Astroimage processing

Photoshop "vs" ACDSee

twilight99 — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 04:45:04 GMT

Does anyone here use ACDSee phot processing in place of photoshp. I have this program and it is very powerfull but I am new to astroimaging and don"t know if I can use this program fro processing.

Poor mans darks

TeleNoob — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 03:53:18 GMT

What do I mean with such a weird title?

Simply this- have you ever taken some astronomy pictures, with the intention to process them later only to discover you forgot to take some darks that night? Oh well! Here's a processing tip that seemed to work for me.

One night in August I put my digital camera on its tripod, and aimed in the region of Hercules. I was on vacation in a place called Magnetawan, Ontario and on this night I was trying to observe M13, which I had never seen before. I was feeling a little bewildered, didn't really know where it was, and was looking for the Keystone but unfamiliar with this part of the sky. Seeing so many more stars also made things difficult. So I thought I'd take a few pictures, planning to process them later to help me confirm that I was looking at the right spot. About a week later I looked at the pics and realized they were pretty bad... the camera can only go to maximum 16 seconds exposure and has a very low iso, probably something like 100, so the exposure was not sufficient. Worse, there seemed to be an artificial glow of light spreading diagonally from one corner of the image to the other.

WARNING: BAD IMAGES AHEAD. This post is about how to fix a problem, not necessarily to produce the finest quality images. What I end up with is sub-par compared to what some of you are doing! Oh well, you were warned!

Unprocessed image:

I could see a few specs here and there, but the gradient of light coming from the top corner made the image difficult to improve upon. I think this is called "Amp Glow". I forgot to take a dark image in order to subtract it. So, after thinking for a few weeks on what my options were, other than getting the camera out and actually taking some darks... thought I'd try using a copy of the same image to flatten itself. I made a duplicate of the image in memory. The trick was to remove the stars from this image, but leave the amp glow intact. I applied a median filter to it, carefully selecting the filter's aperture... so that the stars completely disappeared, but the gradient of artificial light remained. This now became my dark image, by subtracting it from the unfiltered version of the same image file. This seems to work well in solving the problem, so that I could process the image a bit more to show the stars.

Result-

Ok, not a "stellar" image Although this technique is not as good as using real darks, I hope you might find it useful to solve a problem some day.

Intro to image stacking: step-by-step

Bloodhound31 — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 07:13:33 GMT

Like a lot of astrophotographers, I get repeated questions on how to do things that although may seem simple, I have to remind myself that they were once beyond me... So last night, I sat up all night and stacked some images in Deep Sky Stacker, taking screenshots all the way and writing down what I did as I went. Hopefully this can answer a lot of questions and get the new blood in the game well on their way to adding to the richness of images proliferating amateur astronomy. http://www.asignobservatory.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=84&Itemid=125 Have a crack, enjoy and let's see what you new folks can do!!! YEEEHHARRR! Baz.

Practice needed

tkerr — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 23:58:46 GMT

My opportunities to acquire any image data over the last few months have been slim to none, and I know others here have been in the same boat. Yet there are still a few who have been able to capture something. I would really enjoy the opportunity to have a go at some fresh image data to keep in practice and hopefully gain some more experience. Since I've upgraded my Photoshop software I have had little opportunity to do any processing, with the exception of the image data Richard Crisp allowed us to practice with. That was a great practical learning experience.

I for one would enjoy the opportunity to practice with and gain more experience processing the image data collected by other members here if they wouldn't mind. I wouldn't post or publish any results, instead I would send the results back to the person who collected the image data. If they like it great, If they want to post it that's fine by me, it's their data and their decision to make. If not we can always say we tried.

If you could after you have aligned and stacked the image data and saved it to a uncompressed unprocessed 16 bit TIF file allow me or anyone else you wish to download and give it a try that would be great. Since these files are often very large most email servers won't allow them. If you don't have a personal web site where you can share files, you can upload it to a file host web site such as http://www.mediafire.com/ and send the link to those you want to allow access to it for processing.

