guiding working! All the best, Luke
@@lukomatico Thanks! That's what I was thinking, too. I just ordered an OAG and for my 8" SC scope. Harder to use but better results at high focal lengths. I'm going place an order for a Player one Sedna guide cam in a few days too.
I mean this in kindness - your music is distracting. Your voice is fine for doing the narration on your own, and your mic is great for voiceover work. You really don't need musical support, but if you're set on having underscoring, I'd suggest turning it way down, particularly the early part of the video. Thanks for the content though.
It's probably not applicable anymore, but I encountered the opposite issue where pip didn't debayer Jupiter capture correctly. I had to resort to using Siril for debayering and then utilized pip once more with debayering disabled.
I had a similar issue last week to what you're experiencing. I normally capture in FITS format and debayer in Siril. However, for some reason, the settings in the capture software reverted to "PNG" format, which I couldn't debayer using Siril. The solution I found was as follows: convert PNG to FITS format files using a Linux tool: mogrify -format fits -path ../converted/ *.png. Then in Siril, change the settings to use a predetermined debayer setting (because no debayer info is included in the converted file), and then debayer with Siril. This solved my issue, this method does also work for "tif" files.
Hey Bill! - I have done in the past and will definitely revisit it as an option, with even a modest processor it can keep up with reasonable framerates including on the fly calibration! :-) I hope you are well!
I didn't get if you talked about what may be the most important part of lucky imaging. How to find the "lucky" frames when you have thousands and thousands of total images. Did you just throw everything in Pipp? How did you measure which frames to keep. That would be the whole point of this exercise, to throw away all but the sharpest ones.
Hey cucu! - You are right , I should have elaborated more on my selection!! - I took around 2100 frames but did not use them all, I told DSS to stack the best 70% I think it was, I'd have loved to be more careful in selection but I just couldn't find the energy to go through all the subs manually to check them at that time :D Definitely something I should have brought up and talked more about though, cheers! I hope you have a great weekend mate!
@@lukomatico Thanks! No worries, it was a very cool exercise indeed. Ever since Astrobiscuit's video came out, I've been wondering about this. At some point I will end up trying it. On the other hand, for true lucky imaging we'd need much shorter exposures to essentially mitigate seeing wobbles. Probably even 1 second is on the upper limit... which brings up the need for much larger aperture for light gathering capabilities. Also, likely you will need to ditch way more frames. Take the example of planetary luck imaging, they take 10-20k frames and keep only 10% in average...
@@cucubits True mate! it's a real hotbed of challenges but the rewards are insane when it all goes well and is executed right, like Exaxe's examples on Astrobin! :D Thank you so much for getting back to me!
Thanks for putting this out there, this is an interesting field and I found this searching for lucky imaging. It would have been really useful to show your great final image against an image taken using the same gear by the more traditional method with 3 or 5 minute subs etc Quick question - I thought one of the principles of lucky imaging was discarding those shots that may not be as clear due to atmospheric impact at that specific time, ensuring you are only stacking the sharpest ones possible. It looks as though you may not have done this, was there a particular reason why?
Hey there! - thank you so much for watching and giving such a detailed comment! :-) Regarding frame rejection : you're absolutely right that you'd usually be very discriminatory with frame selection when performing lucky imaging, however some benefit to resolution can be realised just by using short subs vs the usual long ones, even if you stack nearly all of them without much rejection - I've tested this myself an there's definitely an increase in detail, though not as extreme as only stacking the absolute best few frames 👍 The reason I kept more frames was down to needing the extra SNR that more exposure brings, the end result was still quite noisy so a 'best 10%' stack would have been too noisy to use for the video :-) You made a good suggestion about showing a version taken with longer exposures would have been good, I'd definitely try and do that next time - I just need more clear nights to do it all haha! Thanks again for watching 🙏
Great video Luke! PIPP is a great program for a lot of things. I was wondering why I can't find a 130PDS in the United States. Ever since watching your comparison video I've wanted one.
