Planetary Data Processing: Trying Out Siril's Approach

Welcome to my tutorial on processing planetary data using Siril! In this video, I'll dive into the basics of using Siril software to enhance your planetary images. While there are more advanced techniques out there, Siril offers an accessible starting point for beginners to dip their toes into the world of planetary data processing. I'll guide you through the steps of loading your raw data, applying basic enhancements, and producing visually appealing results. Keep in mind that as you progress in your planetary imaging journey, you might discover more sophisticated approaches such as using AutoStakkert and RegiStax. But for those who are just starting out or looking for a straightforward approach, Siril can be a valuable tool to have in your toolkit.
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[@DeepSpaceAstro]

Please consider supporting this channel on Buy Me a Coffee!: www.buymeacoffee.com/deepspaceastro

[@MultiOmega1911]

I swear you are the best channel for Siril tutorials, keep going dude!

[@DeepSpaceAstro]

Thanks man! Appreciate that!

[@eacron]

I think this was a great video to create. You're right that there are better options for planetary processing than siril but that is mostly for the windows platform. This is probably the best that exists for the Mac platform. In any case showing the current limitations may motivate someone to advance the processing for planetary in Siril. 🤞

[@DeepSpaceAstro]

I was unaware of that! Thanks!

[@huibwouters]

Wow didn´t expect that it would work that well. I was bored waiting for the moon to disappear behind a building, and decided to shoot 100 frames of the moon, stacked them in Siril and BOOM! Maybe planetary imaging is not too bad after all. Thanks a million.

[@DeepSpaceAstro]

Glad it was helpful! Thanks!

[@luizleao]

Tks Rich for one more great tutorial!

[@DeepSpaceAstro]

You're welcome! Thanks!

[@Naztronomy]

Good stuff! I tried Siril for planetary a few years ago just to compare it to my usual PIPP, AutoStakkert, Registax. Definitely worked better than I expected and was a good experiment.

[@DeepSpaceAstro]

Yeah it would be nice to see it grow into comparable. Maybe someday. Thanks!

[@AstroAF]

Thanks Rich! I just went through my first planetary processing with Siril last week. I did not have great data but it was a fun learning experience. I really don’t have the right scope/setup to do good work in planetary. Cheers!

[@Chris2000SP]

Since this is the best option under Linux, i used it to stack my moon video and it worked. Tanks a lot!🤩

[@DeepSpaceAstro]

Glad it helped!

[@Chris2000SP]

@@DeepSpaceAstro It worked with a Smartphone Video and no motor goto Telescope mount. This way it had some black lines at that side the moon moved in to it. (Since i have surface shot with my Maksutov)

[@kaeez]

Woah, love that you did planetary. I always wondered if Rick would make a non DS AP one and guess the day finally arrived. I’m looking forward to a lunar one soon.

[@DeepSpaceAstro]

Thanks! Lunar should follow the same process

[@earthling-fh2mg]

Just been using it over the past week with nikon .MOV data files but, to be honest, i think my raw data is bad so i cant honestly comment on its ability. What i can say is it took the .MOV files and converted without complaint and registered and stacked. I converted to .fits files however rather than an SER sequence. Do you think this would make a difference to how well you can process them? I’ve also been reading about deconvolution and have seen how this can provide even greater resolution BUT I cannot understand how to use deconvolution at all (even having watched your video on it).

[@DeepSpaceAstro]

Besides taking up drive space when converting to .fits, I don't know that one way is better than the other. Regarding deconvolution, I haven't tried using it with the planetary images so I can't be much help, sorry.

[@OVSoftLLC]

Great tutorial! Thanks a lot!

[@DeepSpaceAstro]

Glad you liked it! Thanks!

[@stergiosfykatas624]

Hi Rich, nice video and very informative how other software does the job. I am doing lunar, planetary and solar imaging for some years now and I still prefer autostakkert and registax as my primary software for this job. Of course I finalise the pic in a picture processing software. The interesting part is, that I don't have to try it myself. Thanks for that. Greetings Nik.

