lukepower

As Ron is eagerly producing an incredible amount of truly great images, I also tried to do something useful. I feel like my processing skills are slowly improving, even if I am still far away from you other guys. Here is a version of M106 which I aquired during the last days and elaborated with Pixinsight. I am quite happy with this version, even if the details are still not where I want them to be... I am also considering to upload my raw files to Google Drive or somewhere, so that somebody else can give it a try and see what happens

Very nice, Ron!

Beautiful as always, Ron, congrats!

@rharter: Hm well, give it a try Sequence is - of course - still beta

Hrm, interesting... Actually, what you have to do in the exposure settings would be: check the "MLPT" checkbox for an MLPT run check dithering if you want it configure some exposures (at least one), as the MLPT lenght is calculated by the sum of the duration of the exposures. An empty "exposure" would probabily cause some errors (just a guess) save the settings as an exposure settings file It's strange indeed if you get that error. If I click the "Set exposures" button the corresponding window pops open and I can insert whatever I need... Which version of Sequence do you have?

Hi Ralph, well, you basically would set up your sequence with your targets and respective imaging parameters... It shall do everything by itself. I am not sure if I understood your question correctly, though I'll happily try to assist you (considering that good weather is forecast in the coming nights, even more ) And yes, it takes a bit to set up everything properly, especially the Autofocus routine was a bit complicated for me...

Ralph, this is perfectly possible right now... even if it's limited to 10 objects. It really depends on whetever you need MLPT (like I do) or not. If not, there are other solutions which are more robust and mature than Sequence, that's sure. Prefetch, you're right, usually you'd start at dusk and then go through all single targets one after the other, no matter what time it is (this can actually lead to imaging in dusk or even morning light... but that's another story). What you could do is manually set the start time of Sequence (like, let's say 1 am), then it would start at that time. Of course it's once again valid for the whole list of targets...

Hm, well, not really... Actually I am not sure if that would even make sense, you basically start an imaging run with several targets and exposures, and it runs them sequentially one after another. You can indeed set certain settings (like, how many measurement points in one MLPT run you want), but at the end it makes one run per target...

Hi Ralph, using the beta of Sequence, this works remarkabily well (even if a few glitches are still there), and it is somewhat comparable to using ACP. There was some request for a way to use MLPT from other programs, too, but as long as that is not possible, you'd probabily good to give a try to Sequence. During the last months I used it quite successfully for aquiring images without any interaction from my side.

Okay, I went through all those images again, this time using FLI's RBI flooding in the camera. I had severe ghost images in my raw images, so I had to re-take them with RBI mitigation. Of course, I had to take new appropriate darks with the same exposure time. Also, I am now calibrating the flats with a "normal" method (scaled darks with no RBI flashing). The results are definitively improving, especially the oh-so uneven background (caused partially by RBI) is now better

Hmm... Actually I cannot fully understand why the "beta" of Sequence has not become an official beta for everybody. It is working well... enough

Nice one Ron! I noticed your tutorials for Pixinsight processing, I'll have to grab and study them, very interesting! Thanks

NGC 2174 (also known as Monkey Head Nebula) is an H II[1] emission nebula located in the constellation Orion and is associated with the open star cluster NGC 2175.[1] It is thought to be located about 6,400 light-years away from Earth. This is a narrowband image, sum of 60 minutes exposures in Ha7, O3 and S2. Yeah I know, more data, but I wanted to try ... This is actually my first narrowband image, I am not satisfied with the colors and had some severe RBI issues with the images... Need to work on that...

Around 200,000 light years in diameter, NGC 772 is twice the size of the Milky Way Galaxy,[2] and is surrounded by several satellite galaxies – including the dwarf elliptical, NGC 770 – whose tidal forces on the larger galaxy have likely caused the emergence of a single elongated outer spiral arm that is much more developed than the others arms. LRGB of 32 exposures of 10 minutes each, taken between November and December 2014. I am still gaining more exposures to reach a better s/n ratio

Konihlav, I see, at least I am not alone... Between technical problems and weather issues, it took me a while to get everything running. Oh, and now the fun part: I still wait for a counterweight to use the f/3 mode of my scope. Hell is expecting me once it arrives

Nice, very nice

Great image Mark, I find it very nice especially considering the seeing you had

Hi there, I had a row of good nights at the end of october, and left Sequence take some images while I was on holiday in Turkey (don't tell my wife, btw ). So here is a LRGB composition of M42, made out of a total of 600 exposures of 20 seconds each. I actually planned to take some longer exposures, but now weather turned back to sort-of-snowing, so let's see... I am relatively satisfied with the result, made the Calibration with MaximDL and all other processing with Pixinsight. I damnit loe the Local Histogram Equalization, btw

Kruno, I too observe sometimes quite severe icing on my DDM85, but never had a problem (actually, as the setup is automated, I only notice it in the morning when it would too late anyway)

Hrm, I do admit that I tried last night a few Syncs, even without moving the scope, and Sequence had everytime some offsets to find (note: the image was the same). Dunno if there is a calculation error in Sequence's routine, as it fetches the results from Pinpoint, or whatever. At the end of the game, when leaving it taking a Sequence of images, it is working quite well nonethless... Which version are you using?

Thanks! I actually had to try for about 6 months to get there, I had the secondary not centered in the tube (off by 3cm!) and also the lateral supports of the main mirror too tight , seriously disturbing collimation. and an endless load of other issues, like shiny screws. You'd expect a better system for those prices ...

Hi everybody, alright, I had a funny time (cough) trying to improve the collimation of my scope, and after a few hicckups, I ended getting a slight improvement in star roundness and size - not bad, after all. Now we are lucky and enjoying a long clear weather period (should last at least till sunday), so I am acquiring images at full throttle. That said, here is a never version of Andromeda, taken through my Cassegrain at 3550mm focal lenght. For Luminance I combined 20 sec- and 300sec subexposures, for RGB all 300 sec subexposures, this time getting close to about two hours of data per color channel and three hours for Luminance. I still need to improve my processing skills, but I am quite pleased with the result: And for clarity, here an image shot through the webcam:

Robert, Mark, I'm gonna try this, seems to actually make more sense than a big pointing file plus MLPT... Thanks

Hi Daniel, I experienced bad mlpt runs with bad pointing files. I am not sure, but I gues MLPT is jet another parameter of the pointing correction, so if the overall correction is quite good, MLPT makes it better. But if it is quite bad, it makes it better only that much... Not sure if this is always the case, though.

Hi guys, weather is improving here, so imaging is again going on. Last night I tried to image for a 15 minutes exposure using Sequence, at 3550mm of focal... And you know what, it worked! I considered myself happy once with 5 minute subs, now 10 minutes is the default I am working with, but I never would imagine to go further... But it works! Please note, it's a 50% size single exposure I shot as a test.