Comet C/2022 Processing in PixInsight - OSC and Mono Tutorial

[@mikevollmer8418]

I appreciate that your video does not have the distracting music in the background.

[@rodbell4222]

Your video is superb, everything worked for me very well! Thanks for clearing up the screen so I could read the smaller print. Made all the difference! Comet looks good too...Generalized Hyperbolic Stretch now is readable as well. It worked well and in Linear mode too...

[@viewintospace]

Great to hear!

[@PeteCroft1]

Thanks for this, it’s the best tutorial I’ve seen for comet processing, helped me get a decent image! Liked and subscribed.

[@viewintospace]

Awesome, thank you!

[@AstroHunter5280]

@@viewintospace I cant seem to find "GeneralizedHyperbolicStretch"? Did you have to manually add that?

[@viewintospace]

Yes, have a look here: ghsastro.co.uk

[@flopflipism]

Thankyou, great video! Without people like you some of us would be lost. Or take years to untangle the workings of PI.

[@BTurner.]

You’re a genius, I’d take years to work that out myself. Many thanks.

[@CarpeNoctem42]

First of all; great work, Sasha! You have quickly become a major source of information for me, thank you! One little addition for this video; you use debayered, registered, stacked lights as a basis. Of course that can be done with Deep Sky Stacker, but when using WBPP in PixInsight those files are stored in the "debayered" folder. You can recognise them by their addition of _c_d_ at the end of the filename.

[@rudibarani]

Thanks for the tutorial, Sascha. I really like SXT, too - but it is not the only way to do batch processing. I did it using an image container until SXT added the functionality.

[@viewintospace]

Thanks for sharing!

[@pksacoma]

thank you very much for this very profound and very well explained processing ..... I love your channel the forthcoming nights I will try some pictures also when it is nearly full moon... lets have a try clear skies Peter from Frankfurt am Main

[@zelodec]

I can totally relate. I haven't seen the sun or stars since october. I'm from Slovenia.

[@demax25]

Very usefull tips, Sacha. Thank you for another excellent video.

[@AZJohnnnyC]

Sasha, thank you for this great tutorial. So much great information! You've inspired me to try my own hand at processing C/2022 E3 (ZTF). Working in mono, I've come across an issue with the StarXTerminator part of the process. The "starless" comet images I now have show thousands of faint streaks in the background - similar to the effect of brushed aluminum. These star streaks seem to be too large for noise reduction to remove. Do you know of a way to remove these streaks? Or is there a setting in StarXTerminator that would avoid leaving these star remnants?

[@viewintospace]

Clone Stamp - it's brutal but it works ;-)

[@jratino]

Another great tutorial. Thanks again Sasha. Can we use APP to calibrate, register...?

[@viewintospace]

Sure you can use APP! In my example I used APP to stack the star picture fully and then for the rest I just did the calibration job with APP and the rest (debayer, register....) as individual processes in PixInsight.

[@jratino]

@@viewintospace Thanks. Forecast here is for a few hours of clear skies. I'm hoping. Been a rough Winter.

[@brynleyperrett1345]

Hi Sascha, I am a complete newbie to all styles of this type of astrophotography. I took some pictures of the comet recently but I did not know at the time about darks, flats, bias etc. So I only have light frames. Is it possible to process just my lights following your tutorial because I have been trying to follow your tutorial for the last ten days and have failed every time. This calibrating, debarring and registering, I have never heard of before, can this be achieved with only light frames? Sorry for the complete amateur questions!

[@viewintospace]

Oh, sure you can. That is not the issue. The issue is that Comet processing is by far the most complex undertaken within Astrophotography. So doing that as a complete newbie is challenging to say the least. My recommendation to you would be to save these files somewhere safe and then first learn to process some regular objects - like the Orion Nebula or Andromeda. And this does not pose any issues anymore, then come back to this tutorial and the comet pictures.....

