Dear fellow astrophotographers,
Over the last 15 days, I captured about 24.3 hours of good quality data on M31 organized in 9 panels that I stitched in a 3x3 mosaic. That is about 2.7 hours per panel, which is not that huge but not that bad either consider weather, moon, and limited night time constraints. So far, it is one of my sharpest image. Thousands of stars and nebulae pockets from an distant galaxy. These are RGB data shot with an ASI294MC pro. I plan to add data using my l-ultimate.
You can find the image there : https://www.astrobin.com/48wv2a/B/
I am looking for further improvement suggestions. So far, my workflow was the following
Preparation
- for each panel, check individual subs for quality before caligbration, alignment and stacking in SIRIL.
- for each panel, image solving, mosaic by coordinate and mosaic trim in pixinsight
- photometricmosaic to stitch the panels into one large image
Linear processing
- dynamiccrop
- image solving and photometric color calibration
- DBE 2x (second with reduce tolereance)
- noiseXterminator (OMG that's good !)
Non-linear processing
- Maskstretch (OMG !)
- Starnet
- starless : curves (colors, saturation), HDRmt, curves, colors saturation to pull out blue and limit yellows, BG correction with a mask (background neutralization, curve for darkening and color desaturation)
- stars : deconvolution with deringing, increase saturation, reinforce stars in the middle of the galaxy by applying curves with a mask constructed with ACDNR on the starless (i.e. masks the stars that are not on the galaxy by extracting the corresponding mask from the starless with ACDNR), curve
- pixel math
- final touch with curves.
I am using pixinsight since 48 days, minus 12 days of astro-free family holidays. I would greatly appreciate any inputs to get better.
Many thanks & clear skies !
Patrice
Over the last 15 days, I captured about 24.3 hours of good quality data on M31 organized in 9 panels that I stitched in a 3x3 mosaic. That is about 2.7 hours per panel, which is not that huge but not that bad either consider weather, moon, and limited night time constraints. So far, it is one of my sharpest image. Thousands of stars and nebulae pockets from an distant galaxy. These are RGB data shot with an ASI294MC pro. I plan to add data using my l-ultimate.
You can find the image there : https://www.astrobin.com/48wv2a/B/
I am looking for further improvement suggestions. So far, my workflow was the following
Preparation
- for each panel, check individual subs for quality before caligbration, alignment and stacking in SIRIL.
- for each panel, image solving, mosaic by coordinate and mosaic trim in pixinsight
- photometricmosaic to stitch the panels into one large image
Linear processing
- dynamiccrop
- image solving and photometric color calibration
- DBE 2x (second with reduce tolereance)
- noiseXterminator (OMG that's good !)
Non-linear processing
- Maskstretch (OMG !)
- Starnet
- starless : curves (colors, saturation), HDRmt, curves, colors saturation to pull out blue and limit yellows, BG correction with a mask (background neutralization, curve for darkening and color desaturation)
- stars : deconvolution with deringing, increase saturation, reinforce stars in the middle of the galaxy by applying curves with a mask constructed with ACDNR on the starless (i.e. masks the stars that are not on the galaxy by extracting the corresponding mask from the starless with ACDNR), curve
- pixel math
- final touch with curves.
I am using pixinsight since 48 days, minus 12 days of astro-free family holidays. I would greatly appreciate any inputs to get better.
Many thanks & clear skies !
Patrice
