Is there a tool in PI or photoshop to fix irregular star spikes? - Forums

Topic starter

Jan 28, 2022 · Edited: Jan 28, 2022

Hi!

I do own an Esprit 80 ED refractor and overall love it.

But there is one issue, on bright stars I get Star Spikes (that I actually like!) but they are irregular in one place, one spike is missing, as far as I know this is an effect that comes from one of grub screws that hold the lens not beeing as tight as the others (might also be something else..)

The question is now if anybody knows a PI script or a photoshop action that fixes issues like this, I can manually mask every star and rotate it to mask the issue but this gets quite annoying for target like, for example the Pleiades where there are lots of bright stars in the frame.

To better illustrate the issue I have uploaded a picture to my gallery and attached here:

https://www.astrobin.com/urt729

Engaging

Steven

Jan 28, 2022

could be worse.. I wish mine looked that nice, these are mine with my Esprit 80:
Getting it tested and adjusted soon though to hopefully fix the lopsided-ness of the stars..
the spikes I can deal with, but not the lopsided nature of the stars.. worried something inside the scope isn't in alignment.

As for your issue and your scope.

Yes, You are seeing a diffraction effect caused by the radial lens cell adjustment bolts. If they are a little tight they cause diffraction, the issue however is whether to adjust and loosen them. As temperature will change this too.. so even if you get it adjusted and make it "perfect", chances are it won't be on a colder or hotter night.. So I doubt there is much you can do "in telescope" to fix it.

If you have it mounted in tube rings, you could rotate the scope within the tube rings, while rotating the field rotator to keep the same image, that should move the diffraction spikes. But that's probably more hassle and not worth it.

As for software,
Pretty sure starnet++ does a bad job at star spikes, so I don't think there is a script that can just get rid of them in 1 go.
So, masking and cloning/rotating might be the way only to go.. that's the way I would go about it to fill in that one darker section of your spikes.

But perhaps someone knows of better solutions.

Helpful Engaging Supportive

Michael Ring

Topic starter

Jan 28, 2022

Wow, yes, yours actually look a lot worse than mine, somebody has stolen you 50% of the nice flares….

Please report back when your adjustments were done, I am not very keen to send back the lens for adjustment as it will be international shipping but when that helps in your case it will likely also fix my case.

Steven

Jan 28, 2022 · Edited: Jan 28, 2022

Michael Ring:
Wow, yes, yours actually look a lot worse than mine, somebody has stolen you 50% of the nice flares....
Please report back when your adjustments were done, I am not very keen to send back the lens for adjustment as it will be international shipping but when that helps in your case it will likely also fix my case

Tell me about it.. I would prefer to drive it to a skywatcher location near me and just get it done there instead of international shipping back to the vendor. But the scope is still under warranty.. so the vendor says he wants to do the tests/adjustments and can't let me do it some place else (without paying for it myself)

Should hopefully ship it there next week, no idea when I'll get it back..
But I'll try and report back once I have it back. But again, I'm (hopefully) having the lopsidedness fixed, not necessarily the spikes.