I Captured a DYING STAR - Part 2a - Siril and GIMP

[@michaelsachgau2970]

Thank you, Nico! Excellent Tutorial! Siril and GIMP are great tools for AP. Hope to see more of this from you in the future.

[@neilmehta187]

You are the best astrophotography ambassador on youtube. I really appreciate your help in making sure freely available open source softwares are not left behind in terms of tutorials by an expert in the field. Thank you Nico for this amazing work.

[@drunk_astronomy]

I wanna express my gratitude to Nico. Your tutorials are some of the best online and I love these programs that don’t require pay to play. For a beginner I have spent enough $ on my equipment and learning the basics of post processing is great way to ease into programs like pixinsight and such. Plus I love supporting the open source movement and small indie developers. Nico if you see this comment, I have to say thank you my dude!

[@PsychMike]

It was very exciting watching the premier earlier - I literally shot the Dumbbell Nebula for the first time last week and already did my post-processing with Siril+GIMP but I’m gonna do a second run following along this time!

[@ghillan]

note: the third most common error in siril is that the default debayer pattern is not correct for your OSC camera. For example if your fits are GRGB but the setup on siril is RGGB then will throw an error. Just go in "preferences" -> "FITS/SER debayer" and set the patter appropriate for your camera. You need to do that just once.

[@joneslu1377]

Genius idea using GIMP to mitigate star trailing! Very inspiring! Thank you!

[@shutterbug49]

I appreciate you explaining Siril and GIMP. I love your technique of rounding the stars. Great video. Thanks

[@HLyons1994]

Great work Nico! Did the very same target the other week, first deep space object I found by complete accident, sure stands out on the DSLR screen. The star trail reduction was a really cool technique!

[@NebulaPhotos]

Hi Harry, Yes, I've seen it by accident too when sweeping Cygnus. Even with a wide angle lens, that little dot of green really pops! Cheers, Nico

[@stay_at_home_astronaut]

Great video! Thank you for making this to show what can be done with "humble hardware" and free software.

[@Sydney3291]

Excited to see you use GIMp, I try to follow some of your photoshop editing with it but there's always points where I get lost due to differences in program. I hope to see more gimp processing as your videos are so good

[@bakerfx4968]

How you manage to make the part 2s as good as the part 1s is impressive! Thanks for what you do

[@Jonasastrophotos]

i appreciate the fact you upload these versions aswell. I cant afford photoshop so this is a huge help!

[@peterbarratt8699]

Brilliant !! Thanks Nico.

[@jimcraig8754]

I tried this and captured M57 in Lyra. I did it under Bortle 7+ skies so I'm pretty pleased with the results. I'd have tried M27 but I wasn't sure I'd have enough time to find it then take enough lights.

[@DKelly350]

This video and your channel are very instructive. I have not encountered any problems starting the folder names with caps.

[@davidjames4915]

Besides GIMP, I've also used Darktable as a follow-on to Siril, but that's generally only if there aren't things to fix (as in this example) or manipulate (like dealing with adding back a foreground in a nightscape). In particular, Darktable does have some interesting noise reduction tools.

[@christianheras4192]

THANK YOU NICO! YOU ARE THE MAN✌✌

[@graysmith9496]

Nico, you make it all look so easy :). keep these videos coming please.

[@rashie]

👍👍 - Fantastic content, as always! Thanks much.

[@marcmurison]

Superb tutorial. Thank you!

[@IgnazioPillitteri]

I like the scripting capabilities of Siril, and the various steps can be customized and adapted to specific needs. The names of the sub-folders can be changed, however if you change their names you must change the OSC_Preprocessing.ssf under ../siril/scripts accordingly otherwise the software will not find them.

[@NebulaPhotos]

Good point! I need to find time to really explore the ability to customize scripts in Siril. Thanks Ignazio

[@IgnazioPillitteri]

@@NebulaPhotos I started tweaking the existing script, for example commenting with a "#" the line where it does the flat calibration if I don't have flats yet

[@urtziodriozola7766]

@@IgnazioPillitteri Siril comes with the OSC_Preprocessing_WithoutFlat to make what you are intendend to

[@leeearlgray7818]

I enjoy the tutorials and am learning new things about Siri, GIMP and astrophotography in general. Thanks. Can we see a comparison shoot between a high Bortle area vs a lower Bortle area of the same subject? I would like to see the difference, especially since I live in a Bortle 6/7 area. Once again keep the posting good informational tutorials.

