Data for practice

Welcome to Astrobin!

This forum thread over on Cloudy Nights is one of the best for getting data to process. Best of luck getting started with this hobby!

This discord server has a #processing-challenge channel where a dataset is posted once per month and everyone can edit it. Winner (as determined by a vote) gets to pick the next month’s dataset. https://discord.gg/astrophotography

This month’s data is 83 hours on CTB1.

(Astrophotography discord servers have been getting raided recently so you’ll need to post a photo of an opposum to prove that you’re real before you can access the whole server. Hopefully just a temporary measure).

Serezha,

Visit my site: www.desertastro.net. Look at the watermark for the pictures. If you see my name only or no watermark at all, this is my data and processing. Tell me which picture you would like to have. I have a lot of data processing, which I purchased from TelescopeLive, and I cannot share those, but my own data- not a problem.

Grigory

Alexander Bouwman · Nov 13, 2025, 02:44 PM

Hi Sergey,

As a starting astrophotographer, I’m struggling with the processing of the data I captured. Last night I captured M31 and if you are interested: I can share all the *.fit files (lights, dark and bias). To be honest, I am eager to see what anyone can do with this data, so everyone else is also welcome to download the data - no strings attached.

I used a ASIAIR plus to capture and live-stack the images, but I think with the use of the right tooling the result can be even better (as I was told).

The data: https://tinyurl.com/2s3nsmjr

If possible, I would like to see the result and perhaps all the steps that were taken.

Hi Alexander,

I gave it a try and the result is below. I did quite a simple workflow to see what I can get, and the steps are the following:

WBPP - maximum quality (with local normalization)

Applied Auto Stretch on the result, looked good so I didn't do a more refined stretch

Stars

StarXterminator to separate stars from the galaxy field

Applied SCNR and CorrectMagentaStars processes

Denoised the star field

Galaxy

Applied HDR to get more details in the nucleus

Increased a bit the saturation

Applied DarkStructureEnhance to make the dust lanes pop out a bit more

Applied NoiseXT

Merged the star field with the galaxy — Applied BlurXT to the final image

📷 M31.jpg

I hope it helps. Let me know if you have questions :)

Bogdan

Alexander Bouwman · Nov 13, 2025, 06:29 PM

bogdanstanciu · Nov 13, 2025 at 04:06 PM

Alexander Bouwman · Nov 13, 2025, 02:44 PM

Hi Sergey,

As a starting astrophotographer, I’m struggling with the processing of the data I captured. Last night I captured M31 and if you are interested: I can share all the *.fit files (lights, dark and bias). To be honest, I am eager to see what anyone can do with this data, so everyone else is also welcome to download the data - no strings attached.

I used a ASIAIR plus to capture and live-stack the images, but I think with the use of the right tooling the result can be even better (as I was told).

The data: https://tinyurl.com/2s3nsmjr

If possible, I would like to see the result and perhaps all the steps that were taken.

Hi Alexander,

I gave it a try and the result is below. I did quite a simple workflow to see what I can get, and the steps are the following:

WBPP - maximum quality (with local normalization)

Applied Auto Stretch on the result, looked good so I didn't do a more refined stretch

Stars

StarXterminator to separate stars from the galaxy field

Applied SCNR and CorrectMagentaStars processes

Denoised the star field

Galaxy

Applied HDR to get more details in the nucleus

Increased a bit the saturation

Applied DarkStructureEnhance to make the dust lanes pop out a bit more

Applied NoiseXT

Merged the star field with the galaxy — Applied BlurXT to the final image

📷 M31.jpg

I hope it helps. Let me know if you have questions :)

Bogdan

Hi Bogdan,

I’m totally speechless … what an amazing picture it has become! Really stunning to see what was ‘hidden’ in my captured data.

When I look at the steps you took I assume you used PixInsight. At this moment I’m using DSS, Photoshop and Photos, but I think with that package I will never achieve what you have created … The good part is that my data looks all right …

Thank you so much, it’s really inspiring to see what is possible! If you can conform that the image was indeed processed with PixInsight, I know what to do: get to learn to use that software! I read that it takes some time to learn to use it, but the effort will be worth it!

Thanks again!

Alexander

Hi Alex,

Indeed it was processed in PixInsight, sorry I didn’t specify it in the reply.

To be honest, I was also a bit afraid of PixInsight when I first used it, but now I cannot live without it. It is light-years away (pun intended) from any other post-processing tool I used (Siril, DSS, AstroPixelProcessor). I recommend you take the 45-day free trial and see how it goes. There are so may YouTube videos on how to use it in various deep-sky objects (because the approach is different between let’s say an open cluster and a galaxy). Important to know that additionally to PixInsight default scripts and tools, you can add more from users who decided to create their own tools.

I am also not the best post-processing guy there is, but with a very fast and simple workflow I could come up to the image I showed you.

Fingers crossed to you and clear skies!

Bogdan