[@brynleyperrett1345]

@@viewintospace Thank you Sascha. I do intend on capturing lots more deep sky objects soon, but we don't get many dark sky nights here in southern Norway in the winter so I am going to stubbornly continue watching every tutorial I can find till I have conquered this comet. Thanks and your videos are great :)

[@guitaralantrumper7926]

Hello, how are you, a question that is a 🖥️ from 2012, tell me how you managed to incorporate Pixinsight since version 1.8 is not compatible that I know of, like the StarXterminator layer preset, can you give a good answer and a very good video

[@viewintospace]

I only used this computer to display the Thumbnail, the real work I do on a MacMini M2 Pro machine 😉

[@adymanser6447]

Hi, I wonder if you could do a tutorial on Blink to show how you can use the video setting to capture the animation of my comet. As I’ve really struggled with this, thank you in advance.

[@viewintospace]

Well, no need for tutorial 😄 1. You have a Mac? Works 100% not! 2. You have a PC? Depending in who you ask it works or not…. (I can‘t say - see 1) 3. You want a save and easy workaround? Use a screen recording tool.

[@ericbonneville6837]

Another great tutorial! thank you!

[@Rafastro]

What filter would you use with an OSC for a comet?🙏🏼

[@viewintospace]

No filter or a Lightpollution filter like the L-Pro or the Antlia Quad Band Anti-Light Pollution Filter

[@naegeleh]

Thanks a lot for your Great effort, i have one question: Why you do not use star X terminator batch function also for the stars?

[@jamesgoodall3818]

Thank you for your excellent and informative astro imaging KZbin videos! When removing stars from C/2022 E3 subs with StarXerminator there was quite a bit of beautiful, dark, teal-green glow at the head of the comet that was removed into the star mask. Did you have that same issue with StarX? It would be nice to retain all that rich color. I have not tried StarNet2... Also it's very cool to see/watch the vapor trail change from image to image when viewing all 30 of my 180" (star aligned) pics in the 'Blink' module. I know of no way to retain some of that definition when stacking the aligned (comet only) image. Any ideas? I shot the comet with my 8" Edge HD and HyperStar at f1.8 + L-Pro filter and 180 second subs so maybe a single comet image carefully processed in say LightRoom might have enough detail instead of stacking the comet? I might try both ways and see. I'll let you know the outcome... Keep up the great work!

[@viewintospace]

Yes, a bit of the green was also in my case removed - you see me removing it with CloneStamp.... If that is really visible in the final pic is questionable. 180s with a Hyperstar in my opinion way too long given the comet is quite bright.. Did it not blow the nucleus out?

[@jamesgoodall3818]

@@viewintospace Thanks for the reply Sasha! Very good point on the exposure length. Between the L-Pro and the ASI 2600-MC's high dynamic range it seems the nucleus is still completely visible with only a very tiny, central pinpoint possibly blown-out. Because of the moon cycle I think I'm finished with this project, otherwise I would try say 60" exposures or perhaps 120" with 0 gain...

[@acapulcoastro5967]

Nice one Sacha. Great tutorial You can also do batch star removal with Starnet if you place your subs in a Pixinsight image container and then apply the Starnet process icon to the container

[@AstroOnBudget]

Great stuff! Thank you very much

[@arcalpinplan]

Sehr nützlich - danke - versuche das heute Nacht ;-)

[@marcelp275]

Great tutorial, Sasha. I've tried it, using my data of C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS) and it worked partially. There is one problem: after StarXterminator, I lost the nucleus of the comet. Did I do something wrong and is there a way to correct this?

[@viewintospace]

And with "lost the nucleus" you mean that SXT also extracted it?

[@marcelp275]

That’s exactly what I mean.

[@viewintospace]

Should not happen - SXT should recognise that it is a comet. Can't tell you why this happens without seeing the pic....

[@delmarvawx]

Thank you so much for doing this! Wonderful video!

[@viewintospace]

Thank you for the data - without your help this video would not exist!

[@glennschiffer1742]

excellent tutorial

[@gregmckay666]

Great video Sasha. I'm curious how you would handle comet data that has other non stellar objects in the frame. I have data from when the comet grazed by M102 on Jan.22 that I am struggling to deal with.

[@viewintospace]

I guess the only way would be to either use a single frame or make a stop-action video - like with Blink. But with multiple shots I don't see a way how to deal with that....

[@gregmckay666]

@@viewintospace I think my plan right now is to go out and shoot the exact same area of sky again, now that the comet has cleared the field of view. Then I'll have a clean plate with stars and galaxies to composite the stacked, starless comet data into. Thoughts?

