Astrophotography Dithering - Noise Removal Technique

[@I_Spaced_Out]

I like doing these 'process along with me' kind of videos, but I think there is room for them to improve. Comment below with your ideas of how I can do a PixInsight video, Photoshop video, or other kind of follow along tutorial that is easier to follow along and doesn't get too long or boring.

[@jamestickle3070]

If you dither you should use drizzle combine. It will yield higher details in you resolution and can really help if you are undersampled. Try it with that horse head and you’ll see even better results

[@I_Spaced_Out]

That's the plan!

[@OriaXu]

Wow that is a huge difference!

[@jamestickle3070]

Dithering can save you if you don’t have time to do darks. But if you can do darks and flats AND dithering you should.

[@cheesification]

hi there Allen you should also put Pixinsight within the header of the video. It helps and there are not too many vids with PI on this!!

[@I_Spaced_Out]

This is a good suggestion, and I'll update the description and the tags on the video. The Title, however, does reflect the nature of the video, which is how to remove noise by dithering. This would have worked in any stacking tool, not just PixInsight and I don't want astrophotographers who use other stacking programs to skip the video simply because I use PixInsight even though the video has little to do with PixInsight.

[@justjerry1078]

You started in the middle, how EXACTLY from the start (in English) do you dither.

[@I_Spaced_Out]

Try this video.... kzbin.info/www/bejne/jqCyaphji7GhnbM

[@elmikol2443]

Cool video Alan.

[@I_Spaced_Out]

Thanks Mike :)

[@paulcampbell583]

Hi I don't have anything to add to your tutorial, but I am always looking for new ways to subtract noise... Nice thank you... Can you tell me the name of the music you were playing in this video...

[@I_Spaced_Out]

I'll see if I can find the names of the songs in my project file once I get back to my computer. They were royalty free, and I think I found them in the KZbin library of free songs. I'll double check that, too.

[@I_Spaced_Out]

Description updated with the tracks I believe I used. My project file is missing right now (doing PC upgrades and the HDD array is being difficult again).

[@Nottsboy24]

Great video :)

[@Froobyone]

Very helpful. Thank you.

[@craigallenphotography]

I am a landscape photographer who is starting to play with night sky/milky way photography in my landscape work. Is this a process that would improve the quality of my wide angle (16mm-50mm range) night sky shots? Or is this more geared to deep space shots? Thanks

[@I_Spaced_Out]

In theory, yes, this can work on any data that has a lot of noise. However, you need to be able to do several things when capturing your data to make use of these techniques. The most important step is to dither (random move) between shots so that the stars in the sky are not on the same pixels from shot to shot. Second, and I've never tried this one myself - you then need to stack the data with the stars as the alignment points. this will shift the noise around and smooth it out. The foreground should benefit from it, but I've never done a landscape shot myself, and cannot speak to how effective it would be. Good luck, let me know how well it works for you!

[@smason547]

Great video. What dither settings did you use to capture the images?

[@I_Spaced_Out]

I would have to go back and watch the live stream again to find out, but they were in sequence generato pro.

[@I_Spaced_Out]

+Steve Mason, at 39 minutes on this video, I'm configuring the dither settings in Sequence Generator Pro: kzbin.info/www/bejne/in7Gdml3qc6nqdU

[@Thunder_Dome45]

I don't know how you got it to work, but I've tried dithering with my DSLR and it doesn't seem to help. I do only dither with ra though. The backlash in my mount is pretty bad and I don't need to make it worse by dithering in Dec.

[@pbillings808]

Useful perhaps if you didn't take calibration frames (darks and flats), but I think you'll get better results by using adequate calibration data. (You might consider making a video showing that process & benefits). The main benefit of dithering is to enable sub-pixel interpolation (aka drizzling) when undersampled. That would also be a great video, as the improvements can be dramatic in such cases.

[@I_Spaced_Out]

I haven't had my telescope out since that night, but I do intend to grab a complete set of data on a target soon. The intention is to show the full process step by step. I've had a few requests to do so and I'll be dithering for the purpose of noise reduction and drizzling the images to recover data through interpolation. Thanks for confirming that I need to make the drizzle video as soon as I can!

[@davidaylsworth8964]

Good content but the backtrack music is a vexation.

[@I_Spaced_Out]

Yeah, the free music library from KZbin isn't all the greatest. In my videos now, I use music from DeepSkyDude. It's much better!

[@Nottsboy24]

Nice upload 👍:)

[@I_Spaced_Out]

Thanks!

[@paulcampbell583]

Thanks Allen

[@EraldBuneci]

very loud music

[@cmelton.photography]

I liquid cooled my pc.

[@I_Spaced_Out]

I'm going to to liquid cool mine eventually. I'm still adding parts, more RAM scheduled for delivery later this week. Maybe an RTX 2070 after that. Then liquid cooling!

[@cmelton.photography]

@@I_Spaced_Out are you doing hard line or soft line? But it does pay off, I cut my temps in half and it runs alot smoother.

[@I_Spaced_Out]

@@cmelton.photography undecided right now. Soft line costs less, and doesn't look horrible if the installer knows what they're doing. It's also simpler to do. Hard line costs more for the tools to cut and bend the tubes... And can look like crap if done even slightly wrong...

[@cmelton.photography]

@@I_Spaced_Out I went with hardline and it took a whole day, I even had a leak, but no damage was done to the electronics. Now it is all done, I love it.