Hey mate! Yeah PIPP really saved my bacon, I'll have to explore the program more over time as it seemed quite capable! RE: the 130PDS, it seems for whatever reason that SkyWatcher don't sell them in the United States! - I'm really sorry about that, such great scopes should be on sale everywhere! Clear skies mate
That's a great sensor for this kind of application! incredibly low readnoise per um2 of sensor area :-) I have it's little brother already as it happens, the IMX429 - also an interesting option for this kind of imaging! Clear skies!
@@lukomatico IMX chips are great for amateur astronomy. But, there is another level. In my profession, I use fluorescent microscopes. I have one equipped with Teledyne camera. Teledyne has astronomy cameras as well; with whooping 11-16 um pixel size; 18-bit dynamic range; full size; just 0.7 e- read noise; 90% QE for 400-700nm; takes from 350 to 1100nm. I do know what is cost of astronomy cameras, but microscope cameras are 30K and upward.
@@anata5127 Sounds amazing! - research-grade equipment is phenomenally specced for sure, EMCCD/sCMOS are unreal - I imagine that's what you're using at work 🙂 I hope these professional grade technologies trickle down into amateur level equipment sooner rather than later!
@@lukomatico Yes, it is EMCCD/sCMOS. They will definitely come to amateurs astronomy. I think, in 2-3 years. Once upon time, I used apogee CCD cameras as a student. They long moved to amateur astronomy. The same will happen with cutting edge sensors, which are used for science. Nowadays, you buy camera and it is already old in 2-3 years.
I find the biggest downside of luckyimaging is the time it takes to process - I had about 2000 frames from my ASI533MC and it took more than a day to process using Astro pixel processor.
Hey Timothy! - Oh mate, I felt this comment in my very bones haha!! it take sooooo lonnngggg, even with a region of interest crop! Thank you so much for watching!
Hey Luke, great video and glad to see you back, its been a while :D. Just a quick question for DSO lucky imaging, say i take 1500 1 second exposures will i have to go through each one to see which subs are the best frames or will i for example in DSS select the best % frames? Thanks
As expected from you this looks amazing! Lucky imaging is a very good tecnic but it would totally destroy my current PC, what laptop/PC CPU, GPU and Ram do you use? I'm planning on buying a good PC to be able to stack and work with thousands of frames without it crashing and lagging non stop so if you could help with that I'd really appreciate it! Your image was very very beautiful and very sharp for such a small target honestly I believe this tecnic would work great on other targets such as m13,m63,m27,m81 and m82 and much more! Thanks for the video and for the great content, as always it's a blast watching your videos.
Hey Savjol! - Thank you so much mate, I'm really glad that you enjoyed the video and results :-) It'd definitely work on a variety of targets like you mentioned, worth checking out more! Regarding the PC I use, it's a ryzen 5 3600 processor, 16gb of ram and the gpu although largely just for gaming is an rtx 2060 - I hope that helps you :-) Thank you so much for your time and support my friend, I hope you have a brilliant weekend! Luke
Oh wow, absolutely loved this video Luke, really interesting. I imaging you did a load of research for this one. Quite like what you doing with the camera swap angles too. I would never have thought to do exposures that short but the results look great. The astro monster in my head is shouting to give this a go. Super Image at the end, really nice work. Hope all is well mate. Take it easy!!!
