31 replies to this topic

[Borodog]

In this thread we post our attempts on other people's free data, give each other slaps on the backs for our efforts, and discuss processing techniques and tips.

 

Your post should include:

 

1) A direct link to the post in the Free SER File thread that the data came from.

2) You should state whether you used the originator's stack, or stacked the data yourself.

3) If you stacked the image yourself, please post your stacking settings (e.g. stack percentage, AP size & number of APs)

4) How you post-processed the image, including software and a rough outline of what you did.

5) Your final post-processed image or images, of course.

 

Remember: This is the discussion thread, not the data thread.

[RobDob]

OK, I'll bite. Thanks Borodog for putting this into action, will be fun!

 

I've been missing Mars and have not had a chance to image and process it yet with my newish ASI678 camera, so it's nice to get some PPP (Preliminary Processing Practice) with really good data from Borodog's Mars SER here:

 

https://www.cloudyni.../#entry13136851

 

-This is my stack of 84% frames with AS3, 18 AP's @ size 48. Sharpened 80% normalized, 0% raw frames.

-WaveSharp: Gaussian RGB - Layer 1 = 10, Layer 2 =0, Layer 3 = -10.

-Gimp: Saturation and a little bit of black level adjustment.

 

Edit: I sacrificed some sharpness and detail to minimize the edge rind.

 

Rob

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Edited by RobDob, 19 December 2023 - 02:05 AM.

[Borodog]

I miss Mars too. I hope someone steps up and posts a really impressive SER file from a really large aperture scope.

 

I find color balancing Mars from my own camera data to be difficult. I don't know exactly how people pull out the rich variety of color they get in their Mars images, like this one from the wikipedia article on Mars:

 

https://en.wikipedia...vin_M._Gill.png

 

Or better yet this one:

 

https://www.cloudyni.../#entry13137228

Edited by Borodog, 19 December 2023 - 11:33 AM.

[Borodog]

I took a whack at Ken's phenomenal Jupiter SER, posted here: https://www.cloudyni...ead/?p=13137480

 

I stacked 80% of frames in AS!4, using 238 alignment points of size 88. I also used horizontal & vertical blur of 1 pixel as found under Advanced > Experimental features, as I always do. I sharpened, denoised, and color processed the result in Wavesharp. I brought up a little ringing with my sharpening (probably indicating too much sharpening, but that's what I do), so I masked it in paint.net.

 

What a wonderful dataset. Thanks Ken for posting it.

 

 

 

[hyparh]

A try with the awesome data from UL16 Dob: https://www.cloudyni...ead/?p=13137480

 

AutoStakkert4

40% stack, 243 align points

 

AstroSurface VOLCANO-V1

Wavelets and Noise Prefilter:

 

 

Apply BW-Point (Set Black and Set White areas)

Saturation increased to 10 points

 

Photoshop

Apply 15 points to Contrast and 0.04 to Topaz DeNoise 5 plugin

 

Edited by hyparh, 19 December 2023 - 03:16 PM.

[Borodog]

I realized I forgot to post my exact Wavesharp settings, which are now lost to the sands of time. Oops. I do remember there was so little blue I had to process it in two passes. Because of the order of operations had to white balance, save, and then saturate the saved image.

Thanks for that post hyparth; I’ve been meaning to try AstroSurface and that will gwt me started.

Edited by Borodog, 19 December 2023 - 05:23 PM.

[RobDob]

I really like last years 'Peach Line' Jupiters. This is from RedLionNJ's excellent data from here: https://www.cloudyni.../#entry13138556

 

-This is my stack of 63% frames from AS3, Auto 41 AP's @ size 104. Sharpened 80% normalized, 0% raw frames.

-Gimp: Fine adjustments in Levels, Hue/Saturation, Sharp/Unsharp mask, Noise reduction

-WaveSharp settings as shown:

 

 

 

 

 

 

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[Borodog]

I am going to take a stab at that data later. The green looks like it may be difficult to deal with.

