Seeing some odd behaviour here. I took 39 90s subs of M81 with my QHY153C through my SW 150P at a gain of 200 (I'm new to a CCD so I don't know the correct settings!) The subs look ok to me, I can see plenty of stars, but when I register them in DSS, it can't find any and refuses to stack! I've tried changing the star detection threshold from the default as it suggests but that makes no difference. I'm using the same DSS settings I used on T Coronae Borealis (basically, just the recommended settings) and that one registered and stacked absolutely fine. So what's going on, any ideas ..read more

Hi all, first post here.  I'm going to show you a couple of images with poor star shapes. I was going to write a long preamble but decided to just get opinions on the stars themselves without all the backstory. These were taken with a William Optics GT81 (older model) and 0.8x reducer/flattener (non-adjustable). Cameras used are ASI2600MC Pro and Canon T5i. The stars are sort of almond-shaped but asymmetrical, with little spikes on two sides.  The star shapes are not affected at all by exposure time. 3", 30", 300" yields about the same results, so it is not a tracking/guiding issue ..read more

My basic theory is that when used purely for the purpose of noise reduction the use of Binning is made redundant by the advent of modern AI noise reduction techniques and in some cases my be detrimental to image quality.  In effect AI noise reduction is making best use of available information contained within the raw image to reduce noise dynamically across the image dependent on local SNR. By binning the image you are simply depriving the AI algorithm of information and potentially missing out on detail in areas of already high SNR if whole image binning is applied.  In the case of ..read more

Hi all,  So far I have only calibrated and processed data taken from a single night, but now I'd like to try and improve my images by taking more subs over multiple nights.  My question is-- when integrating data from different nights, what is the usual process?  Do you calibrate each set of data from each night with their specific darks, flats and dark flats, then combine the master lights together?  Or do you calibrate all data together with one set of calibration frames from one of those nights?  Thank you in advance for your help and advice!  ..read more

I'm testing Pixinsight on a 45 day free trial (loving it!). I use a William Optics Z73 with a 533MC Pro on an HEQ5 Pro mount with guiding and controlled via ASIair Plus. For each target/session I take lights, flats & dark flats. I have a separate recently made library for darks as described by others on SGL. I have sorted my file storage again as per great advice found on here. My question is that when I stack a target with WBPP and then continue to process the image, I'm left with what I think are a load of files I won't necessarily need to keep in the future, should I return to the targe ..read more

A few weeks ago we had clear skies every night for 5 days, which was great as I recently upgraded from a star adventurer to a HEQ5 and this was the first time it was used…and bar a few polar scope calibration issues it worked flawlessly ? Using a Canon 800d (modded) + Evostar 72ED and no filters, I pulled in 85 x 240s subs on M33, dithered every 5 frames using APT and stacked with 50 bias, 60 flats and 8 darks in SiriL. After stacking and processing in SiriL, Starnet and GIMP, attached is the best version that I could produce, and I’m fairly happy with it…aside from wanting more sub ..read more

Hi all, I purchased my Quark from FLO last October and was just wondering if this is normal for a Quark Chromosphere to have uneven field illumination such as in the flat that I've attached to this post? I find that without taking these flats, my solar images are totally unusable when I start stretching the curves in imppg. I realise that taking flats is good practice anyway, but ideally would have liked to not have these inconsistencies to begin with. The unevenness is consistent regardless of whatever OTA I attach the Quark to so I assume this lies with the Quark itself. I'm just wondering i ..read more

I’m just curious to what sort of computer members use for processing images and what their favourite processing software is  ..read more

Hello, I shooted today 150 photo to the moon with my Sony A7 RV, then convert ARW files in DNG and import in PIPP, but when I export the images in TIFF, this is underexposed (attached screen, on left original images and on right exported images). How can I solve this? Thanks   ..read more

Just run this through APP as always but never seen this before......any ideas ..read more