How many others here wouldn't mind the chance to give it a try.

Solar Image Proccesing

TilburyN — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 09:16:50 GMT

How do your proccess a solar image?

Star trails with a Digital SLR camera

tkerr — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 02:35:51 GMT

I came across an interesting thread discussion on another forum(ODS) about creating star trail images with 30 second exposures from a DSLR.

Many people might know that creating star trail pictures using a 35mm film SLR is a basic entry level method of astrophotography because it only requires basic equipment such as a simple tripod a camera and a locking shutter cable. Lock the shutter open and let it go 20, 30 or 40 minutes and you have a picture with star trails. Sounds easy enough because it really is. But, how many of you have tried that with a DSLR? You can't exactly keep the shutter open as long as you can with a SLR because the noise would be outrageous and would probably wash out from any ambient sky glow. So instead we take multiple short exposures and try to stack them into one image. Stacking as many know is used for stacking multiple exposures of deep sky objects. When stacking deep sky images we use the stars as alignment points trying to keep all the stars aligned to a single point on themselves from fame to frame. Well we can't exactly do that for star trails because in this case we want the stars to drift, Drift a lot, so much that it leaves nice long continuous trails.

Anyways, I can't remember who it was on ODS. , but they posted a link to a nice little application that will take all your image stills and turn them into a star trail image. Here it is.

http://www.startrails.de/html/software.html

Then I got to wondering why you couldn't do the same in Photoshop. I started experimenting with the idea, then when taking a little break and searching the internet I found a Photoshop ATN for creating star trails.

http://www.schursastrophotography.com/software/photoshop/startrails.html

That ATN works just as good and as fast as the stand alone application. Additionally I learned from it how easy it actually was to do each step yourself manually. Why would you want to do all that manually you ask? Because Bill Weir on ODS forums posted a link to a Youtube video of a star trails animation and asked how that was done. I figured you could create the frames using Photoshop then compile them into a video using Windows Movie Maker, which I did today.

To create each Video frame is tedious time consuming work. I posted copies of the star trail images I created yesterday using some of my still frame image data collected last winter for some time lapse videos, and I also posted the star trails animation I created today using Photoshop and Windows Movie Maker.

http://cs.astronomy.com/asycs/forums/t/42368.aspx

http://cs.astronomy.com/asycs/forums/t/42399.aspx

This next one puts a little different twist on star trails.

http://cs.astronomy.com/asycs/forums/t/42442.aspx

Making your still frames into star trails using Photoshop is actually pretty easy, just a little time consuming. Other than staying up all through the night taking consecutive exposures with very little break between each, all you have to do is open the frames you are going to use in Photoshop. Obviously using the first as your baseline image/frame. Select the next image then ctrl-A to select all, ctrl-c to copy to clipboard. Go back to your baseline image and hit ctrl-v to copy into a new layer. Change the layer blending to "Lighten" then flatten image layers. Repeat process for each consecutive frame. I was only opening 10 at one time keeping the base image always open.

If you want to make video frames then you have to "Save As" for each consecutive frame.

You can also easily use the Star-Trails application to create each individual frame and create the video. However, although it might be easier on you it is more time consuming to create individual star trail video frames. Additionally, the video would be very basic unlike what you can create in Windows Movie Maker or similar.

Useful readings for astroimaging

Sand Saref — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 21:51:36 GMT

Me again. So I wanna share with you all the information that I collect searching and searching in google about astroimaging. I'm beginner and I desperately needed this information about software how to work and such things. They are really helpful. Here are mine and if you find any other books, articles and tutorials post it here, please. http://deepskystacker.free.fr/english/theory.htm http://pixinsight.com/doc/LE/index.html http://www.threebuttes.com/RegistaxTutorial/RegistaxTutorial.htm http://www.astropix.com/HTML/J_DIGIT/TOC_DIG.HTM http://www.saratogaskies.com/articles/noise/index.html http://astro.ai-software.com/articles/dslr_iris/dslr_iris.html http://ricksastropics.blogspot.com/ http://www.saratogaskies.com/articles/cookbook/index.html http://www.skyandtelescope.com/howto/astrophotography/Deep-Sky_Photography.html http://www.starrywonders.com/tutorialpage1.html http://pixinsight.com/examples/NGC7331-CAHA/en.html