[@DeepSpaceAstro]

Thanks!

[@TheNarrowbandChannel]

Glad you did the video. The other software is so ancient looking compared to Siril. They need to update those.

[@DeepSpaceAstro]

I agree! If Siril would add multipoint alignment I think they'd be positioned as a good alternative!

[@ssrattus]

Thanks Rich!

[@DeepSpaceAstro]

You're welcome!

[@stefanschneider3681]

Thx, that was very helpful!

[@DeepSpaceAstro]

Glad it helped!

[@Real-Tecnica]

This definitely will be worked on

[@andyrawlins]

Great video thanks. I would have been interested to see a comparison between these images with what you would get from your preferred workflow. I generally find that ZWO ASI Studio gives the best result when the data is good and Autostakkert! when it is less good, but I haven't tried Siril!

[@DeepSpaceAstro]

Thanks! Maybe next time I'll try to do a comparison.

[@sternenstorch4556]

Great video! Thank you! For me as a MAC M1 user Siril is the only planetary stacking software I know. So I do not have an alternative, or do you have a proposal?

[@DeepSpaceAstro]

There may be. Doug at @astroaf may be able to better answer your question.

[@sternenstorch4556]

@@DeepSpaceAstro Thank you!

[@OwenSneddon-z2p]

Hello! New to astrophotography. If I am using a mono cam, do I want to stack all the images then start adjusting the wavelets? Or should I adjust the wavelets in each filter then create the composite image from there, possibly adjusting the wavelets further?

[@DeepSpaceAstro]

If I use wavelets I always perform them on the stack, after stretching.

[@skyhookbix]

Hi Rich, seems like you might be working with the developers, do you think they will make improvements on planitary in the future?

[@DeepSpaceAstro]

There's a feature request for it but it's been out there for awhile now. I don't think it's on the road map for anytime soon though

[@TalGivoly]

As a Mac user, I found your videos that helped me learn Siril extremely useful - they transformed my process and made my workflow much faster and better. Thanks to the fact that Siril runs well on my Mac, I’m able to take my DSO captures directly from the ASIAIR to Siril and then Photoshop on the Mac without having to go to my dedicated astronomy laptop running Windows... However, this put planetary imaging at a major disadvantage - since I couldn't find a way to properly replace AS3 or Astrosurface that only run on the PC. I'm going to try this process - but first attempt, didn't properly debayer the image sequence... I'm wondering how to ensure that the debayering works well before processing. I found the 2x drizzle option really useful as well. Any idea how to ensure debayering works correctly? I tried both 'open' and 'sequence', and checked 'debayer' in both. But the result is always B&W without the debayering...

[@DeepSpaceAstro]

Thanks. Glad you found the videos helpful! Not sure what's happening with your data. However, I did have two other viewers that experienced the same issue. For both of them it ended up being something with the video file. Do you see the same results when playing the video outside of Siril?

[@TalGivoly]

@@DeepSpaceAstro Thanks for quick reply. No issues processing these videos with AS3, Astrosurface, or ASI Studio's video stacker... Just Siril doesn't debayer them properly. Also, I've never tried to stack with Siril - since I typically start with a FITS that is the end result of an EAA session live stack, already after bias/dark/flat calibration - so I just need Siril to process the image. But last night, I captured 2 hours of the Pleiades, and I have the individual frames, so I wanted to try Siril for the entire stacking flow. But again, got caught up with the debayering - if I convert with Debayering, I wasn't able to apply my master bias/dark/flat frame in the processing. The scripts complain. Something's odd. I have a master bias/dark/flat in FITS, and 60 2-minute subs FITS files. I tried the script OSC_Preprocess, complained about the bias something. Tried manually, was able to register and stack, but not to ensure that the calibration frames are considered in the process... Odd.

[@DeepSpaceAstro]

Regarding the stacking of Pleiades, paste the error message you see here and I 'll see if I can make sense of it.

