C/2022 E3 ZTF - ASI678MC - Not getting color

[Nittany]

Ok - So good friend here has solved my problem - Histogram black/mid were not set hence i was not getting color.

[RonAM]

A couple more thoughts from my short history:

1. I usually see less visual color saturation on the monitor screen during deep sky livestack compared to the saved stacked image.
A. What do you observe if you increase just one of the color
sliders at the bottom of the livestack display? For sure if
the hardware is operating properly you should see large
increases in each color on the display if you slide each from
the nominal 0.00 setting up to 0.20-0.40. Maybe you already
showed this….apologies if I missed it.
B. You did share a livestack saved stack file that was colorless.
Do you observe any increase in color if you adjust
saturation in your favorite post processing program?

2. My ZWO camera has strong sensitivity to near infrared.
Near infrared will render as colorless in all displays and
images. I think that’s why the colors in my images tend to
be less saturated than when comparing to my brothers DSLR
acquired images. I sometimes use an IR cut filter but often
prefer the extra photons when deep sky imaging so I seldom
use an IR-cut filter.
A. Is your ZWO also strongly sensitive to NIR?
B. Does it have a built in IR cut filter?
C. Maybe try IR-cut filter & see what you get.

Best

Ron

[Nittany]

Thanks Ron for taking the time to even engage with a novice like me. Really appreciate it. I had not set my Black and Mid Sliders - hence no color. All else is good and as expected. As i said, a good friend here on this forum has solved it for me. See attached. This is just 100 seconds and 20 frames at 5 seconds exposure. I will stack longer and also I will play with the optimal color combination over next couple days. But i am happy that worst is behind me in what i wanted to achieve. I understand i have to get into dark and light frames etc. That is next level.

[RonAM]

Wonderful!

And useful for us all to learn that this could affect color. I assumed that with the images shown the black and mid levels were in reasonable positions. Good to know this can affect color too. You are on a great track to some excellent images.

Ron

[Nittany]

Yeah reasonable positions - black at the peak and mid halfway between peak and the point where RGB lines touch the x-axis.
The reason this is blown out with colors is because i had the color sliders way up - in all the experimentation - i had driven them up and did not back them down once i got to know about these sliders. Will fine tweak over next couple of days.

[oopfan]

Can you share a screenshot of the histogram after you made the green discovery so we can compare it against the screenshot you shared on the previous pages?

I don't LiveStack. I do things old-school using Astro Pixel Processor (APP). With APP, I do something called "Star Color Calibration" which samples the color of all the stars in my image and assumes that there is a uniform mix of red and blue stars. It uses that distribution to decide how to adjust the sliders. It is remarkable how accurate it is, but sometimes it can be fooled by an overabundance of either red or blue stars. In that case you can specify an offset value. Doesn't LiveStack have an automatic "Star Color Calibration"? I ask because I don't understand why you have to manipulate sliders.

Brian

[Nittany]

I did not take screen shot. I will take it when i am out again in next couple of days.

[Nittany]

Just to close out the topic - Here is the picture of the histogram with the black and mid levels moved. Still playing around a bit for that pure green color.