Hey there Ben! Thanks so much for your lovely comment mate, it did take quite a lot of work but I'm quite proud of how the video turned out - not perfect, but probably my best yet :-) it was nice to get out and try something different for a change, and with reasonable success too! :D Thank you so much for giving it a watch matey, I'm really glad you enjoyed it! Hope you have a smashing weekend, Luke
Hey Dave! I'm glad you liked the video mate, That's absolutely brilliant to hear :-) Thank you for watching, and thank you so much for your support!! I hope you have a great weekend mate, Luke
Loved the Video, trying but miserably failing to replicate the result. I'm trying to go at it with a C6 and a 224 camera. anyways ... "I've a heck of a mountain to climb yet to approach Trevor", Na you're more content than show. Great work :)
@@lukomatico I only speak the truth man, keep up the good work. If you don’t mind, which is the best platform to reach out to you on, if one has a sizable question? Thanks :)
@@xee1429 Hey mate! - I appreciate that, thank you! Re: questions, if it's a monster of a question then perhaps my business contact email is best (on my about page) I'll be totally honest though, I'm pretty swamped lately so it may take me a bit to reply! All the best, Luke
so what was your take away from this? looks like under 2 hours of total data... could you have done better with conventional LE method? This must practically eliminate the need for guiding.. What Bottle zone was this done from? Did you take one loooooong video for Luminance or several shorter ones? Did your computer hate you in the morning? Great video and experiment.
Hey Tim! - thank you for the interesting question :-) I think on the night I imaged on I should have used shorter exposures to get more resolution benefit at the risk of losing some more signal, it was a night of particularly bad seeing. It was all done from a bortle 7 sky, one long video for luminance, and you are right, my computer did hate me 😂😂 A final take away was I do need a larger aperture scope and a longer focal length to really get more benefit from lucky imaging, shooting at 650mm for such a small target was adding extra challenge to an already challenging project! Thank you for watching!
Hello, Really excellent video! you have a good idea to talk about this relatively unknown technique even if it has been around for almost 10 years. There are several points that you tackle perfectly well, the first is the reading noise, it is even the only quality that a camera must have to launch into short exposures. We can say that we can even go as far as a "virtual" absence of signal (apart from the stars which allow a cling to the processing software) so that the target nevertheless escapes from the noisy photonic background. An example with M1: ekladata.com/pCNI99BNhROdu_xC1x3gh90e3hU.gif In any case your video is very well done! Excellent job! I'm also a fan of Dorche and Lucas ... Exaxe (stephane gonza)
Hey there Stephane! - I'm a bit starstuck if you'll excuse the pun, it's brilliant to hear from you - I've been a huge fan of your work for a long time! I'm so happy to hear that you enjoyed my little video on this subject of which you are so accomplished, that's very high praise indeed coming from you - thank you! :-) I really enjoyed seeing your M1 gif, it is phenomenal to see the image SNR change with the subexposure count like that when individual exposures look quite 'thin' on signal!- awesome. Thank you so much for taking the time to leave your thoughts and kind words, I do very much appreciate it! Wishing you all the very best, and most of all - clear skies! Luke
Hey David! I'm glad you enjoyed the video! I'm sorry the music was a little loud in this one for you, I really get into it while editing and maybe get a bit carried away at times! :-) I've got another video on the way that's already uploaded and rendered where you'll likely find the same issue at times, but in future I'll try and bear this in mind a little more as I edit, thank you! :-) Clear skies David!
Haha :D Traditional is still best in most cases so I'd not worry mate! On the occasional target lucky imaging can really shine though :-) I hope you enjoyed! Thanks for watching mate!
Luke, as always very informative, but also thought provoking to try something new, great final image, PIPP is a great program for planetary imaging. Kr Ian
Hey Ian! Thank you so much, I'm glad you liked it! - Truly PIPP is a stellar program, it helped save the day! :-) I hope that you are getting some clear skies! All the best, Luke
Hi Luke, This video was FASCINATING!!! Maybe I missed it, but were the original luminance images saved as an SER file or individual FIT or TIFF files? Also, what capture program did you use? I want to do more on the Ring nebula with the larger C11 scope. there is an outer ring glowing in dull red that I somehow want to try to capture, but it will take more than 3 second exposures .... more like 300 seconds. Again, FASCINATING video. (Patrick of Savannah)
Hey Pat! :-) I'm so glad you found it interesting! - re: the file type, they were all .ser video files but due to a problem with autostakkert they needed to be turned into .tiffs with PIPP! I think you and your C11 will take a magnificent image of M57 and it's extensions - I can't wait to see how it turns out! Thank you for watching Pat! All the very best, Luke
Good video Luke with lots of great information. Not sure about lucky imaging myself, to be fair I have not tried it (old school, old git lol) Think I will give this a try though and see what results I get
Hey Glenn! - I hope things are good for you at the moment mate, I just saw you got a new scope - what a beautiful beast of a photon hoover, it's glorious! :-) I bet lucky imaging would work well with that to be honest if you give it a go! I just wanted to say big big congrats on 2k subs man, nobody deserves it more mate! Clear skies! Luke
@@lukomatico thanks Luke. It is certainly a light bucket. Having some challenges re balancing and guiding but getting there. Weather as always playing its part. May even join the BAT and see what I can add. Best get it working first lol 2K subs ....i was shocked actually as it kind of happened quite quickly
Lucky imaging is not about freeze framing the seeing. Seeing is not constant. Lucking imaging is about capturing when the momentary seeing is better than the average and stacking those images. And it was amateurs that developed lucking imaging. It doesn't work on large telescopes.