[@viewintospace]

@@gregmckay666 Thoughts? You will also have issues to isolate the comet as M102 will remain when eliminating stars. So you would also have to shoot the comet again without M102 and then kind of photoshop the encounter but there is nothing real about that anymore...... So from my opinion - just no ;-)

[@gregmckay666]

@@viewintospace I already have the comet isolated with no stars and I cloned out the galaxy. I have a pretty clean "comet only" plate now. I just need a clean "stars and galaxies" plate to do my composite.

[@walterhock7809]

Why do you use the star measured PSF in BlurX when there are no stars in the comet only image?

[@viewintospace]

This practice is not needed anymore since BXT 2.0 as it can do it automatically the correct way

[@Jam_66]

For some reason comet align does not successfully align the comet at all. Is there something wrong with my data? Should I coney align and then calibrate or calibrate and then comet align? I shot the comet with my mono camera and unfortunately, did one filter per set of images instead of changing the filters more frequently

[@phillipmontgomery3576]

Great level of detail! TY! Do you think imaging comets via star guiding is better now than imaging them comet tracking?

[@viewintospace]

Great question! I think both has it's pros and cons. But with the comet tracking the main success criteria is 100% stable and accurate guiding. So it that is a given, comet guiding might be a good choice. Otherwise, better go with star tracking, it is more forgiving.

[@Aerostar509]

As the comet gets closest to Earth its apparent motion is greater so it is harder to keep it in the frame. I would like to figure out how the track the Comet instead of the stars during this time.

[@viewintospace]

@@Aerostar509 Just select it as guiding star in PHD - issue solved

[@jeffginnow3561]

Is there anything you can think of that you would modify if you also had a Lum channel with the R, G, B channels? I got 4 hours of 1-minute exposures last night in L, R, G, B sequence (1 minute of each then repeat) and just got through watching your excellent and VERY timely video. (This is my first comet.)

[@viewintospace]

Comet align all files together (LRGB) (after calibration and registration) - then star removal and integrate them per channel. Now you can do completely normal LRGB processing.

[@Thomas-mn5ih]

Hi, one question. When did you the color calibration for the comet image? You made an unlinked stretch in the STF but later in the GHS it seems color calibrated already, if I look at the histogram. Thank you

[@viewintospace]

I did not do it. I tried with regular color calibration after the DBE but really did not saw a favourable change and so I did not do it.

[@PaoloBanci]

I don't understand why when I integrate the photos of the comet without the stars, with the integration, it gives me an error.

[@viewintospace]

What error do you get?

[@PaoloBanci]

@@viewintospace Cannot see signal in channel 1

[@PaoloBanci]

@@viewintospace Zero or insignificant signal detected (channel 1)

[@viewintospace]

@@PaoloBanci Send me a download link to 4-5 exposures you are trying to integrate and I have a look

[@PaoloBanci]

@@viewintospace dropbox ?

[@giohelp]

Grazie moltissime. great job!!

[@markhelton8032]

This is very helpful once you get into aligning the comet itself, however for those of us who are somewhat new to Pix, I am not sure I understand how you created the first image with the stars. Do you do a normal batch process with all of the images of the comet first, but not integrating them? Or do you integrate those images to get the whole image to create the star field, and then create another image to take the stars out of the background from the comet. I think that is what you did, but for us newbies it was a little fast! I did image the comet the other night and would love to get the kind of image that you did!! Thanks. I enjoy your videos. You are lucky to live in Switzerland!! Mark. Great Neck Observatory on Astrobin

[@viewintospace]

For the first picture where I extracted the stars I just did complete normal stacking incl. Integration. For the rest you need the individual pictures in a calibrated, debayerd and registered form, but not integrated yet. I guess WBPP saves them like that, but I'm not an expert in WBPP, as I use APP for stacking.

[@markhelton8032]

@@viewintospace Thanks! Looks like I have to learn another software! Clear Skies!

[@sjondemolphotography]

very very usefull! thanks a lot

[@R46Fazer]

Arrggh, you lost me at 3:07😞

[@viewintospace]

BXT? Really? I hope you understand how far a stacked comet picture is from reality anyway? The physical appearance changes constantly and gets averaged by the integration, the position of the comet changes rapidly so the position of the comet on the picture is also an average of its position over the whole exposure time, so the ongoing discussion of the accuracy of BXT pales really against all that......