Deep Sky NGC7292 Helix Nebula (1 Viewer)

[OhNo]

I have to admit, I have never tried shooting the Helix Nebula before. In my defense from my latitude and the time of year I am usually involved in some sort of harvest operation. This was put together inder a less than ideal sky. It consists of 17 240 sec images with the ASI533MC P/SharpStar 61. Stacked in APP processed in Pix.

Not happy with the color(s), adding more ToT probably help. May pull the L-eHance filter to see if that helps......

 

[Tracy]

I think you said you use a color camera... I have an 8 position filter wheel for my mono and 1 space open and was debating if an L-eNhance would even serve any benefit to it since it is only 1 filter amongst the others that you would use... the others not getting the benefit of it... or if it might be better to put it in inline in front/behind the filter wheel.

BTW, between y'all... I just paid for PixInSight.
Now, what the frack are the xpsd data files and do I need them?

 

[OhNo]

I've heard the ppl in Light Polluted environments are having pretty good luck with the L-eXtreme filter. Can say as I have never used one.

 

[Larry]

Pretty nice!
You've captured some of the outer shell with very little ToT.

Larry

 

[Larry]

What's so funny? I think that's a pretty solid attempt.

Larry

 

[OhNo]

The Sky and it's atmosphere are our bosses when it comes to to AP. I am in control of a few things, clouds, smoke, thermal zones aren't in my realm of control, that's what I was chuckling about. As a kid at harvest time there were times when the guy running the grain truck could park on a hill in the dark and shut the truck and lights off. The sky back then seemed different than it does now.

I remember nights where the Stars just hung there like rip fruit ready for pickin'!. I am all for turning most of the light off everywhere are night. All street lights do is enable crooks to see where they're going! I can see a light dome of a town 50 miles NE of me! LED street light bouncing up doesn't help people on the ground!

 

[Larry]

Ah... I get it...

Larry

 

[Tracy]

The Sky and it's atmosphere are our bosses when it comes to to AP.

No joke... last night I walked outside and could actually see stars (was about 1:30am local time)... got excited, went back in the house and started toting out the equipment... by the time I was almost set up.... hello again clouds. Tonight those clouds have been present all day and still are. My "Good to Stargaze" iPhone app says... NOT good to stargaze because of the 31% cloud cover, and I think it's a little light on it's percentage.

 

[OhNo]

Law of proportionality! The move you want to image the larger the forecast is with reality!

 

[OhNo]

I returned to NGC7293 last night and gathered another 8-240sec frames (32 Minutes) and stacked it with the nights before data (17-240sec 68 minutes). So the total ToT for this image is 100 minutes. Stacking was done in APP. Opened the data in Pix and this time I used a couple tools I had neglected for far to long. The tool I have been neglecting is HDR Multiscale Transformation.

I used the HDR MS Trans lightly. Once it was done I saved the image as NGC7293 2 Night A. I then reduced the number of star using Morphological Transformation reducing the stars 15%. This image was saved as NGC7293 2 Night B. I believe too many stars can distract from the object the Imager/Processor wants you to focus on. As you can see the background space in Image B looks darker but nothing was done except reducing the small stars.

We often discuss Light Pollution, which we acknowledge a "Earth or Man made" LP. In fact space produces LP too. Our camera sensors pick up all the photons they can..... The PHOTON is an amazing powerful thing, without them it's game over!

Here are the two 2 night images, feel free to express opinions....

NGC7293 2 Night A by Brent Secord, on Flickr

NGC7293 2 Night B by Brent Secord, on Flickr

 

[Larry]

Those look great! I've been applying star reduction to my images as well. For some, like anything in the Veil region, star reduction is an absolute must, but for others, some subtle reduction just has the effect of tightening them up a bit. I realize Brent, that you are limited by your old computer, but the EZ processing suite and Bill's StarReduction are fabulous tools that make looking into a new PC totally worthwhile.

Larry

 

[OhNo]

The ultimate insult is when you download a program or script and your ole computer say's "nope that ain't happinin"! I'll have to do it the hard way until I win the Lottery!

 

[Tracy]

Here are the two 2 night images, feel free to express opinions....

Those look really good... I SURE will be glad when I have good enough sky to do ANYTHING. Heck, I can't even get clear enough sky right now to do simple planetary captures.... looking at my app it says that around 5am I "should" have good star gazing.

The ultimate insult is when you download a program or script and your ole computer say's "nope that ain't happinin"! I'll have to do it the hard way until I win the Lottery!

What kind of computer do you currently have... I do side-line computer work for some businesses, and frequently when we upgrade their hardware, I get to keep some of the older ones as an off-set for what I (frequently) don't charge them for doing.
I might happen upon something newer that I would not mind donating. Most of them have built in video (usually Intel based), so they aren't great for game playing, but generally good enough for most other uses, and are at least Intel I5 based (some I7) with around 8-16GB RAM (easy enough to upgrade). Most have Windows 10 as their OS. Usually they aren't tower cased size. More like this

Shipping to the great north should not be that expensive, and since it would be a gift there should be (unless your taxes are weird) no importation tax.

 

[OhNo]

It is an old Dell: No video card......

 

[Tracy]

Honestly.. that should be more than adequate (except maybe memory) to run anything you can toss at it.
The I5-4570 is good for basic photo editing... but if pushing a lot of load at it by the program, it might seem slow. Thats' why many get a computer with a dedicated GPU and a lot of the work is off-loaded to it from the CPU. I have a really nice case with great cooling that I just need to get a new motherboard, processor and memory for.. it already has a decent older gaming GPU. Yet another one of those barter for work items.

The larger ones that I have access to right now have older, slower processor than what you have.

My current setup is an I7-9700T that was a "discard" due to them now wanting to replace the HD and reinstall the OS and programs.... even though I had made a master image a few weeks ago... they just wanted a newer computer.

 

[OhNo]

I bought this one used with the monitor and speakers for $185.00 Canuck bucks. It had a new SSD installed. Prior to the co*id thing starting there were lots of used 'puters for sale, not so much right now.

I will have to revisit the EZ tools and figure out why I couldn't load them to Pix.

Oh speaking of that, someone should start a glossary of abbreviations that are acceptable for use here on the forum.

 

[Tracy]

Oh speaking of that, someone should start a glossary of abbreviations that are acceptable for use here on the forum.

Pretty much anything that doesn't tend to p*ss folks off... if talking about astro terminology.. sounds like a good idea for an Article... hint hint.

 

[Tracy]

You'll find some that get censored allready
****
************
********
*********
**********

There will probably be more added as time goes on
I could even replace covid with "the disease that should not be mentioned" if I wanted...

 

[Larry]

Your computed specs don't look terrible (except for maybe the memory). I bought this 3 years ago for $650 USD and upgraded the 16G memory to 32G for $90 USD. It didn't break the bank and I've been using it for 3 years. It's not lightning fast, but it works fine. It's also $450 USD now...

Amazon product

Larry

 

[OhNo]

Added a little more data to the Helix last night. This go round I used the darks I captured last night (cloudy, windy rainy) go out to shut off the RPi and clear..... After APP, Pix I threw it into Luminar AI. Up to 2 hours and 4 minutes on target.

 

[Larry]

That's coming along quite nicely!

Larry

 

[OhNo]

It is getting down pretty low in the sky.

 

[Larry]

That data looks good enough to add onto next year for sure!

Larry

 

[OhNo]

I added another 20x240sec frames bringing the total time on target (TOT) to 3.4 hours. Integrated in APP tweeked in PixInSight (Pix).