Hey there! Thanks for your comment :-) I believe we mostly agree on this, but perhaps would personally phrase a discription differently even though the essence of what's being described is the same. Lucky imaging really IS about freeze framing the seeing, simply because the seeing isn't constant as you say - you take the best and stack them, rejecting the worst. It does indeed work on large telescopes though, better than on small telescopes even as they have a higher overall resolution limit - why else would the best terrestrially captured planetary images come from huge scopes using planetary lucky imaging techniques, and not from small scopes 👍
Hey mate! - You do tend to get quite nice tight stars as a result of those short exposures :-) I had a ccd as one of my first cameras by the way, an Atik 314L+ mono and I absolutely loved it!! Thank you for watching!
Rank amateur here...I was under the impression that calibration frames weren't really necessary for doing lucky imaging. Perhaps I am confusing this with live stacking method?
Hey mate! - calibration files are definitely a boon but not totally necessary, - I often use at least flats and bias when doing even live-stacking too! :-) Cheers!
Thank you Luke, throughly enjoyed this latest video, i managed my 1st night since May, last Sunday i was surprised on how much i had forgotten :) only did M31.. Took me an 1/2 hour to find it :) Srar adventurer worked great, Looking for to your next video
Hey mate! I hope your recovery is going well, it's brilliant to hear you got outside and did some imaging :-) I'm sure you'll knock the rust off your skills in no time at all and be right back at it! Thank you so much for watching!
Hey! This was a really helpful brillinat video.Couple of questions I have: - did you use the same calibration frame method like "normal" deep sky shooting? - With such a short exposures is it necessary to use cooled cam? (I have asi 178 and 294 pro) - what about taking a video instead of single images and use pipp as3 etc? thx
Hey there Krisztián! - I'm glad you liked the video my friend :-) RE: calibration frames, no darks flats or bias were used, just lights. RE: cooling, - it's always beneficial really, but sometimes not required to perform well with the newer sensors on the market today! RE: video, - that would have been my preferred way to capture it if I was to do this again I guess! :-) Thanks for watching, I hope that helps!
Liking your style and presentation. Creative criticism: please learn to lock your autofocus - this would take your videos to another level. Not sure if the continuous music helps my autistic brain concentrate on your message.
Hey Peter! - Great to hear you like the video my friend! :-) RE: the autofocus problem, it's an annoying thing I realise! I'd much rather manually focus but I do all my filming alone, so without someone to stand in as a model for me to focus on, or something to put in the correct focal plane that I'll present from then doing a manual focus without anything to focus on is a bit of a guess, I will try and figure something out though - sorry if it's frustrating to watch mate! :-( All the same, thank you for watching!! :-)
Hey Ian! You'd usually stack just the best ones, but in an ideal world you'd have lots of good frames to stack rather than just a few! :-D I stacked the best 65%-ish of those lights that I captured for reference :-) Clear skies!
