StarTools

I have never run into this before. When I stop tracking and run De-Noise I get stars with "dimmer center spots." There is a hint of "abused" stars prior to the De-Noise but De-Noise really brings it out. I have tried every option to fix this, but only turning down the both brightness and color loss to near 0% helps and there is no De-Noise at this point. I have attached a screen shot showing the result. I am running version 1.4.316. My workflow up to this point was:

File loaded [D:\AstroPics\2016\ngc6992\Light\NGC6992.fit].
---
--- Crop
Parameter [X1] set to [320 pixels]
Parameter [Y1] set to [575 pixels]
Parameter [X2] set to [4763 pixels (-300)]
Parameter [Y2] set to [3158 pixels (-590)]
--- Auto Develop
Parameter [Ignore Fine Detail <] set to [Off]
Parameter [Outside ROI Influence] set to [15 %]
--- Wipe
Parameter [Mode] set to [Correct Color & Brightness]
Parameter [UNKNOWN] set to [No]
Parameter [Precision] set to [256 x 256 pixels]
Parameter [Dark Anomaly Filter] set to [1 pixels]
Parameter [Drop Off Point] set to [100 %]
Parameter [Corner Aggressiveness] set to [100 %]
Parameter [Aggressiveness] set to [75 %]
--- Auto Develop
Parameter [Ignore Fine Detail <] set to [Off]
Parameter [Outside ROI Influence] set to [15 %]
--- Wipe
Parameter [Mode] set to [Correct Color & Brightness]
Parameter [UNKNOWN] set to [No]
Parameter [Precision] set to [256 x 256 pixels]
Parameter [Dark Anomaly Filter] set to [1 pixels]
Parameter [Drop Off Point] set to [100 %]
Parameter [Corner Aggressiveness] set to [100 %]
Parameter [Aggressiveness] set to [84 %]
--- Develop
Parameter [White Calibration] set to [Use Stars]
Parameter [Gamma] set to [1.00]
Parameter [Skyglow] set to [0 %]
Parameter [Digital Development] set to [87.53 %]
Parameter [Blue Luminance Contrib.] set to [100 %]
Parameter [Green Luminance Contrib.] set to [100 %]
Parameter [Red Luminance Contrib.] set to [100 %]
Parameter [Dark Anomaly Headroom] set to [5 %]
Parameter [Dark Anomaly Filter] set to [Off]
--- Wipe
Parameter [Mode] set to [Correct Color & Brightness]
Parameter [UNKNOWN] set to [No]
Parameter [Precision] set to [256 x 256 pixels]
Parameter [Dark Anomaly Filter] set to [1 pixels]
Parameter [Drop Off Point] set to [0 %]
Parameter [Corner Aggressiveness] set to [100 %]
Parameter [Aggressiveness] set to [75 %]
--- Set Mask to mask out the stars
--- Wavelet Sharpen
Parameter [Intelligent Enhance] set to [Yes]
Parameter [Scale 1] set to [100 %]
Parameter [Scale 2] set to [100 %]
Parameter [Scale 3] set to [100 %]
Parameter [Scale 4] set to [100 %]
Parameter [Scale 5] set to [100 %]
Parameter [Mask Fuzz] set to [8.0 pixels]
Parameter [Amount] set to [100 %]
Parameter [Small Detail Bias] set to [75 %]
--- Contrast
Parameter [Expose Dark Areas] set to [No]
Parameter [Compensate Gamma] set to [No]
Parameter [Precision] set to [256 x 256 pixels]
Parameter [Dark Anomaly Filter] set to [1 pixels]
Parameter [Aggressiveness] set to [75 %]
Parameter [Dark Anomaly Headroom] set to [15 %]
--- Set mask to fill
--- Color
Parameter [Cap Green] set to [No]
Parameter [Bias Slider Mode] set to [Sliders Reduce Color Bias]
Parameter [Style] set to [Scientific (Color Constancy)]
Parameter [LRGB Method Emulation] set to [Straight CIELab Luminance Retention]
Parameter [Dark Saturation] set to [2.00]
Parameter [Bright Saturation] set to [2.00]
Parameter [Saturation Amount] set to [128 %]
Parameter [Blue Bias Reduce] set to [1.00]
Parameter [Green Bias Reduce] set to [1.24]
Parameter [Red Bias Reduce] set to [1.51]
Parameter [Mask Fuzz] set to [1.0 pixels]

Are there suggestions of things I should re-do earlier in the process to avoid this situation.

Hmmm... Any chance you could share the data?
Does the latest alpha exhibit this behaviour still?

Sure thing. You can find all the files at http://casazza.net/Astro. This rendition is looking a lot better. Whatever you changed made the difference. Being a software guy myself I thought yo might want the data to run through the algorithms anyway.

A few other notes about the image and the process. This image has been a nightmare. I had to throw out over 40% of the images due to bad tracking. I jumped guide stars several times during the night. The large crop was just to get rid of stacking artifacts. By far my worst performance. The loss of frames reduced this image to the best 23 5-minute exposures that I had.

During processing I set up a mask for only the lower part of the frame for the 2nd and 3rd wipes. I was trying to not wipe the faint nebulosity in the upper left. I took a screen shot of the mast and included it. For what it's worth I go into the Deconvolution function and use the auto mask for my "avoid the stars" mask. I als took a screen capture of that mask's result and it looks good to me. I noticed with the new Alpha version the color bias selections that came up by default were different. I kept the other settings the saem and I still like the color balance. I'm not sure why that changed as I did everything exactly the same...

I did take a close look, visually, at the stars before I did the sharpen and I think I saw the beginnings of the star distortion, but it could have also been my eyes as the stars are big and bright.

The final Star Tools TIF is also posted. As I said it is much better. I think I will have to re-process this with binning to get rid of more noise, but all things considered this is quite good. I expected the night to be a total loss.

Ugh! I forgot to copy my license file so I can't save. I will run the process through again and post the final result later today or tomorrow.

markcasazza wrote:Sure thing. You can find all the files at http://casazza.net/Astro. This rendition is looking a lot better. Whatever you changed made the difference. Being a software guy myself I thought yo might want the data to run through the algorithms anyway.

Much appreciated Mark!

I will test with this for a while.

Thanks again!