Stacking software

Sand Saref — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 14:27:11 GMT

Hello, I've read a lot of things about astroimaging and still can't understand some things. Well first of all when somebody takes picture he writes the software that he use. In stacking nebula as example he uses Maxim DL (or Iris or Registax оr Deep Sky Stacker) then he uses the software of the photo camera (Canon 350D, 40D, 5D, Nikon etc.) and then phototoshop. Some of them use guidin - PHD (which I don't know what is for). And after these readings I wonder how to work with them, what are they separately for? Why is the software of the camera is so important?

RegiStax Stp-By-Step Guide

DarkStar72 — Fri, 31 Mar 2006 22:05:45 GMT

There are several of us on here and probally many more who have not posted on the topic, who are just starting out in imaging. From what I have seen, we are all having wonderful sucess for our first tries, and seem to all be pretty much along the same learning curve. I have also noticed that many of us are finding RegiStax a bit overwhelming to take in all at once.

Last night while searcing the boards over at CN, I finally found a step-by-step guide that I found bery usefull. Its a BASIC guide but a guide none the less on the different steps in the processing procedure using RegiStax. In minutes I found settings that I did not even know I could adjust, and understood the ones I did know about 100times better.

Follow the link to the guide, and lets try to make this thread a beginners feedback about what we find to be helpful. Both for ourselves and for others just starting out.

http://www.starizona.com/ccd/software/soft_proc_registax.htm

Narrowband raw FIT stacks uploaded for image processing practice

Richard Crisp — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 23:04:20 GMT

In one of the Yahoo groups yesterday I offered to upload some raw stacked FIT data of four different objects that were captured using emission line filters. In each case the data is S2/Ha/O3 data.

The data is calibrated and stacked FIT data that hasn't been further processed.

I uploaded this data because several people are interested in how to process tricolor emission line images and are struggling trying to capture the data as well.

Since at least half of the work is the image processing and since not everyone has proven data sets to use for such processing skill development, I have prepared four such data sets so that anyone that is interested in practicing the image processing can do so.

I only ask that any images that result be credited to Richard Crisp and www.narrowbandimaging.com and that the name of the person doing the processing is listed as well.

http://www.narrowbandimaging.com/raw_stacked_data_for_practice_page.htm

the data sets for these images are what I uploaded

Registax V5

tkerr — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 19:08:08 GMT

Last night even though the conditions weren't ideal they were clear, and that is something I haven't seen for quite a while around here. So I took this opportunity to do a little web cam imaging of Jupiter and then some of the moon.

I know Registax version 5 has been available for some time now, and I've even had it loaded on my PC for months without even checking it out. Until now that is! There are some differences between this and Version 4. Many for the better. I have yet to crash it like I could easily do with previous versions. Having a new PC probably helps too. But it still seems much faster and proficient at utilizing system resources. More importantly is that your not restricted to AVI files as in previous version if your going to stack video frames. That does away with the need for additional software on your machine such as Virtual Dub to convert your Mpeg to AVI for use in Registax.

Because the seeing was so poor last night I doubt I will be able to produce any good images, but at least it gives me a chance to learn the newest version of Registax. Maybe I can learn enough about it so that I can help others.

Why Halpha luminance makes no sense for RGB and emission line images

Richard Crisp — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 00:49:21 GMT

click for the report

http://www.narrowbandimaging.com/why_halpha_is_bad_for_luminance_page.htm

Help with UHC filter colour

VincentMorris — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 10:43:56 GMT

Hi All,

I took this widefield of the Veil using a UHC filter and a F1.8 lens/Canon 350D. 600s exposure.

The UHC's given me a magenta background. How can I get rid of this background colour in PS? . Tried Colour Balance, Colour Replace, Levels/Curves after converting to CMYK. Nothing works really.