Very interesting experiment Luke. I recently did something similar, but I used a 70mm x 400mm Guiderscope as a telescope (not the best optics. It was for experimentation) I used a 533MC and a 462MC for Omega Centauri without tracking with 400 x 0.5s + 50% Gain. The results weren't spectacular but good enough to test short exposures with my 10 "SC f / 6.3 soon. Thanks for sharing.
Hey Jesus! I actually watched your Omega Centauri video on your channel with the 462 in, such an amazing sight! :-) How did the 533 and 462 compare if you don't mind me asking? was one clearly better or both similar? I hope that you are able to have some fun with lucky imaging soon with your 10" SCT! That'll be a great instrument for the job! :O I hope you have a wonderful weekend mate!! Luke
@@lukomatico Hi Luke. The 462 MC and 533MC behave similarly in short exposures of 0.5 to 1.0s for Deep Sky. The advantage of the 533MC is the cooling that significantly reduces the noise of the individual frames. As soon as I test with my SC 10 "f/6.3 I will tell you (f/6.3 is the native focal radius of some Meade SC from the 90s). I usually use it at f/4 with FR. With the small field of the 533MC I can avoid the coma and spherical aberrations that the FR produces at the edge of the field due to the short f/4 focal ratio foa an SC. Regards
@@jesuspineiro1622 Thank you so much for getting back to me my friend! That's really interesting information indeed, In that case I may yet try and use my 2600MC (same sensor tech as the 533 basically) as a lucky imaging camera with a region of interest crop selected to keep file sizes down! I really appreciate the info, thank you :-) Have a great day!, Luke
Nice video. Trying a new style? Seems a little Trevor Jones but with actual content and not just wistfully looking up while talking and then showing a photo. One thing I would suggest is to try siril again now you have the individual tiff files but use the generalized extreme stacking method and select weighted on the stacking page. Should work well on such a large data set.
Hey Michael! You got me :D I was trying a bit of a different style, - I'd like to make more videos like this in the future, as I feel really quite proud of it :-) I was forcing myself to get 'something' out each week and my creativity and quality suffered as a result I think. RE: Siril, I'll keep the .tiffs and give that a go! Thank you for the suggestion :-) I was just so relieved to find that something had finally worked that I just went with it and stacked everything in DSS! This is something I'd like to revisit as I'm really interested in the subject, It'd be interesting with a colour camera as originally planned and maybe a "proper" scope for it, 10/12" newt etc - Then it's just a case of finally getting some better than average seeing! Thank you so much for watching mate, I hope you have a great weekend!
I enjoyed it. Just a suggestion, but as you've done previously, why not release the data for everyone to have a go with? Obviously it would be a lot of data in this case but that's half the fun!
Fantastic video again Luke and great image, I really enjoyed this. I had the same issue with the grid pattern when I tried planetary imagery using Autostakkert. Like you, I had no idea how to solve the issue. I tried again a few months later and didn't experience the issue again...very strange. thanks for the tip on PIPP, I'll try that in the future if I encounter the same issue. Clear skies
Thank you very much Russell! - I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one that's experienced some serious weirdness from Autostakkert! 😅 So glad PIPP saved the day 👍👍 Thank you for watching mate!
Hey Jason!! I hope you are able to get out imaging more in AZ now the heat has lessened a bit :-) I'm really glad to hear you enjoyed the video, it's pretty wild what can be done with these newer sensors - I'm only just scratching the surface of it! Have a wonderful weekend my friend! :-) Luke
Awesome Video!! Love The Ring Nebula Shot!! I do EAA imaging With My ZWO ASI 224mc! I need Try Imaging Some Clusters and Orion Nebula hopefully by this Winter! Great Video! I follow AstroBiscuits Channel As Well By the way!! He has a Series Of Videos On Lucky Deep Sky Imaging! I really Love That image Of Ring Nebula! Clear Skies👍🏻🙂🔭
Hey Avanteesh! Thank you very much matey! I'm happy with how it turned out, your 224 is a great camera for lucky imaging for sure! you'll be able to take some amazing shots with it :-) Thank you for watching!!