[@avt_astro206]

Very nice tutorial Nico. I use SiriL and Gimp to Process my Photos!

[@lcmattern]

Great tutorial! I have been following this advice to process my images. Unfortunatly I am having significant issues with heave gradient, very light bottom left and dark on the top right. As well as black lines going down from bright stars. I suspect this may have something to do with the camera I am using and perhaps some issue with my methods of getting flat frames. I use a rebel t3 (1100D) unmodified @ 2min exposures. I usually use my phone with a lightbox app to illuminate for flat frames. Those get captured via NINA. But I think the shutter from the DSLR is messing with image as they look slightly different, as if the mirror or shutter are not clearing the sensor fast enough.

[@IgnazioPillitteri]

Sometimes the photometric calibration fails in solving the field, this is something that will be more robust in the next release of Siril, the authors say.

[@NebulaPhotos]

That is great to hear. It's an excellent way to calibrate the colors, but I know the solving failures have been frustrating to many I've talked to, so I'm very glad the developer will make it more robust.

[@aprendendo.astronomia]

Hi Nico. I've been following your videos and learning a lot from them thanks a lot ! They are perfect. But now I did something I didn't even imagined I would,. I took a fantastic photo of orion nebulae, a close up, and on Siril if looks so beautiful, but it need a lot of threatment on GIMP or darktable, etc... That's because since it was a test I decided to do. I was on the field and plugged my DSLR on my reflector (150mm x 750mm). But as it was a test to see if I could capture something relatively good, because two days before I did that with a CLS filter and got almost nothing and now I was not using the filter, the telescope was near a street lamp and my wonderful Orion Nebulae is full with noise. I'm trying to remove all way I know, but it is very, very dificult. I can send you some screenshot of what I have here, or also share the fit file, and if you have some spare time, take a look and point me how can I make this my best photo I ever took .... Thanks a lot !

[@NebulaPhotos]

Sure, send to nicocarver at gmail dot com, and I will try to take a look

[@harrison00xXx]

Nice, this video comes at the perfect moment. i tried SiliL myself and well, i need a tutorial lol

[@jessehuang5696]

How do you stack lights/calibration frames from multiple nights with Siril? Do the camera settings have to be the same for each night?

[@AdamHarrisonEros]

I’d like to request a new Siril tutorial. Specifically, how to image stack comets. I got about 2hrs worth of 30s exposures of comet c/2022-e3(aft), but Siril is aligning on the stars and leaving me with a smudge for a comet.

[@christianlee8093]

Siril doesn’t recognise my disk space. I have 2Tb hard drive but doesn’t recognise it . Any solutions?

[@deeber35]

Is there any way to make stars that are not quite circular (e.g. arrowhead) look round?

[@BRAVEN32m12]

Nice shot

[@rickdurham264]

G'Day Nico, Great video, very informative! Very much a beginner here, but I have a tip, and a question for you!!! Your star trail reduction method in GIMP can be performed a bit easier than you showed here. Here goes.... Duplicate the layer... change mode of new layer to "Darken only"..... Then go to Layer - Transform - Offset and change the X and Y offset by the appropriate number of pixels! Now to my question.... I watched Part 1 too, where you used PhotoShop, which was also very informative.... Do you know of a way in GIMP where you can enhance the reds in M27 as you did using PS?? That was a pretty remarkable result! Cheers!

[@NebulaPhotos]

For the easier method, wouldn't that mess up details in the nebula if you don't mask the stars? Bringing out the reds: should be basically the same in GIMP- go to channels copy over the red channel as a layer, colorize it to red and blend it back in with a layer mask.

[@rickdurham264]

@@NebulaPhotos Good point about messing up the nebula.. Didn't think of that! Thanks for your help on the reds too, I will give it a go!

[@amature_skywatcher]

Finally its here!!

[@IgnazioPillitteri]

It seems to me that the image obtained with DSS has a red glow in the bottom left corner while this one from Siril hasn't, is that true?

