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I wantetd to stich a pano of about 390 subs from 2016 and blend my actual Ha-data in. The subs were shot under varying conditions with the 80/480 apo. The quality was extremely mixed - 50% were very bad and light polluted. They were shot with ISO 400 and ISO 800. DSS did not want to do the job - it crashed after hours of calculation. So I gave it to the Astropixelprocessor, 390 subs to analyze, the 300 best of them to integrate. Because I had read that it needs a huge amount of disk space for panos I did it all on a slow external harddisk (my internal disks are always full). It chewed and chewed and chewed from Sunday morning to noon on Monday (28 hours!). Then it made a loud "DONG" so that my wife who was in the home office made a jump - ready!


I did not give the software any flats to calibrate so the result was this:


The pano was about 11000 x 8000 pixels and pretty ugly (though this is only the autostretch representation of the Astropixelprocessor)

After 2 hours of processing in Photoshop the result now looks presentable. I have blended in the Ha-data you already know from the single images of the two nebulas I posted the last days :




The small nebula at the top is the Spider Nebula.

Cheers
Pete

Jaw-droppingly great result. Applause!

It sould be nice with a Like button in the social groups, it`s a +1 from me (again)
Btw. Peter, I need you to send some clear skies up north, we haven`t had any since the beginning of January 😩

Thank you both!

Keld, don't think that we live in clear-skies-paradise here. I would share my clear skies with you if I hade something to share . We had some holes in the cloud cover every now and then and just I because I have a fixed setup on my balcony I could use each little hour (if I was at home) to shoot what I could get. And I could try the Ha-filter when there was moon and blend it with old data - that really was a plus.

But last night there were no clouds until the sun went up (but it had a lot of skyfog) and I got 150 x 300s of M106 to work with now!!!

So I wish you all the best and loads of clear nights in the upcomming "Galaxy Season"!!

Peter

Hey Keld, looks like it might be a good idea for you and for me to stay up late this Sunday.......
Have a nice weekend anyway!
Pete

It looks good! It might be freezing cold, I`ll just sit in my car like I did the last time, both due to the temperature but also due to the wolfes we have in the area, I guess I would have to change my trousers if one of them decided to show up next to me 😂

Btw. I would hate to be an astrophotographer in Belgium - looks like one giant flashlight on the MeteoEarth map.

Year isn't it crazy over there with those illuminated highways? Though my skies could be darker too. You find me squeezed in between the bright Rhine-Ruhr area and the city of Münster in that map. I wisk you clear skies good luck and a brave heart out there in that Danish wilderness

Hey Keld, what about the wolfes? Have you been outside? I was out on Monday (Sunday was just wind and cold and too many clouds here)to hunt in the Leo Triplet . When I changed the SD card after 2 hrs I did not shut of the camear before I took out the card. When I started the next series remote from inside the camera did not fire - it was in some sleep mode but I did not notice it. So I lost the best 85 subs before the meridian flip. I noticed it when I got up at 1 am to do this flip - s**t! Then I had to stop and go to bed because it began to snow.


This is the quick intermediate pp result with 40 subs. Outside I try to catch some more for the final processing actually but there is a lot of skyfog tonight.





Cheers, Pete

Snowing and we are under a winter storm warning right now, so now AP for me. Sad times. Also, you inspired me to get a 2 inch Ha filter with 12nm bandpass. I also decided to attempt something else by buying a 77mm IR650 filter and a 86-77 step down ring. I want to try to see if I get Ha using that on both the DFA 150-450 and the Tamron 70-200 on the stock cameras. I guess I'll find out!

Excellent results! Phew! That looks like a lot of work!

I have to ask, what are you using for raw conversion to a format APP can eat? When I attempted Lightroom it spit out non-linear 8 bit tif files. I need a batch processor that keeps my files linear and full bit depth.

Thank you gbeaton! Despite the fact that I did not notice the camera was not fireing in the first night it was not a lot of work. I am extremely happy that I have my setup capturing the more or less subs stand alone now. When al is set and started I just have to get up for the meridian flip. I collect the subs next morning, load them to my desktop PC and let DSS chew it. I control the whole thing remote via TeamViewer and when I come home in the evening it is all there, ready for processing. Processing is about 1-2 hours when its galaxies. Galaxies are MUCH more easy to process in my eyes because the images contain less stars and the background is much easier to controll than with nebulas.

Maybe I misunderstand - but the in the file settings of the export window in LR you can set TIFF format without comprimation and choose 16 bit depth. I shoot in DNG and convert to TIFF in LR for the APP. The only disadvantage is that the file size grows from 24 MB to 140 MB when converting from in-camera DNG to TIFF. So I have to delete the working files afterwards to save disk space.


I am not 100 % sure but Irfanview(64) has a batch mode that also should deliver 16 bit tifs.

I did see a result of having wolfes in the area Saturday afternoon, a dead cow (I'll spare you for the details). People are furious/afraid, I think it's exicting having wolfes in Denmark after almost 200 years of absence - but that's another story.
Right now I'm processing the result of a very cold Saturday night, I had to go in after a couple of hours - was freezing despite of having three/four layers of clothes on, used my DA*300mm to capture some more light from the the Orion nebula (the photo I've already been sharing), the Horse head nebula and the Whirlpool Galaxy.
Today I was certain I was going to get myself a used Celestron Advanced VX mount with a 6" Celestron Newtonian telescope including accessories for a very reasonable price, 670€, but it had already been reserved by someone else
Now I'm considering buying a new Skywatcher HEQ-5 with a telescope, Astroshop.eu has various kits with the HEQ-5 mount - but the price is triple of the used kit I just missed.