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Bloated Star Halos in stacked S2 - Pixinsight

Pleiades Astrophoto PixInsight ZWO ASI6200MM Pro SII Narrowband Blooming
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MeridianSkyAstronomy avatar
MeridianSkyAstronomy avatar
Hello astro community I am looking for a solution to correct some nasty bloated star halos visible in the S2 data of the Heart Nebula.
Data was shot in a Bortle 8 heavily light polluted site using a Chroma 3nm filter - 300s Bin 1x1 - ZWO 6200mm
Tried several configurations of Star Exterminator but could not get rid of the halos
Used WBPP in Pix to stack frames.
I cannot detect any star defects in any subframes and my Ha & O3 stacked data came out fine using the same WBPP parameters.
Any insight into what is causing this and how to correct or avoid in the future would be greatly appreciated.


Heart S2 - 1.jpg Heart S2 - 2.jpg Heart S2 - 3.jpg
andrea tasselli avatar
andrea tasselli avatar
You got the wrong stacking/normalization parameters but what I cannot tell unless I see the log file.
Brian Diaz avatar
Brian Diaz avatar
look like humidity , i have the same setup  zwo 6200mm pro and Chroma LRGB and  SHO  3nm ,  in south Florida , usa we have a Hight humidity ,
One night I forgot to turn on the dew ( camera ) and I had a similar effect on the stars, which does not seem like a halos to me caused by the filter, in fact it is one of the few brands that do not have halos, the next time stop and check out all optical train , looking for some humidity  ps : all star with halos not make sense
Jose_L_Roldan avatar
Jose_L_Roldan avatar
Hi, maybe this helps (though it’s in spanish):

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5BzIUEuBV2A
Philippe Barraud avatar
Philippe Barraud avatar
Hi,
You may try shorter exposures. I have the same problem with a doublet.
Philippe
Tom Engwall avatar
Tom Engwall avatar
Not sure if it would help but you might try Blur X with an aggressive halo setting. Worth a try.
Martin Mutti avatar
Martin Mutti avatar
Hi, with the script "GAME" it is very easy to remove star haos
Sabine Leidinger avatar
Sabine Leidinger avatar
Martin Mutti:
Hi, with the script "GAME" it is very easy to remove star haos

Hi,
please elaborate, what script are you talking about?
do you have any link to read more about it?

CS Sabine
Martin Mutti avatar
Martin Mutti avatar
Bogdan Borz avatar
Bogdan Borz avatar
You cannot remove these halos with AI sharpening or scripts. They look like bad integration of frames and are probably artifacts. Did you drizzle? What were your parameters when you integrated?

CS,
Bogdan
Alan Burgess avatar
Alan Burgess avatar
Agree with Bogdan, looks like processing artifacts. 

Process of elimination simplify WBPP. Stack without darks and/or lights, turn off normalisation in lights, reset all WBPP parameters etc. etc. Check all subs as a video and frame by frame using blink. 

Good luck
Alan
MeridianSkyAstronomy avatar
MeridianSkyAstronomy avatar
MeridianSkyAstronomy avatar
MeridianSkyAstronomy avatar
Upon closer inspection in the Blink process it appears to be site condition or possibly equipment relatedBlink 1.jpg Blink 2.jpg
I will remove the bad subs from the integration 
Thanks everyone for your input
Siegfried avatar
Siegfried avatar
Hi,please elaborate, what script are you talking about?
do you have any link to read more about it?

CS Sabine


http://www.skypixels.at/pixinsight_scripts.html

Siegfried
Wim van Berlo avatar
Wim van Berlo avatar
The blink1 image you posted looks like you have poor focus. I would exclude those subs from the stack and redo the integration. As others wrote before, the problem is in stacking, so it should be fixed there, not in post processing.

cs, 

Wim
Helpful Concise
Kjpc85 avatar
Kjpc85 avatar
I just had something similar to this occur. A handful of shots were coming out with the center stars like this, I realized I didn’t turn on the antidew on my cam. A couple shots after I turned it on the stars were sharp again with no halo/glow.
Helpful