[@jwalinrami.photos]

hi Nico, thank you for excellent guidence ! I am jus starting my journey and I found your videos very helpful. I took my first images using Sony A1 in raw (ARW files) format today and trying to stack them using Siril 1.0.6 on my Mac running on Catalina with enough space(640GB) available and current directory looks correctly pointing to where I have all four folders needed. I am getting below error, please advice. 'No sequence `bias' found. Error in line 29: 'stack'.

[@NebulaPhotos]

Since the Sony A1 is pretty new, I wonder if it is having a problem decoding the raw files. Just a theory, but you could test by converting them to dng with Adobe dng converter (free) and see if Siril works after that. This is just a theory off the top of my head. You may have better luck asking in the Siril web forum here: discuss.pixls.us/c/software/siril/34 Good luck!

[@AdamHarrisonEros]

Does Siril load all the frames into memory at the same time? I'm wondering if you need enough ram to load all the images, uncompressed, at the same time. Or if this loads the images one at a time into a new image, so you only, effectively have a couple frames loaded at a time. (Specifically, my Ubuntu laptop has 8Gb or RAM. Will I be fine or will I be hating life and should get more RAM?)

[@NebulaPhotos]

I think it works in batches. I would definitely try it with your current system. My guess is it will work, but just slowly (leave it overnight).

[@CurtBlakeslee]

Hey Nico! I had a pretty meager dataset, but even still, I noticed that Siril takes much longer to process the same number of Lights and Calibration Frames than Deep Sky Stacker. I didn't see much of a difference between the two programs, but again my data was pretty noisy. Do you find it gives much better results, given the increased processing time it takes?

[@majortom4338]

i experience much faster processing time in Siril and better colours than in DSS.

[@NebulaPhotos]

I'm really not sure since I usually use Siril on my Mac laptop and DSS on my Windows Desktop. One of these days, I will download Siril on the Windows PC and test. I've never really minded processing time as I just let it go overnight while I am sleeping.

[@NestoRides514]

How do I add the scripts tab on top of SIRIL? All it shows is image processing tab. Thx .

[@NebulaPhotos]

Try the troubleshooting instructions here: siril.readthedocs.io/en/stable/Scripts.html#troubleshooting

[@tephe9986]

Amazing!

[@ΚώσταςΒαγγελής-χ9θ]

Great job man. This was really helpful tutorial. I have to make you a general question. If i have only one image of astrophoto can i copy and paste 100 times this image and then stacking these files? With darks and lights of course. Tell me if you know if that will work. Because i have taken an image o milky way and lot of darks and lights from that day and i want to make it better

[@NebulaPhotos]

Nope, if that was the case, we would all just do that. It will look the exact same as the single picture. The trick with stacking is photons arrive randomly, and the more photons we collect over time the more filled in the picture becomes. I have a video with a much more in-depth explanation here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/ZqfHZ42harJohaM

[@ΚώσταςΒαγγελής-χ9θ]

@@NebulaPhotos Thank you. It was very helpful

[@BigBadLoneWolf]

I tried to follow along, but when I do photometric colour calibration, it will not plate solve. say's there are not enough stars despite their being plenty of stars that i can see in the image

[@NebulaPhotos]

In that case, I recommend just using normal color calibration where you make a selection of the background for the black reference, and of some bright stars for the white reference. It usually works about as well for getting the colors in line.

[@jodyschultz5870]

Please please do a manual RGBL or SHO step by step how to stack with darks flats etc.

[@NebulaPhotos]

With Siril?

[@jodyschultz5870]

@@NebulaPhotos Yes with Siril. I am starting to understand how powerful Siril is compared to DSS. But I can't figure out how to do a manual stack with darks and flats and dark flats and SHO. I don't want to use a script, I want to do it step by step. I have some Crab neb data that is so dim, DSS wont stack it. But Siril WILL stack it. I just don't know how to do it properly. Everything I find online is not too good. I need your slow step by step, start to finish instruction. I know it's a lot of work but I know you are the man for this job!

[@NebulaPhotos]

@@jodyschultz5870 Hi Jody, I will add it to my list. Have you tried (or have any interest in) Sirilic? It is basically a GUI for chaining together the manual processes like the scripts do.

