Clear Sky Evenings
Monkey Head Nebula
I had several problems in those 3 nights when i took the photos. my main problem was a drift caused by bad guiding scope alignment.
I tried later to process the old data with Affinity Photo. Crap Data stays crap data:
3 Evenings of clear sky and a long way to go!
But most problems could be solved post processing with PixInsight.
My fist post processing results came very quick and lead to my v 1.0:
At a closer look, i sow some ugly artifacts. Ugly Noise. My solution was to use the CANON Banding Reduction in every single light subframe and in the flat frames using Process Container and Image Container in PixInsight. The quality increase was huge:
I had another problem beside the CB: Ugly stripes. Should also be a result of the drift problem. I tried to fix it using the Cosmetic Correction in PixInsight. Think its called Walking Noise Pattern.
Therefor i started working again on my post process using PixInsight.
Lessons Learnd:
- Calibration in PHD2 helps a lot and improves guiding 🙂
- I should not play around with my guide scope without optimizing the field of view of the guide scope and the main scope after re-attaching it.
- PixInsight does not bring magic into play, but i could at least rescue my results and made me happy.
- Full Moon nights are there to photography the Full Moon!
3 Years later
3 years later I have a workflow that worked even on this material.
High resolution on Flickr:
Technical Overview
| Telescope | APO, Entry-Class |
| Focal Length | 600mm |
| Aperture ratio | 7.5 |
| Erecting Lense | – |
| Filter | – |
| Mount | HEQ5 Pro |
| Goto-Control | Cartes du Ciel, (Open Source) |
| Mount Control | ASCOM |
| Guiding Scope Focal Length | 162 mm |
| Guiding Camera Chip | 4.8mm x 3.6mm, 8bit |
| Guiding Camera Resolution | 1280×960 |
| Guiding Software | PHD2, ASCOM Pulse |
| Dithering | – (first time 12th, April 21) |
| Camera | CANON EOS M100a |
| Camera Control | iOS App CC&C |
| Photography Date | 03/29/2021 03/30/2021 03/31/2021 |
| Exposure-Time Lights | 87x180s |
| Sensitivity | ISO 400 |
| Calibrationframes | Flats, Darks, Bias |
| Processing Date | 04/01/2021 |
| Reprocessing Date | 12/22/2023 |
| Stacking, Integration | PixInsight |
| Processing Software | PixInsight |
| Image Editing | – |
| Reprosessing Software | PixInsight |
| Capture Place | Koblenz, Deutschland |
| Lightpollution | Bortle 5 |
| Scattered light | strong |