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Post by Deleted on Oct 22, 2019 22:48:22 GMT
Tried the 183 on the Rasa 2 nights ago and pointed at Pavo. Could barely see ngc 6744 on the screen. Needed a bit of astrotoaster to get an image . Tried again last night with the 290 on the Rasa , could see an image on screen but not much detail. Fairly low surface brightness. zwo 183 11s x 65 astrotoaster zwo 290 15s x 16 no post process cheers paul
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elpajare
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Post by elpajare on Oct 23, 2019 7:19:28 GMT
The second image has a lot of signal. If you did a processing you would have a spectacular image. It's very good!
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Post by Deleted on Oct 23, 2019 7:28:19 GMT
Carlos,when I stretch it on Astrotoaster, I lose a lot of the detail. Your Astronomy tools may do a better job. I have looked at Astronomy tools but it looked a bit complex. I just need to sit down and learn it. For dim galaxies, the 290 mono on the Rasa seems to be a good combination. cheers Paul
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elpajare
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Post by elpajare on Oct 23, 2019 7:29:03 GMT
Your photo after a couple of minutes with Startools ....
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Post by Deleted on Oct 23, 2019 7:58:44 GMT
Carlos,that is much better than what I could do on Astrotoaster. I meant to say Startools but had a senior moment . I need to learn that program. cheers Paul
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elpajare
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Post by elpajare on Oct 23, 2019 10:06:48 GMT
I think the creator of Startools is Australian (Melbourne).
For the type of photos we take, we only need a few steps to have decent results. The program is designed for astrophotographers and half of the tools we do not need.
Anyway they have a Forum and they are very friendly people, especially the Admin, Ivo Jager.
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elpajare
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Post by elpajare on Oct 23, 2019 10:13:45 GMT
This version is after making an automatic reduction of the brightness of the stars and applying a Sharpening filter to the galaxy
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elpajare
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Post by elpajare on Oct 23, 2019 10:19:05 GMT
By the way, this galaxy is beautiful, invisible at 41º lat N where I live. It is one of those that I can never will see and I appreciate that you share it. What's happened with the color?
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Post by Deleted on Oct 23, 2019 10:54:41 GMT
I used the zwo 290 mono. I find I can get more detail with the dim galaxies with the mono. I will make the effort with Startools cheers Paul
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elpajare
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Post by elpajare on Oct 24, 2019 7:03:35 GMT
If you can, try the same galaxy with the same telescope but with the IMX294
The color increases the details too. I'm intrigued as it would be ...
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Post by Deleted on Oct 24, 2019 9:32:56 GMT
It looks like cloudy nights for the next 5 nights Carlos. I will use the 294 and remove the light pollution filter as well next chance I get cheers Paul
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Post by Deleted on Oct 24, 2019 10:45:45 GMT
Carlos, there were clouds, but Pavo was clear. Here is ngc 6744 ,zwo 294, 58s x 10, and light pollution filter removed. The wider FOV with the 294 makes the image very small and with a small stretch on astrotoaster cheers Paul
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elpajare
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Post by elpajare on Oct 24, 2019 15:35:12 GMT
I'm sorry but this image you sent me I can't take advantage of. Do you have a way to send me the original with full resolution? It seems that you have reduced it in size and there is a lot of light pollution (clouds?) In addition to an important vignetting. This is what comes out in AutoDevelop:
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Post by Deleted on Oct 24, 2019 18:53:57 GMT
will try again tonight . Might need to be email cheers Paul
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elpajare
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Post by elpajare on Oct 24, 2019 20:35:39 GMT
I send you a PM
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Post by Deleted on Oct 28, 2019 21:22:21 GMT
Carlos,I have been saving my images in Sharpcap "as seen", which saves it in a PNG file that doesnt have enough information to do any post processing . I think that was the problem when you applied Startools to the image in the previous post. When I use Astrotoaster all I ever do is a 1 or 2% expand. I have been able to do that on the small png files. What I need to do is save it as a 16bit FITS file which is a much larger file if I want to use Startools I was a bit tired last night and stupidly saved ngc 6744 "as seen" again which was about 600k and not suitable for post processing. This was 44s x 14 on the 290 and Rasa as compared to the first image which was 15s x 16. The 15s was probably better focused. 44s x 14 no post process 15s x 16 no post process By coincidence,in the latest Australian Sky and Telescope mag, there is an image of ngc 6744 done by a reader, Mark Schapper. He did a total exposure of 6 hours plus whatever post processing.There is no comparison in the quality of his image against mine but I am just not cut out to be able to put that sort of effort into 1 image. cheers Paul
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elpajare
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Post by elpajare on Oct 29, 2019 8:22:49 GMT
I capture my images in jpg and process them in jpg. About 5 Mb. In size. It is enough for Startools. Actually before starting the processing I reduce them with the BIN tool and in the end they are less than 1 Mb. The size is very flexible from what I see and no detail is lost in the final image. This is the result of treating your 143 Kb image with Startools::
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elpajare
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Post by elpajare on Oct 29, 2019 9:48:41 GMT
This is the 14 x 44 sec version. Like the other it seems that the data coming from the camera has been streched. Look at the image given by the AutoDev of Startools, the stars and the background in general has deformations in the image. I would try to take the photos with all the default parameters and the maximum gain by adjusting only the shutter speed to get a Histogram peak around 25% (counting from the left). See what happens..... Captura de pantalla de Autodev Imágen final con Startools
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elpajare
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Post by elpajare on Oct 29, 2019 15:17:30 GMT
In the November Sky & Telescope magazine there is a very interesting article about the mapping of our galaxy and they mention NGC 6744 as one of the most similar to the Milky Way. It is precisely the galaxy that Paul is photographing and I think it's great to be able to see it thanks to him.
The photographs are detailed and perfectly show the structure of the spirals and the central bar.
Thanks for sharing, Paul !!
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Post by howie1 on Oct 30, 2019 1:26:51 GMT
I would try to take the photos with all the default parameters and the maximum gain by adjusting only the shutter speed to get a Histogram peak around 25% (counting from the left). See what happens..... That 15-25% position for where the peak should be is what most folk also do when using the SharpCap stacking. Get the display histogram peak around 15-25% off the left hand edge of the graph (underline display histogram! Not the stacking histogram!) THEN click the SharpCap Live Stack button. Stacking will then work better as the individual images have a better dynamic range of data saved within them. That is, work better than when the individual images display histogram peak is barely off the left hand edge. So definitely give it a go Paul using elpajares workflow. It's a good suggestion. I suggest using SharpCap though, to do the stacking and "observing" beside the scope when you do. Why? Well you're then "set" to get instant results in future VA sessions. Without also having Startools involved. But, of course, also save the frames and use StarTools to tweak to get that final beaut image to keep when you get home if you wish to. BTW ... when I used that workflow back in the early days when I used ASI224mc with early SharpCap versions, it worked well .... up to a point! Mag 12 and dimmer it was very hard to get the display histogram peak 15-25% across the histogram. If you did get close to that percentage for the peak, then it was usually very hard to pull faint stuff out of still very bright images. So (back then in my early days) for very dim stuff I followed the old "just-get-the-curve-off-the-left-edge" rule. It worked better for my early processing skills on very faint stuff. But ... as that was about 4 years ago, my technique was probably crap back then! LOL. And both cameras and SharpCap have improved since then. Over to you Paul to try it all out. cheers
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