Hello from Seattle, WA - Forums

Topic starter

Aug 4, 2024 · Edited: Aug 5, 2024

Hello Folks,

I've been dabbling in astronomy since high school.. I brought my first C8 (Orange Tube) used, probably about 35'ish years ago, and have
collected a few more scopes along the way since than...

I'm a complete newbie to astrophotography and I just did my first stacking and post-processing of my images a few days ago...
I started out doing visual observing with the intent to use my DSLR with a Celeston AVX mount and a WO Z73 for astrophotography.

I played around with that setup for a while with not much sucess, and the ASIair came out, and that sort of changed everything for me.
Everything in one box, one interface... thus I've invested in the ZWO system thus far...

My deep sky rig currently consist of the following:
WO Redcat 51 Gen II
ZWO 2in filter drawer w/ZWO Dual Band filter
ZWO OAG w/Helical focuser
ASI 220mm mini guide camera
ASI 53MC Pro
ZWO AM3 mount
ASIair Plus

Since I'm still learning, the only software i'm using currently is Siril, and Gimp... I until figure out how to refine my post-process work
I can learn with free software for now, and maybe move up to Pixinsight and Photoshop at some point in the future.

Any how enough of my babbling, looking forward to learning and advancing my skills from this community.... I've attached the first images that I collected and processed in Siril and Gimp. I think they're okay, but could use some more work on post processing... But I have to start somewhere

Additional info on the images posted:

1st Image M 32 Andromeda Galaxy
2nd Image: NGC 6960 Western Veil Nebula
Equipment used: above in my post
Gain: 100
Sensore Temp: -10c
Exposure: 300sec
Frames: 24
Calabration: Flats, Darks, Bias frames
Software: Siril and Gimp

3rd Image: Veil Nebula Complex
Equipment, Gain and Exposure: Same as above
Frames: 72 over two night
Calabration: Same as above
Software: Same as above

Clear skies....

Phil

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Dark Matters Astrophotography

Aug 4, 2024

Hello from Snohomish. Welcome to the site and the hobby!

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Tony Gondola

Frequent contributor

Aug 4, 2024

You are off to a great start! Also, don't think that you can't do amazing work with free tools because you most certainly can! Siril and Gimp are very powerful and capable packages. You might also look at Graxpert and Astrosharp, two other great and free software tools.

BTW, I used to live up there. Lived in West Seattle and worked at the Museum of Flight.

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peng155

Topic starter

Aug 4, 2024

You are off to a great start! Also, don't think that you can't do amazing work with free tools because you most certainly can! Siril and Gimp are very powerful and capable packages. You might also look at Graxpert and Astrosharp, two other great and free software tools.

BTW, I used to live up there. Lived in West Seattle and worked at the Museum of Flight.

Hi Gondola, thanks very much for your comments... at first I thought finding and accurately track my objects was going to be the most challenging obstacle.... but now I realize stacking my imagies and processing in Gimp are very challenging to say the least

Tony Gondola

Frequent contributor

Aug 4, 2024

As you've seen plate solving is a magical and wonderful thing. You're right in that you'll reach a point when getting the data is pretty much routine. It's the processing that really brings out your skill and creativity. Both things are fun but in different ways.

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peng155

Topic starter

Aug 4, 2024

As you've seen plate solving is a magical and wonderful thing. You're right in that you'll reach a point when getting the data is pretty much routine. It's the processing that really brings out your skill and creativity. Both things are fun but in different ways.

You are so correct... I've been looking at Youtube vids, and googling the subject of processing astro images with Gimp.... there's a lot of good info pit there...

And BTW I forgot to mention that working at the Museum of Flight must have been so cool!!! I would head out there every now and than about this time of the year to see the Blue Angels take off from Boeing Field

Tony Gondola

Frequent contributor

Aug 4, 2024

yup, that was big fun. I was in the education department, ran the Challenger Learning Center among other things.

Guillermo (Guy) Yanez

Aug 5, 2024

Hello there. You have a very portable and promising imaging rig. I have been in Seattle a few years ago. Wonderful location. One of those places where you are grateful to every single occasion the clouds dissipate for an imaging night

CoyoteAstro

Aug 5, 2024

Hello from the Tri-cities! Nice shots and here's to clear skies!

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NeilM

Aug 5, 2024 · Edited: Aug 5, 2024

Welcome, Phil!

I am also a newbie relative to the average Astrobin user, having been here only a year.

You seem to have great raw data! I am a 100% Siril user and so far I haven't seen the need to move to the expensive Pixinsight solution! Maybe one day...

Have you experimented with Starnet++ in Siril? This was a game changer for me.

So I did something bad... and I edited your image of the Veil (it was only a 300kb image that you posted publicly). I apologize profusely because editing other people's raw data without their permission is definitely unethical - especially on Astrobin which is a site with high integrity. But if you'll forgive my uninvited intrusion, I wanted to see what your veil image would look like with Starnet++ separation with some reduction in Star intensity. Below is one result using your data. Of course, image editing is completely personal. There is no right or wrong, and everyone has a different perspective on what appeals to them. I was not in any way attempting to criticize your image.

I did want to add that that I think you nailed the composition of this image!

I'm looking forward to following you and seeing your progress!

Neil

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peng155

Topic starter

Aug 5, 2024 · Edited: Aug 5, 2024

Welcome, Phil!

I am also a newbie relative to the average Astrobin user, having been here only a year.

