SharpCap Forums

This came out better than expected.
Technicals:
William Optics 71mm f/5.9
Atik 314E

Session 1:
Wratten #12: 83x60s bin1
Red: 48x60s bin1
Green: 20x60s bin1
Integration Time: 151 minutes
Total SNR: 6.64

Session 2:
Wratten #12: 26x150s bin1
Red: 6x300s bin1
Green: 3x300s bin1
Integration Time: 110 minutes
Total SNR: 7.40

Session 1 + Session 2:
Wratten #12: 83x60s bin1 + 26x150s bin1
Red: 48x60s bin1 + 6x300s bin1
Green: 20x60s bin1 + 3x300s bin1
Integration Time: 261 minutes (4.35 hours)
Total SNR: 9.4

Processing:
Astro Pixel Processor (APP): calibration, registration, integration, color combine, background calibration, star color calibration.
Affinity Photo: de-noise, contrast, highlights, selective color (cyan->blue, yellow->red).

AS AN ADDED BONUS:

A single session so far of M63, the Sunflower Galaxy. The atmosphere was terribly unsettled. I missed my mark of luminance frames after having to make up for spoiled color. I may end up discarding this data. M63 is a half magnitude fainter than M51, so it requires more integration time:
Brian

Hi Brian,
Nice image and it shows the value of more data adding session one to session 2. How are you finding Affinity as I have only recently started using it and so far find it very useful have you tried the Astrophotography Persona for stacking as I am hoping they carry on developing that side as well.

Cheers
Nick

Hi Nick,

Affinity Photo is an incredible bargain at $25 (last I checked). So far, I've just used it for standard post-processing tasks. I need to update to the latest version that came out a few weeks ago. My version doesn't have an Astrophotography Persona, at least not to my knowledge.

Thanks,
Brian

Yep I can second the bargain side of it as I got it on offer for £19 the Astro persona only shows under the file menu is in version 1.91 and above latest is 1.92.

Cheers
Nick

Nick,

I had version 1.8.5. I just installed 1.9.2. Now I see the Astrophotography Persona. I'll give it a try. Just looking at the panels, it looks as if it supports OSC, but I wonder about LRGB? Complicating matters, now I do W12RG instead of LRGB. However, I have plenty of old LRGB sessions that I can run through it.

Thanks,
Brian