Digging for Dust - PixInsight Tutorial

[@JonnyBravo0311]

Your star stretch method is pretty slick, Luke. Typically, I extract the stars when linear and deal with the starry and starless images separately. Your approach gets the stars to where you want them right off the bat, so you can then deal with just the starless data. If there's one axiom that holds true for processing astrophotography data, it's "everything in moderation". It's all about the little tweaks. Nudge this value. Now, nudge that value. Don't try to just get it all done in a single adjustment.

[@lukomatico]

Thanks so much mate! Great message, I can totally agree with that :-D Clear skies!

[@d.fresh.750]

I've been dealing with my stars the same as you describe, and lately using Seti Astro's Star Stretch script, and it seems to work quite well for me. However, I may go back and have a play, using Luke's method, as it also works quite well!

[@JonnyBravo0311]

@@d.fresh.750 Frank's (Seti Astro) scripts are excellent. I use quite a few of them. Blemish Blaster is fantastic. The NB to RGB stars is very good as well to approximate star colors if you don't actually shoot RGB stars for your narrowband images. Star Strech does a really good job. Additionally, I use scripts from Cosmic Photons. NBColourMapper, ScreenStars, ImageBlend, etc. The NBColourMapper and ImageBlend scripts allow you to do some pretty cool stuff that I'm sure users of layer-based editors have been doing for years :).

[@funkmonkeyjaz]

Wow!!... I've never stretched my data this far! I've always thought it ruined the image, but with this workflow, I've been going back over old data and giving it the Lukomatico treatment.. This has really given my data a new lease of life!! Thanks Pal Andy

[@lukomatico]

Great to hear that mate!! :-D chuffed it's been useful :-) Clear skies!

[@mrhornerphysics]

THANK YOU for the processes you generate! My Soul Nebula actually looks fantastic now! You rock!!!

[@lukomatico]

That's fantastic to hear mate, thanks for sharing!! :-) Clear skies to you!!

[@lionki3]

Fantastic demo. I just got PI with the RC and other free tools and this is the first video I watched and you made it easy to follow.

[@lukomatico]

So glad to hear that my friend!! :-D Clear skies to you!!

[@SarahMathsAstro]

This is super helpful, Luke! Excellent workflow and instruction. Oh, and beautiful result! :)

[@lukomatico]

Glad you think so Sarah! Cheers! :-D Clear skies!

[@Interstellardustband]

Great video Luke 👍🏻 love that workflow. I became a pixinsight lover, especially the RC tools. Such a nice result mate 👍🏻cheers 🍻

[@lukomatico]

Clear skies mate!! Always a pleasure to hear from you :-D

[@petesastrophotography]

Excellent work as always Luke. It's interesting to see how everyone processes their images as we all do it in different ways.

[@lukomatico]

Thanks so much Pete mate! I guess having many different ways to do things allows us to add a bit of a personal touch to our images in some way! :-D Clear skies mate!

[@old_photons]

I really like the approach to picking your symmetry points!

[@lukomatico]

Thanks so much my friend!! :-)

[@JarrodMcKitterick]

Thank you for the demo. Will have to give this method a try with the next target.

[@lukomatico]

Have fun my friend!! :-) Clear skies!

[@AlexN-Astro]

Fantastic stuff - just in time, as I'm about to start a very long integration project on M78 with my Askar 120APO + Artemis-C. This is going to be good practice to make sure I'm getting the most from the data that I capture in the next couple of months!

[@lukomatico]

Excellent stuff mate!! - That's a lovely setup you've got there, I really think you'll make an incredible image with some decent integration time! :-) Thanks for watching and clear skies!

[@PeterAndersen1013]

Great tutorial as always, Thanks Luke! Question: the corners (to me) look more like color noise than dust but of course that's just my eye and I am probably wrong. Is there a way to be able to tell the difference when stretching?

[@lukomatico]

Great question mate! - if it's really hard to tell you could always pull up a reference image to judge from that, then proceed accordingly! Sometimes things like this are lost in translation when recording/uploading to KZbin etc so what's noise or signal can be hard to see for the viewer, but it looked OK to me :-D Cheers!

[@dumpydalekobservatory]

Great stuff mate almost makes me want to revisit my data of this target as I shot it with the RASA & it looked like your auto stretch so much to learn lol. Clear skies mate

[@lukomatico]

Thanks mate!! Time to dig for that dust hey :-D

[@Tony-Elliott]

Great tutorial Luke, thanks for sharing your knowledge mate

[@lukomatico]

Thanks for watching mate!! Glad you liked it

[@serkanboydag]

This video helped me understand gsh better. Thank you very much.

[@lukomatico]

Glad to hear that mate!! Thank you for sharing, it's encouraging! clear skies! :-)

[@DSOImager]

Great image Luke!

[@lukomatico]

Thanks James mate!! :-D

[@sekitv]

Thank you for nice trick Luke san !!

[@lukomatico]

My pleasure!! Thank you for watching as always, my friend! :-)

[@SAKinDXB]

You are a magician!

[@lukomatico]

You're too kind mate!! :-D cheers!!

[@jtepsr]

When you used blurb for the first time, I was taught to use correct only, was this incorrect

[@lukomatico]

It will have been correct advice at the time, but these days there's no need to run in correct only mode first 👍

[@pompeymonkey3271]

Great effort. Definitely an advert for dark skies though :(

[@seanod42]

Nice video mate

[@TomSupergan]

Your videos have taught me a lot. This video is frustrating when you have your face overlay in the lower right-hand corner overly large. Yes, we can see the phases of the moon, your guitar, and the microphone arm. But I'd rather see PixInsight's controls you are selecting that are hidden underneath.

[@lukomatico]

Did it hide a control? - The videos where I show my face do a lot better than ones where I don't, people generally like the connection that comes with it, I do too

[@TomSupergan]

@@lukomatico Sorry to sound so fawning, but you are like a GHS god to me right now. Maybe some time in the future I will picture you as some sort of regular experienced PixInsight user to me. I try to watch each portion of the video at least twice--once looking at the Preview window, then again at what controls you are manipulating at the time. I was frustrated not being able to see how far you were moving the sliders or what was selected, perhaps starting at 27 minutes in. I wasn't recommending to remove your image or even reduce your size, but to crop the surroundings (don't need microphone arm or moon poster).

[@lukomatico]

@@TomSupergan So sorry about the late reply mate, - I hear what you're saying and I definitely appreciate your support and kind message! :-) I'm sorry I ended up covering something, usually I'm pretty careful to try and avoid that but I guess accidents happen! Clear skies to you my friend!

[@tomdaigon8707]

I love your tutorials. But I felt you rushed through the image solver process. I am unable to get past this function due to errors. I even copy your screen numbers to no avail. I do use the 2600 so 3.76 I know is correct. When I use image solver on my files it runs smoothly with no errors.

[@lukomatico]

Sorry about that Tom, I assume when copying screen numbers your focal length set to 800mm, and object searched for and set also? Hope this can help somehow!

[@tomdaigon8707]

@@lukomatico Yes it did. Thanks. All is good.