Having just spent an entire Saturday working on an image, I thought I would give a synopsis of what it takes to create a deep space image. Many people are not aware of the details, patience, statistics, and computer processing power that is required. Many people think that you just… Continue Reading... "What it takes to create a deep space image"
Possibly my favorite part of the hobby of astronomy is the continual improvement of a wide range of skills needed to produce images. The image processing stage makes all of the patience of hardware acquisition, maintenance, fine-tuning, and operation worth it. I would like to take my favorite targets, the… Continue Reading... "My journey in processing, featuring the Deer Lick"
I typically shoot at native resolution with my ASI2600MC for any single target. Recently, I’ve started collecting data for my first attempt at a mosaic, a two-panel spread over the Eastern Veil Nebula. With frames from my camera being about 6000×4000 pixels, and needing to collect two panels’ worth of… Continue Reading... "OSC binning in PixInsight"
I’ve been struggling for some time now to find a decent method to fix the brightest stars in my images. Since some stars are so much brighter than the deep space objects I am imaging, they become saturated due to the limited well depth of cameras. This means that information… Continue Reading... "Fixing saturated stars in PixInsight"
When I started processing astronomical images, I went with the common open source tools Siril and GIMP. Siril worked very well for calibration, registration, integration, and some basic post-processing. I would use GIMP to finish images as best as I could figure out. This combination couldn’t give me everything that… Continue Reading... "New PixInsight Tools"
Depending on where a target is, I can have terrible gradients and mottled backgrounds in my images due to sky and local light pollution. I struggle each time to try to salvage bad images when simple background elimination doesn’t work well enough. Here, I’d like to outline a new idea… Continue Reading... "A method to remove light pollution background problems"
With nothing else to do with the endless cloudy skies, most of my astronomy has lately consisted of looking at other peoples’ images. My favorite part of this hobby is the creativity you can use while post processing your images. Some people prefer the blue-orange of the Hubble palette, others… Continue Reading... "Enhanced Triangulum"
I’ve discovered a fantastic new feature in Siril: you can now have it apply background extraction per frame in a sequence. Since the sky gradient can be quite different between sub frames in a project, especially when tracked all throughout the sky over multiple nights, stacking all of the frames… Continue Reading... "Background extraction per sub in Siril"
I found a really slick trick to reduce stars in an image using GIMP. It’s really simple and works amazingly well. Many of my images are absolutely loaded with stars, especially most nebulae which live in the galactic plane. After stretching, sharpening, and other processes, these stars can be quite… Continue Reading... "Star Reduction in GIMP"
I was always super confused when working with color SER files in Siril. In particular, the program always says you can “debayer them on the fly,” but I could never figure out how to do that. The files are definitely beneficial when doing lunar or planetary work, as they are… Continue Reading... "Working with SER files in Siril"
