Weird Artifacts in RGB Linear Image - Forums

Topic starter

Perfect post

16 hours ago

I am seeing some weird artifacts in this RGB image. They’re also in the linear RGB as well. Anyone know what’s causing this? The red, blue and green color spots on the left side of the image are something I’ve never seen before.

📷 M53 & NGC 5053 RGB Non Linear_1.jpgJerry

Imaged with ZWO ASI2600MM and Astronomic R, G and B filters. Bortle 2, good sky conditions. 7,500 feet altitude, Askar 130PHQ scope.

*I exaggerated the weird blotches by over stretching the image, and they’re not hard to hide, but they should not be there. I pre-processed these in Pixinsight’s WBPP, processed in PI and post-processed in ACD Photo Studio.

180” exposures, a bit over 28 hours of exposure time. Gain 100.

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Interactive Sky

16 hours ago

HI, Jerry.

Can you tell which equipment you have and also the camera settings, etc?

Jerry Gerber

Topic starter

Perfect post

16 hours ago

Interactive Sky · Mar 19, 2026, 05:35 AM
HI, Jerry.
Can you tell which equipment you have and also the camera settings, etc?

Equipment and more info has been added above.

Interactive Sky

16 hours ago

Jerry Gerber · Mar 19, 2026, 05:38 AM
Interactive Sky · Mar 19, 2026, 05:35 AM
HI, Jerry.
Can you tell which equipment you have and also the camera settings, etc?
Equipment and more info has been added above.

Oh, I see — I just didn’t notice that earlier.

Sorry for bothering you.

I’ve actually seen similar strange artifacts during long integrations, especially after background extraction and denoising.

In my case, I was using GraXpert, and saving the image with GraXpert Stretch usually helped reduce or remove those “weird blotches”.

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Interactive Sky

16 hours ago

Interactive Sky · Mar 19, 2026, 05:51 AM
Jerry Gerber · Mar 19, 2026, 05:38 AM
Interactive Sky · Mar 19, 2026, 05:35 AM
HI, Jerry.
Can you tell which equipment you have and also the camera settings, etc?
Equipment and more info has been added above.
Oh, I see — I just didn’t notice that earlier.
Sorry for bothering you.
I’ve actually seen similar strange artifacts during long integrations, especially after background extraction and denoising.
In my case, I was using GraXpert, and saving the image with GraXpert Stretch usually helped reduce or remove those artifacts.

📷 image.png

andrea tasselli

Frequent contributor

13 hours ago

Something moving and slowly rotating across the field.

Dave Rust

10 hours ago

These could be hot pixels. They move around with dithering, forming clouds that look similar to this. It might mean you just need new dark frames, which normally cancel these out, unless new ones have recently developed. If you are confident you used dark frames made recently, then I’m flummoxed, as well.

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