[Borodog]

Here's Grant's Jupiter, as shared here: https://www.cloudyni...ead/?p=13138556

 

I stacked 2473/3749 frames in Autostakkert! 4.0.6. 2473 is the number of frames Autostakkert wanted to use for the reference frame, so I took it's advice. I used 111 auto-placed alignment points of size 72. I used horizontal and vertical blur as well as RGB alignment.

 

I sharpened, denoised, and made color adjustments in Wavesharp beta 1.0:

 

 

I upscaled 20% and applied a mild resharpening in paint.net because I can't help myself:

 

 

Here's the final image:

 

 

 

I'm not super happy with the color balance, to be honest. I may revisit it and try to get the highlights whiter without messing up the other colors.

 

[Borodog]

Oh, that's much better:

 

 

[jackpresley]

I appreciate these threads. Thanks for setting them up.

 

Old dog, very new tricks so I hope my son will have time over the holidays to jump into this with me. My planetary imaging with my 80D and BYE was a complete flop so might be looking for a dedicated imager. But if I can't make these awesome datasets come out close to the original, I'm not sure I'll invest more time and money. So much of the conversation is over my head -- pretty intimidating.

[Borodog]

I appreciate these threads. Thanks for setting them up.

 

Old dog, very new tricks so I hope my son will have time over the holidays to jump into this with me. My planetary imaging with my 80D and BYE was a complete flop so might be looking for a dedicated imager. But if I can't make these awesome datasets come out close to the original, I'm not sure I'll invest more time and money. So much of the conversation is over my head -- pretty intimidating.

Don't give up. Just post your efforts and ask for help as needed.

[Borodog]

I took a stab at Con's gorgeous image of Saturn with Tethys transit, as shared here:

 

https://www.cloudyni...ead/?p=13143667

 

Clearly I need to subscribe to Con's newsletter. His version of the image is larger with less noise. I stacked 3 times the frames he did, to get more noise. :Op

 

I stacked in AS!4 using 80% of the frames from the first 3 minutes of the video. I used 59 manually placed alignment points.

 

 

Here's the Wavesharp processing:

 

 

And here is the finished image:

 

 

I thought about desaturating the blue out of the rings but that seems like a lot of work for someone as lazy as me.

 

Con,

 

Amazing data. Thank you for sharing. Would you care to elaborate on how you processed your version?

Edited by Borodog, 22 December 2023 - 04:27 PM.

[Ittaku]

I took a stab at Con's gorgeous image of Saturn with Tethys transit, as shared here:

 

https://www.cloudyni...ead/?p=13143667

 

Clearly I need to subscribe to Con's newsletter. His version of the image is larger with less noise. I stacked 3 times the frames he did, to get more noise. :Op

 

 

 

Con,

 

Amazing data. Thank you for sharing. Would you care to elaborate on how you processed your version?

Thanks. I posted my regular workflow a few months ago. A fixed amount of deconvolution in Astraimage, followed by unsharp mask on each wavelet decompose in The Gimp as much as the image tolerates. If the image is noisy I then use denoise in Astraimage. I don't believe I used any denoise on this image at all since the sharpening required was very light.

[Borodog]

Thanks, Con. I will dig up the original thread.

Edit: Found it. Fascinating approach, sharpening the wavelet layers.

At what stage sid you increase the image scale? Before sharpening? After?

Edited by Borodog, 22 December 2023 - 11:36 PM.

[Ittaku]

Thanks, Con. I will dig up the original thread.

Edit: Found it. Fascinating approach, sharpening the wavelet layers.

At what stage sid you increase the image scale? Before sharpening? After?

Final step after everything is completed.

[Sirius Pun]

As pointed before, that this is a discussion thread, not a data thread.

 

Is there a data thread?

 

I'm trying to step into planetary imaging, specifically Jupiter, and would appreciate pointers to data so I can start learn by playing around. :-)

 

Thanks.

[Borodog]

As pointed before, that this is a discussion thread, not a data thread.

 

Is there a data thread?

