Bruce
Thanks. What surprised me is how easy it was to do (or maybe the 3 years of struggle are paying off at last).
Data capture steps:
15x120s lights
20x120s darks
30x60s lights
20x60s darks
30x30s lights
20x30s darks
50x10s lights
20x10s darks
50x4s lights
20x4s darks
100 bias
100 flats
Took around 2 hours and produced ~27.5Gb of data. Altair 183C is 5440 x 3648, each frame 38Mb.
APP load data steps:
load 120s lights and select multi-session, assign these lights to session_1
load 120s darks, assign these darks to session_1
load 60s lights and assign to session_2
load 60s darks and assign to session_2
repeat for 30s, 10s, 4s lights and session_3, session_4, session_5
load flats and assign to
all sessions
load bias and assign to
all sessions
APP processing steps:
calibrate
analyse stars
register
normalize
integrate
Then APP 'Tools' for post-processing.
The PC was at it for a while on a 16Gb, quad core Xeon workstation. All the settings in processing can be set at once, then choosing
integrate will carry out all the processing steps in the list above.
Features in APP that have helped me improve my results are:
- Remove light pollution, calibrate background, calibrate star colour
- Predefined stretches to select from
The calibrate star colour has resulted in images which have retained star colours. The best example I have is on my Astrobin - the recent M27 was captured back at the end of August 2019. Look at the difference in the 2 images - same data, different post processing.
The APP site has some good video tutorials including downloadable data. I have spent a good few hours grinding through these. The idea of the sessions and assigning frames in APP extends also to narrow band where there is the additional capability to assign an RGB colour to a set of data.
As always, any new piece of software needs time spent in order to get the best out of it.
Dave