StarXTerminator struggles with saturated stars in NGC 6960 processing

make one with starnet++ and one with starxterminator.

Blink both and copy the better areas to one picture.

You will see, that especially starxterminator looses some faint areas because no software is perfect. So take the best from both for one picture.

If there are halos in both … try what Obbe J has told.

Obviously this was only done with a screengrab from here, and I apologise in advance as I don’t like doing this without consent, but;
This isn’t so bad, basically only one problematic star partially left behind. Correct only, followerd by SXT using large overlap. But the permanent fix to your issue is to root out what causes the problems in the first place. Several things look off in your image.

1. Your backfocus is off, this may not be a dealbreaker to you - but processing isn’t going to fix the edges, it’s going to attempt to mask them - but they will not look as good.

2. You didn’t mention what kind of filter you are using, the 585MC only has an AR cut window, so you will at the very least need a UV/IR cut filter in front of it. Not using one will result in star bloat and questionable focus.

If you did use a filter then maybe that filter is no good.

3. You don’t mention gain, but HCG mode kicks in at 200. This is pretty high and you should use the histogram to adjust your exposures accordingly to avoid saturating the stars if this is what’s happening in your case. There’s basically no reason to push exposure lengths too far. If you still want to use longer exposure times then you should be reducing gain but at the possible cost of added noise.

TiffsAndAstro · May 18, 2026, 11:30 AM

I'd say it handles them pretty well.

With my 72ed and 533 it seemed a lot worse.

As said above, you can clone stamp them out, but that might make thos stars look worse overall. Might not :)

Also you could try giving the image a bit of stretch before removing the stars. This might help.

Might not :)

To be fair this target has pretty horrendously bright stars, second only to Alnitak near horse head/flame nebula in my limited experience :(

This is an ill advised 4 panel mosaic taken not long after getting a mount and filter. Maybe you smaller pixels don't help, but I'm not sure about that :) maybe helpful comparison.

https://telescopius.com/pictures/view/199619/deep_sky/sh-2-103/veil-nebula-4-panels-80mins-per-panel/by-tiffsandastro

I don't think you have anything to worry about.

Congratulations! It seems like a great thing to me

The first thing to realize is that stars do not always have to be removed from an image. The easiest fix is no fix at all but to celebrate and portray what is actually there. It’s not wrong to do that just because it’s not thr “style” at present. Case in point, I usually do not remove stars in detailed galaxy images because it it can be very destructive to the tiny details when the software can’t distinguish between stars and not stars.

If you insist on removing the stars then the first steps I would take would be change your shooting technique to minimize the impact of the bright stars in the field. First thing is gain. With the ZWO585 the sweet spot is at a gain of 200. That’s where HCG mode kicks in giving you the most dynamic range in combination with low read noise. There’s really very little reason to shoot this sensor with any other setting. Set your gain to 205-210 to be sure your in HCG and forget it.

Another thing that will help is short exposure times. You can go as low as 15 sec. with this camera and not loose any detail in the faint areas. Keeping subs short will reduce or eliminate star clipping and bloating and should help a bit with extended star halos.

Another thing that can help with extended halos is to make sure your optics are extremely clean and dust free. Also be on the lookout for high hazes that you’ll never see visually but will scatter light in your images. The best way to prevent that is to make sure you don’t have any subs with an abnormally small star count. There are different ways to do this so let me know if you don’t know how to do it.

If you do these things you might find that the star removal software is better behaved. giving you the result you want without the artifacts.

There’s a lot of conflicting advice out there for a lot of reasons. Some of it is just old and incorrect, some is just misunderstanding. Most of it is well meaning and well founded but the problem is, what applies in one situation, under certain skies with certain hardware won’t apply in another. The best way to work with that is to use a given set of advice as a launching point into your own research into the issue. You won’t be able to really separate good advice from bad until you really understand what’s behind it.

Let’s take a look at what I said about gain settings as an example. You have to understand what read noise, dynamic range. really mean. The next thing in your case is to look at what the available performance data for your sensor really means. Here’s what it looks like for the ZWO585MC:

📷 585mc performace curves.webpOnce you understand what these graphs are tell you, you’ll know what settings are best for what you’re trying to accomplish. The bottom line is, this hobby is very complicated. There’s certainly no easy button, even with “smart” telescopes. The good news is there’s plenty of people here to help!

Tony Gondola · May 18, 2026, 05:34 PM

There’s a lot of conflicting advice out there for a lot of reasons. Some of it is just old and incorrect, some is just misunderstanding. Most of it is well meaning and well founded but the problem is, what applies in one situation, under certain skies with certain hardware won’t apply in another. The best way to work with that is to use a given set of advice as a launching point into your own research into the issue. You won’t be able to really separate good advice from bad until you really understand what’s behind it.

Let’s take a look at what I said about gain settings as an example. You have to understand what read noise, dynamic range. really mean. The next thing in your case is to look at what the available performance data for your sensor really means. Here’s what it looks like for the ZWO585MC:

📷 585mc performace curves.webpOnce you understand what these graphs are tell you, you’ll know what settings are best for what you’re trying to accomplish. The bottom line is, this hobby is very complicated. There’s certainly no easy button, even with “smart” telescopes. The good news is there’s plenty of people here to help!

You're absolutely right, we need to approach this issue rationally. From the graph you posted, which I've looked at a thousand times without ever stopping to look at, it's clear what you're saying. The only thing I don't understand is DR(stops). What does it refer to?