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[RCC]M45

Request for feedback M45 Messier Objects Open Cluster Deep Sky
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Jeramie avatar
Jeramie avatar
Greetings! 

I've been practicing astronomy for a little over 3 years now and imaging for about 2 of those years seriously. I'm a fairly new user of PixInsight and am learning as much as I can, and there is still a ton to know. I'm also very new to Astrobin and am excited to learn from some talented imagers.

I've recently moved from the inner city to a dark(er) site and am getting more imaging time. I would love to get some feedback from this community and start thinking about changes to my process moving forward. A ton of processing is subjective, but there are most certainly technical things that will impact overall quality. 

Here is my latest M45 from Bortle 5, 180x60s: https://astrob.in/9wflog/0/

Looking forward to the conversation!

Jeramie
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Aastro123 avatar
Aastro123 avatar
not bad data! I think you stretched the data farther than you should. Theres lots of dust in the background, but you dont really have the integration time to stretch this much without exaggerating the noise. Look into Generalized Hyperbolic Stretch. Adam Block has a great video on it. Its worth watching the entire thing as it isnt as easy as STF and Histogram Transformation. BUT you can be more selective what part of your data you are stretching, as in greatly reducing star  bloating as seen with STF, and noise. 

I recently finished my M45 for 2023 using GHS. You can see how the stars arent blown out on my profile
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Quinn Groessl avatar
Quinn Groessl avatar
I agree. More time so you can stretch it the same and not have as much noise, and it’d be really great. Still pretty good as it sits, just noisy.
Stefan Pfleger avatar
Stefan Pfleger avatar
Hi Jeramie,
i just had a brief look at your image…

I noticed a few things you can improve:
1. Gather more data, its worth it! If you want to howcase the dust properly, there is no way around spending several nights.
2. You seem to have a gradient issue, could be from flat issues. I‘m curious how your raw stack looks.
3. Not sure which methods you use for sharpening and denoising, but the image looks quite soft. Could be due to lack of data though. I recommend using tools like noisexterminator or deep snr for denoising, as well as blurxterminator for sharpening. If the prices for the „X“ suite is too expensive for you, you will need to learn how to use devonvolution. Deconvolution is less powerful than blurX though.
4. I would probably crop this image in until I get enough data to make the dust look appealing. M45 itself can be a stunning target, though admittedly it falls apart with less focal length. I‘d really just urge you to get more data on it tbh, the dust can look stunning!

greetings,
Stefan
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Jeramie avatar
Jeramie avatar
Look into Generalized Hyperbolic Stretch. Adam Block has a great video on it.

I have a subscription on Adam's site and will definitely look into it.

Quinn Groessl:
Still pretty good as it sits, just noisy.


Thanks!

@Stefan Pfleger : I do own all of the "X" tools and love them, although I'm trying to learn decon as well. It seems that decon has some usefulness if you know how to use it and can be complimentary to StarX. I've only recently started to process stars/starless images separately. 

Another thing I'm still fine-tuning are my flats. I use the ASIAir/light board method and maybe there is room for improvement there. I've tried to use PI to measure flats in the past, but the process was lost on me somewhat and seemed to take too much time. 

It sounds like the best place to start is collecting more data. I'll throw another night or two at this one and see how it improves. I recently moved from a B9 zone to B5 and I'm blown away at the difference in data quality. For this target in the past, it would easily take two weeks of data to get to my current output. Maybe it doesn't take two weeks anymore, but maybe 3 hours is still too short. 


Many thanks for the feedback, I sincerely appreciate the help and support.
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Stefan Pfleger avatar
Stefan Pfleger avatar
Jeramie:
@Stefan Pfleger : I do own all of the "X" tools and love them, although I'm trying to learn decon as well. It seems that decon has some usefulness if you know how to use it and can be complimentary to StarX. I've only recently started to process stars/starless images separately.

https://youtu.be/6Maq-UkeqG8?si=FX71WN7o3LYaOC-D
great deconvolution guide imo,  those settings work quite well and can result in similar sharpness to blurx. But Blurx also fixes the stars, so that is just superior to me.
Stefan Pfleger avatar
Stefan Pfleger avatar
Jeramie:
Another thing I'm still fine-tuning are my flats. I use the ASIAir/light board method and maybe there is room for improvement there. I've tried to use PI to measure flats in the past, but the process was lost on me somewhat and seemed to take too much time.

If the flats don‘t correct as well as you wish, it could also be due to a lightleak somewhere in the system. 
Idk if your flats correct well or not. I only saw the leftover gradient in the final process and figured, that looks like a flat issue.