Anyone got a clue?

Thanks,
Vincent.

DSLR photography and registax (newbie question)

messier&tonic — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 19:30:19 GMT

hi folks,

Hope you don't mind another newbie type question on simple (I think) image processing -

Background: Started into astronomy this year with a Celestron CPC800. Really got hooked, and decided to try some astrophotography (oh-oh...), bought an inexpensive DSLR (Nikon D40) and T-adaptor. Now realising I am at the bottom of a gi-normous learning curve..

I've recently taken some I think OK basic shots of bright deep sky objects (M13 and M57) at prime focus (magnification c. 65x) - To get over the limitation of alt-azimuth alignment, using short exposures 25 second @ ISO1600. No wedge or equatorial mount yet due to lack of funds. Shots come out dim, but with no trailing. Now, I thought to use registax to stack / improve picture quality, so took 40 frames and loaded to stack, but I can't seem to get the stack to align properly - e.g. the initial result for M57 is a ring (on which I aligned) with lots of trailed dots around from other stars in the field. - tried to do a multi-point align, but that didn't work either - how do I get Registax to compensate for the frame to frame rotation in the stack? Or is it not made to compensate in this way? Also, should I be using raw (NEF) files for this? They're about 5Mb each. Also, I took a dark frame but still struggling to get it to load. I might just be using the wrong software / approach, but too new to all this to tell. (and lots more questions!)

I think replies (if any) might well be along the lines of: Buy a wedge, read the manual, or don't drink so much gin&tonic when processing, but if anyone can point me in the right direction from this point, I'd be very grateful.. Hoping to slowly build up experience / equipment over the coming months... kind regards, Andrew

Our forum policies, including no advertising (updated July 8, 2009)

Karri Ferron — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 20:00:10 GMT

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Our forum policies, including no advertising (updated July 8, 2009)

Karri Ferron — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 20:00:04 GMT

Now, to the rules:

Please keep discussions on topic (that is, astronomy-related).

For further guidelines, please visit Frequently Asked Questions or our Web Site Usage Policy.

2009 Astroimaging Contest

Karri Ferron — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 15:02:59 GMT

Astronomy magazine just announced its 2009 Astroimaging Contest.

The competition offers three categories: Deep-sky, Solar System, and General. In addition to these winners, the editors will be choose one image as the grand prize winner -- the best of them all.

There are some great prizes from Astrodon Filters, Lumicon, and Tele Vue Optics to encourage your participation. The grand prize is a 5-night stay at Arizona Sky Village/Rancho Hidalgo (worth $3,500) plus $1,000 to cover airfare, rental car, and food. This facility sits in one of the darkest parts of North America, right on the Arizona-New Mexico border.

Other prizes include a mounted 1-1/4" Hydrogen-alpha filter from Astrodon Filters worth $275, a set of 4 nebular filters (Deep-Sky, UHC, OIII, and Hβ) from Lumicon worth $400, and a 13mm Ethos eyepiece from Tele Vue Optics worth $620.

The deadline for entries is April 15, 2009, and we’ll showcase all the winners in our September issue.

I really think this is a great opportunity for many of you. Visit www.Astronomy.com/photocontest to read the contest rules and find out how to submit your image, and let me know if you have any questions.

Help! One shot color processing - MaximDL / Starlight Express

VincentMorris — Mon, 25 May 2009 09:05:07 GMT

Hi All,

I have around 500 FIT files captured with Starlight Expres M8C using MaximDl 5. They all need to be de-bayered.

Maxim DL, Color menu -> Convert Color brings up this menu. The M8C is not present in the list of cameras. I tried with the rest of the SX camera's mentioned here, but the colour comes out awful.

Help please!!

Thanks,
Vincent.

biginer needs help editing pictures

catsrool5 — Sun, 03 May 2009 09:08:56 GMT

i need a softwher which will allow me to layer multiple images of the moon ect ontop of each other dose anyone know any hi appreciate your help thanks

Focal ratio & Focal length

tbone0168 — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 21:05:20 GMT

Hello everyone!