 

I'm trying to step into planetary imaging, specifically Jupiter, and would appreciate pointers to data so I can start learn by playing around. :-)

 

Thanks.

https://www.cloudyni...er-file-thread/

[Borodog]

Man I wish people would post more SER files. Winter is terrible for me. I get maybe one clear night a week and that has awful seeing.

[pvickers]

My attempt at kennhk's Jupiter from here: https://www.cloudyni.../#entry13137480

 

I stacked 30% of images in AS!3, using 72 alignment points with size = 144, multi-scale selected and 3x drizzle.

 

I processed the stack in AstroSurface:

• Adjusted white balance, levels, gain RGB, curves
• Did RL deconvolution and saved a copy
• Heavy sharpening (with some denoise) in wavelets and merged the over-sharpened image on top of previously saved image with opacity = 20% (I think - I wasn't taking great notes at that point)
• Denoise and resize to 33% (original size pre-drizzle)
• Some light local contrast, further minor adjustments to RGB gain and curves

 

I thought I was done at that point, but thought I'd try adding another layer of the image over-sharpened in wavelets (with opacity = 25%) and it actually made a big improvement. Final stage was some noise prefilter in the NoiseSharp box.

 

I'm not sure if all those steps are really necessary. I'm very new to this hobby, having only got my first telescope (8" Dob) in September, so very much still learning and experimenting. I'm interested in any feedback on the final image. It was a real joy working with such incredible data.

 

Edited: colours looked very different on monitor vs. laptop (way too blue) so I attached an adjusted version

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Edited by pvickers, 24 January 2024 - 12:11 PM.

[stefanj9]

Thanks for the thread   Unfortunately, I have never managed to photograph planets. Now I can at least learn the basic steps in image editing.

 

I have a Sky-Watcher Skymax 150, ZWO ADC and ZWO ASI 178MC or 585MC.

 

Next season I would like to photograph Saturn and Jupiter.

 

Clear Skies

Stefan

[Borodog]

I wanted to thank Ken for posting another amazing SER file. I will get to processing that puppy ASAP. I have the planetary imaging DTs.

[WestCoastCannuck]

Thanks to Ken for his wonderful data!  I hope I capture as well one day and work on my own data. 

Being as I have recently learned how to work with one shot colour and my lunar files,  I tried my hand with the same process on Ken's data.  I like the colour....  though I was not able to tease as many details out in the sharpening as I think are there.

Process -> opened in Gimp and extracted the Green channel and saved it and closed Gimp.   

I sharpened that in Astra Image with fine wavelets first then light deconvolution and saved that as my luminence.

I then opened Gimp again on Ken's original file and did an auto white balance,  then increased saturation 5-10% a few times.

With that open,  I then opened my sharpened file and added it as a luminence layer to the corrected,  saturated colour file and exported that....  a little tweaking in LR and export as jpg.  No noise reduction.

 

I know my handling of the files with GIMP is clumsy and it is not necessary to open and close GIMP for my process....  but it is new to me (GIMP) and I know how to get it to work in my backwards way.  haha

 

My version at Ken's original size.

 

Best regards

 

Mike

 

[Borodog]

I finally got around to taking a stab at Ken's latest data, which is great.

 

I made a fresh stack from the SER file, stacked in AS4, 1535 frames stacked, AP size 104 (I think). The raw stack was then color balanced in GIMP, blind deconvolved in David Biggs' BiggSky beta, luminance only, using luminance weights of 0.25, 0.65, 0.1, then denoised in WaveSharp using the FFT denoise tool with settings of 1024 maxFFT, start, feather, curve = 100, 600, 0, and saturated (also in Wavesharp) with S = 0.6. I used paint.net to mask a bit of edge ringing and save the 8 bit PNG.

 

 

Thanks again for posting it, Ken!

[TristanE]

I used some of Mikes data of saturn.  Here -> https://www.cloudyni.../#entry13136802

I took the stacked image already provided and just ran it through registax, going through some minor wavelet adjustments to try and keep noisiness low, rgb balance, and gamma adjustments.

 

 

           raw image                                post processed image