Hey all,
Head’s up if you were not aware but the Pixinsight’s development team has released the the MARS DR2 database with a much more extensive coverage of the sky than the previous DR1 version, especially in the northern hemisphere:
https://pixinsight.net/dev/index.php?ams/mars-dr2.18/
I have to trial that on some of the images where I had trouble removing my nasty Bortle 8 gradients now :D
Clear skies!
Adrick
Good news that, it should help a lot of us who toil under bright skies….
Tony Gondola · Jun 22, 2026, 08:14 PM
Good new that, it should help a lot of us who toil under bright skies….
Here is an attempt on M81/82, previously not mapped, all from a pretty bad Bortle 8 (SQM around 17.8):
And on a starless
A quick processing wokflow later:
Dark halos around bright extended objects, that would NOT do…
andrea tasselli · Jun 22, 2026, 08:38 PM
Dark halos around bright extended objects, that would NOT do…
Maybe a bit but I’m not sure if its from the Background Extraction or simply the IFN dropoff around the galaxies which I dont have much signal off.
I can at least tell you that its much better than using AutoDBE or GraXpert that leave much more gradient in the middle of the frame.
The only sure fire way is manually selected points with DBE. Graxpert does a pretty darn decent work in my B7 skies though…
IFN (but I prefer the technical term galactic cirrus) is all over the place there, the galaxies are seen through all that.
andrea tasselli · Jun 22, 2026, 08:56 PM
The only sure fire way is manually selected points with DBE. Graxpert does a pretty darn decent work in my B7 skies though…
IFN (but I prefer the technical term galactic cirrus) is all over the place there, the galaxies are seen through all that.
Here is what GraXpert does, less dark halo around the galaxies but a big remaining gradient in the middle. Not sure if its visible in the imported image:
And here is manual DBE point placement:
MSGC remains better imo
I’ve been playing around with it and am finding that I’m able to get much better gradient correction with MSGC than without it.