StarTools

Hi

I am in the middle of imaging the Cygnus Loop, RASA 8, ASI071MC, Optolong L-enHance filter during full moon. I am in a Bortle 3 area but I enjoy experimenting and am hoping the Optolong filter will enable me to lose less imaging nights due to the moon.

I understand (slight exaggeration) loading the seperate channels and processing through 'Compose' but then we have the stitching issue. I have used Microsoft ICE which seams good, but the bit I don't get is this

On an OSC I would do do autodev, bin, crop, wipe, and save the image, do the next image, then stitch in ICE and reload and do the rest of the processing. How does this work when using 'compose' and separating the channels? Can you do my above process and then use 'compose' and split the channels or do you 'compose' then do my auto-bin-crop-wipe, Microsoft ICE, reload and process? A work flow would be most welcome.

I must say i was very impressed by the look of the 'stretched' subs on APT (40 seconds at 95 gain) last night.

Thanks

David

Hi David,

Apologies for the slight delay (released 1.6, 1.7 alpha, today).

You will either want to create the mosaic beforehand as one big linear dataset (or 3 big linear dataset channels), OR create the mosaic out of the individually, (roughly identically) composited/processed images afterwards.
For the purpose of processing with Tracking on, the Compose module should always be used to load linear data.

Does that help/make sense?

admin wrote:Hi David,

Apologies for the slight delay (released 1.6, 1.7 alpha, today).

You will either want to create the mosaic beforehand as one big linear dataset (or 3 big linear dataset channels), OR create the mosaic out of the individually, (roughly identically) composited/processed images afterwards.
For the purpose of processing with Tracking on, the Compose module should always be used to load linear data.

Does that help/make sense?

Err..no

So if i load the three data sets, for image one, in compose and do the basic stretch and save as a tiff, repeat for image two with identical stretch/bin/crop/wipe,stretch, save as tiff.
then stitch with ICE, then load in Compose as Linear as one image, or do i load the channels again? Workflow would be useful for the initial StarTools pre-Contrast process.

thanks

Topographic wrote:

admin wrote:Hi David,

Apologies for the slight delay (released 1.6, 1.7 alpha, today).

You will either want to create the mosaic beforehand as one big linear dataset (or 3 big linear dataset channels), OR create the mosaic out of the individually, (roughly identically) composited/processed images afterwards.
For the purpose of processing with Tracking on, the Compose module should always be used to load linear data.

Does that help/make sense?

Err..no

So if i load the three data sets, for image one, in compose and do the basic stretch and save as a tiff, repeat for image two with identical stretch/bin/crop/wipe,stretch, save as tiff.
then stitch with ICE, then load in Compose as Linear as one image, or do i load the channels again? Workflow would be useful for the initial StarTools pre-Contrast process.

thanks

1. You can have ICE create a mosaic from your individual linear datasets, and import the linear mosaic in StarTools for processing
or
2. You can have ICE create a mosaic from your individually processed datasets

In scenario 1 you launch ICE only once, and subsequently launch StarTools only once.
In scenario 2 you launch StarTools only once, and subsequently launch ICE only once.

At no stage should you be launching StarTools twice or more.

Likely, the most straightforward course of action with best results, is to process the individual parts of the sky as as normal with your usual workflow, and once you have processed them all, put them through ICE.

If your question is about extracting channels from your OSC/DSLR dataset (e.g. unrelated to mosaics), do let me know.