You seem to have great raw data! I am a 100% Siril user and so far I haven't seen the need to move to the expensive Pixinsight solution! Maybe one day...

Have you experimented with Starnet++ in Siril? This was a game changer for me.

So I did something bad... and I edited your image of the Veil (it was only a 300kb image that you posted publicly). I apologize profusely because editing other people's raw data without their permission is definitely unethical - especially on Astrobin which is a site with high integrity. But if you'll forgive my uninvited intrusion, I wanted to see what your veil image would look like with Starnet++ separation with some reduction in Star intensity. Below is one result using your data. Of course, image editing is completely personal. There is no right or wrong, and everyone has a different perspective on what appeals to them. I was not in any way attempting to criticize your image.

I did want to add that that I think you nailed the composition of this image!

I'm looking forward to following you and seeing your progress!

Neil

Hi Neil,

Thanks for the Welcome!! I absolutely love what you did with my picture! so no aplogies needed.......

The processing that you did on my upload only shows me what I hopefully can acheive with more learning with both Siril and Gimp.... Also it also shows me what kind of data I can get from my backyard just a few minutes north of Seattle proper... I alway thought I would need to go to a dark site outside of the city... according to lightpollutionmap.info, I'm located in a class 6 bortle location and really did not have much hope of getting very much useable data for DSO's

One of the things that bothered me on my final stacked frame was the amount of stars in the picture, and the lack of contrast??... In my mind I sort of had an idea of how I wanted the image to look, but trying to take what I saw in my head, and translate that thru Siril or Gimp just fustrated the bee-gee-zus out of me.. I did install the Star++ program, and ran it seperately of Siril (I still need to figure out how to incoroperate Star++ into Siril, I use a Mac as my primary PC, but I do have a Windows Gaming PC which i'll probably start to use for post-stacking processing)

How you processed the posted image is how I would have done it, Thanks for showing me what is possible with more experimenting and tickering with the software and the stacked image....

I'm trying to shoot the North American Nebula tonight, and probably tomorrow as well.....Once again in my opinion just a great job on the processing work with my posted image!!

NeilM

Aug 5, 2024

Awesome, thanks Phil and I'm so glad you weren't offended by my editing of your image!

Bortle 6 isn't too bad - you'll see incredible images on this site from astrophotographers in Bortle 7-9 and I'm sure they will gladly share advice. I am luckily in Bortle 4/5 but I still have some challenges.

Once you have Starnet++ successfully installed as an integration to Siril you will see the menu below under star processing in Siril. No need to leave the Siril application. I am also 100% in the Mac/Siril/ZWO environment and I can confirm that everything integrates well. For a Mac the trickiest thing is setting the permissions to allow the StatNet++ files to be read. There are plenty of Google/YouTube explanations of how to do this but I'll happily walk you through if you are having difficulty.

Of course it's up to you... But I wouldn't recommend mixing Mac and PC environments unless you have to. I have found everything I need in the MacOS environment. I am lucky to have a recent M2 MacStudio with a huge amount of RAM and the the processing of everything is fast. There are many more applications available in the Windows environment, and I believe that most astrophotography users use Windows. I recommend picking one environment.

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peng155

Topic starter

Aug 5, 2024

Hey @NeilM ,

Thanks for the tip on integrating Star++ into Siril... I liked your process image of the Veil Nebula so much, I copied, and posted it over to my facebook space to as an example of what's possible with these images when somone who knows what they're doing with the software makes the adjustment (being a newbie, I impress very easily) and credited you with the work.

A question.. maybe two, with Star++, were you able to just eleminate some of the stars?? When I tried intially the image that got generated, had removed all of the stars, and left the nebula.. so I need to put learning Star++ on my todo list, and figure that out...

My second question, the color corrections, did you do that with the Siril Image Processing Scripts, of with Gimp?

PS. To the Mod, It seems that I maybe going off on a tangent from what this sub-forum is for, if so.. I apologize.. Please let me know if I should start a new post in one of the other sub-forum on astrobin

Thanks All!!!

NeilM

Aug 5, 2024

Hi Phil

No need to credit me! Capturing good data is the hard part.

With StarNet++ all of the stars are removed. Two files are created: one with a filename that starts with "starless" and the other with a filename that starts with "starmask."

Everyone's workflow is slightly different, but in my Siril workflow I:
1) stack the images
2) Autostretch
3). crop the nasty stuff at the edges
4) do Photometric color calibration
5) Remove Green Noise
6) do Starnet star removal

then I work on the two images separately, and on each image (starless and star mask) I:
7) change back to linear mode
8) Stretch the image
9) Save the file in 32 bit TIFF format
10) edit in Photoshop (curves, color saturation, sharpening, contrast/highlights/shadows, color adjustment)
11) Reimport into Siril
12) Save the edited file as a FITS file.

Then when I have both images back as FITS files in Siril I use the "Star Recomposition" function.

As I said, there is no right or wrong workflow and I have seen many other workflows, but this is the one that works for me. Of course editing is very personal and I tend to oversaturate colors which many people HATE! But that's what I like.

Oh I should add that I also use Topaz Denoise in my workflow. That is the one piece of software (besides a Photoshop subscription) that I purchased. There are lots of noise reduction packages including the ones built into Photoshop.

Of course your image was already stretched so I didn't do any further stretching but I did Photoshop editing and noise reduction. Editing the star mask file (the one with stars) is generally an exercise in getting just the right amount of star brightness and number of stars, and maybe a little color adjustment.

Neil

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