[@jodyschultz5870]

@@NebulaPhotos Thanks, I don't know what Sirilic is but I will look into it. Or maybe I should just give up on Siril and use something else to stack? I do feel like I almost have Siril working in terms of stacking SHO. I figured out the 2-3 star registration bit.

[@christophermancrief4916]

I have no idea how you create thse videos, but is it possible to get the screen shots a bit more in focus?

[@NebulaPhotos]

Hi Christopher, these are direct screen recordings. If the video looks blurry, please check that you have the KZbin player setting (gear icon) set to "4K" resolution. It will take longer to buffer, but the image should look very sharp after switching. Clear skies, Nico

[@christophermancrief4916]

@@NebulaPhotos Thanks Nico. Your videos are now even better than ever.

[@michael_1601]

Can I do this with nvidia geforce 850m and 8 gigs of RAM?

[@NebulaPhotos]

Yes

[@bhaktibhandari7379]

Is it just me or using GIMP rather than PS was much much easier and faster? I mean, for free, GIMP is just insane if it literally reduces the efforts and the time spent...!

[@NebulaPhotos]

A couple things: It is mostly that Siril offers much better tools than DSS. Because the nebula already looked better out of Siril, I decided not to go for the high pass filtering like I did in PS, which was the most complex part. So I agree that my process here in GIMP was much simpler, but that has more to do with DSS vs. SIRIL

[@bhaktibhandari7379]

@@NebulaPhotos Agreed. Love your vids, Nico! Appreciate your efforts of going through the process twice to explain us... Just a tiny question, is taking photos in RAW a mandatory step for the stacking and stretching process? I have some JPEG photos that I would like to stack and stretch. Would it be worth to spend 7 hours on them?

[@NebulaPhotos]

@@bhaktibhandari7379 Raw is definitely better, but if you already have the JPEGs, I definitely think it is worth stacking and processing them. Cheers, Nico

[@bhaktibhandari7379]

@@NebulaPhotos okay! I'll try processing them..Let's see what's hidden in those pictures 😀😉

[@RijoeDamy6444]

wich is the best stacking software

[@NebulaPhotos]

I'm not sure there is a best. Siril is very good considering it's free. I might do a shootout to compare them all at some point.

[@RijoeDamy6444]

@@NebulaPhotos what is the best overall including paid

[@NebulaPhotos]

PixInsight is the one I'd keep if I could only use one.

[@RijoeDamy6444]

@@NebulaPhotos no i am going to process and edit in Photoshop

[@RijoeDamy6444]

@@NebulaPhotos anyway thankyou for your answer very helpful

[@rishabhmishra6689]

It might be more sophisticated if subtitle is used.

[@CurtBlakeslee]

KZbin takes a while to generate its Closed Captioning; they should be available a few hours after upload.

[@NebulaPhotos]

Should be there now

[@EleanorPeterson]

Yay, GIMP! However, as a full-time grumpy pedant (😁) I feel I should mention that the 'g' in 'gnu' is silent, so it ought to be pronounced 'noo', not 'gernoo'. Yes. Noo. GIMP should be 'NIMP'. If you're bothered about matters of political correctness and cultural sensitivity, 'gnu' is from the Xhosa [South African] word 'nqu'' which may or may not have influenced or been influenced by the invading Dutch colonists. Possibly. Allegedly. Whatever. In Dutch Afrikaans the animal's also known as a wildebeest 🐃👀, which would turn GIMP or NIMP into WIMP. Anyhoooo, a gnu's 'g' is silent, like the 'g' in gnome, gnaw and gnarly, dude. Or the 'k' in knee, knuckle and knife. Shut up, Elli. Gnobody cares...🤭

[@NebulaPhotos]

Ha, I found it interesting! Although I’ve always heard that GNU in this context was an acronym that stood for “GNU’s Not Unix” so I feel like the pronunciation is a bit confusing. Maybe it would be most accurate to spell it out - the G N U image manipulation program.

[@ankusharma3323]

Will we ever be able to find life outside of Earth? No.. Because life is only on earth and god also lives on earth

[@xander1052]

If God lives on Earth what's his address and postal code?

[@williamkacensky4796]

Nico, do you have a way to contact you via email etc?

[@NebulaPhotos]

nicocarver at gmail dot com - may take a few days to reply