Is there an astro-imager who can give me an idea of a good focal length and focal ratio for planetary astro-photography?

new to astroimaging and have questions

alancorey1979 — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 13:56:45 GMT

Ok, I finally bought a camera so I can take up astrophotography. But I have 10,000 questions and I am not sure where to start. So I guess I will just pick one and go from there as I experiment more.

First off, I should say that the camera I bought is a Nikon 35 mm camera. It isn't the most expensive camera on the marker by any means, but I figured it will get me started. My main goal here is to photograph all of the messier objects first and when I upgrade my apeture all the other objects. I think I am going to do prime focus photography, so my first question is what speed film do I need and do I HAVE to use extended exposures for prime focus photography. I also would like to try my luck at just standard pictures of the night sky...something I attempted at last years WUTS but failed miserably. So any pointers anyone can give me, would be most appreciated. Thanks

Alan C.

Film development problem

Kate — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 12:39:08 GMT

Hi there,

I have this problem. Recently, I brought my film strip to a professional photographer who should develop it and should also burn a cd. When I came back a few days later, his assistant gave me three maps with pictures. I said that I brought only one. Cos she didn't know which film was mine, she told me to look through all the pictures. So I just flew over them and figured out which was mine. I had a 24-film. But there where only about 11 pictures there. And on the negative strip therewas absolutely nothing to see where should have been about 16. Well because of that, the film development machine did not know where to cut the negative and therefore where which picture began. In result, the few photos I got often showed two half-pictures on one photo. And on the cd there are lots of pictures that are not mine and only in the end there are my 11 astropictures.

What to do? I am absolutely sure that there should be these 16 pictures somewhere. I am sure that I safety cap from the tube or the camera objective (otherwise it would not have been possible to look through where you usually look through before taking a picture [don't know the name for it :) ] ). I also took pictures of the moon craters with my 102M with eyepiece projection. There must be something.

Thanks for your help!

Kate

Saturn Image Processing Help

hedonest — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 12:55:41 GMT

Hello guys,

So I have taken 8 images of saturn in colour at 1min exposure... with CCD SFX25MC (6MP) mounted on LX200GPS (16")

I have stacked them (Deep Sky Stacker) and was disappointed with the result. For some reason I always ended up with an over exposed image of saturn.. and loose all the details that are otherwise present in the single shot image.

So far I have done basic processing of all 8 images through the camera software (just adding colour), save them in FIT format n then stack them using DSS.

am I doin something rong?

I am using GIMP to process the images (levels, curves, contrast-brightness)...

any suggestions/ideas what i am doing wrong?

thnx

New tutorial about planetary imaging!

astroheaven — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 18:41:35 GMT

Hello,

My name is Sebastien and I'm 21, I speak French and I live in Belgium. So please forgive me for the mistakes I do on this post

My passion goes to planetary imaging with my Meade LX200 telescope and various cameras. I've written a tutorial that enables you to process videos with the Iris software and I'd like to thank TeleNoob, Kevin Bozard, DaveMitsky and tkerr for their help in the translation of my web site and the following tutorial previously written in French.

Can you give your opinions about this tutorial and my website? I'm sure that it remains some bugs, but also a lot of mistakes (all the texts weren't checked) or some sentences need to be rewritten in a better English so it would be great to say everything that need to be changed.

note: thanks to the help of TeleNoob you'll soon discover how to automatically process your planetary videos with the scripts in Iris. Be patient ;-)

Here is the home page of my web site:

http://www.skyimaging.com/

And the link to process your planetary videos:

http://www.skyimaging.com/planetlrgb.php

Thanks a lot and clear skies

Seb

Enhancing Stacked photo

Jarm311 — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 20:47:32 GMT

So I used DSS to stack some photos we took of Orions Nebula, RGB. What it gave me was a grey picture, how do I go about enhancing this to bring out the color and make it look good? Im very new to this...this is the first picture I've ever taken. Thanks for any information! :)