[@KJRitch]

I took video of Jupiter last week using a C8 with and a ASI585MC. After I followed your preferred method of conversion my image of Jupiter didn’t look like yours. My Jupiter image was overlayed by a pattern of horizontal and vertical white lines or maybe transparent line and inside the cross hatch pattern were I guess darker pixels. If you pull back a couple of feet you can make out gray shades of some of Jupiters colored bands. I took the video in 640 x480. I used an ASIAir to control the camera. After I took the 2 1/2 minute video I used the ASIAir planetary stack feature. The image came out looking like your Jupiter, maybe not as sharp. I had to use 100% sharpness on the ASIAir app after it was stacked and it looked half decent. I wonder why Siril processes the video so differently? I notice in my Registration, the Registration Channel is Luminance and can’t be changed yet I shot the video with a color camera. I got a lot of frames generating an error “Register: Kombat couldn’t find alignment pattern on image #xxxx” The stacked file didn’t look any different vs the ser file after conversion. Thanks

[@DeepSpaceAstro]

That sounds like you're seeing the Bayer pattern. Did you use the Open button and if you did, did you tick the Debayer option?

[@KJRitch]

@@DeepSpaceAstro I used your preferred method of manual conversion but it just tried open and the image that is shown is the same as the manual. I downloaded a video player that can open avi video files and I can see the same pattern especially if I expand the window. I'm thinking the image is pixelated. I'm wondering if 640x480 is not the correct resolution setting. I think I remember somewhere that for planetary you don't need larger resolutions for planetary to take video of planets unless you are also trying to image a planet's moons, like Jupiter. I'll have to go out tonight to try and collect another video of Jupiter.

[@KJRitch]

I capture several videos of Jupiter last night using native focal length with and without a 2x barlow lease. The avi files don't seem to show much color and when I run the conversion at the end it shows sensor type mono. I have a ASI585MC. I've used it for DSO via the ASIAir and color shows up but with Jupiter it seems more grayscale. Figured the image processing would bring out colors but in the Image Processing drop down Color Calibration and Remove Green Noise are ghosted out. Weird. I was using an IR Cut filter but last week I wasn't and it still came out Mono. 0:43:35: Checking sequences in the directory: 10:43:35: =========== SER file info ============== 10:43:35: for file 'Jupiter 720.ser' 10:43:35: image size: 1280 x 720 (8 bits) 10:43:35: sensor type: MONO 10:43:35: frame count: 1835

[@DeepSpaceAstro]

Sorry not really sure what's going on. If that video is playing in color fine outside of Siril, you shouldn't be seeing this. Maybe try asking the devs? Again I apologize for not having an answer for you. discuss.pixls.us/c/software/siril/34

[@KJRitch]

@@DeepSpaceAstro Here's what is really bothering me. The same AVI that is on the microSD card when put back in the ASIAir Plus plays in color on the iPad. The ASIAir App sees the color but Siril doesn't. This is the AVI text file that ASIAIR generates when taking video. I've brought in ASIAir color images to try to process on Siril and it detects color. [ZWO ASI585MC] Bin = 1 Capture Area Size = 1280 * 720 Colour Format = RAW8 Exposure = 0.004 Sec Flip = None Gain = 300 StartX = 1280 StartY = 720 Temperature = 24.5 C Bayer = RG White Balance (B) = 63 White Balance (R) = 51 Duration=60 Sec

[@Lampe95]

Why does it create a black and white image after i run the conversion?

[@DeepSpaceAstro]

So you're dropping a color .avi into the conversion tab, and the image is in B/W?

[@Lampe95]

@@DeepSpaceAstro i just dropped the MP4 file in, how do I get .avi file?

[@DeepSpaceAstro]

What software did you use to create the mp4? Is it color when you play it? As far as I know, the common formats for planetary are .avi or .ser

[@Lampe95]

@@DeepSpaceAstro I copied it directly from my camera (canon R8)

[@Lampe95]

It is my first time trying planetary stacking, I don't know if there is a setting I'm missing in Siril or if it's just that it is an unsupported file for colour.