StarTools

A veil complex version in Startools. Ok i admit i used starnet to separate the stars from the nebulae and then for the stars reduces the stretch and combined the images in PI. All the rest is made in Startools. I just could not handle the over busy starfield in Startools enough....

It was shot in Austria, at 1650 m in Tscheytal in the mountains. No easy drive, it was not that difficult in daylight the way up allthough one has to take care. But then once arrived, and darkness fell, it really was dark, really dark, could not see a hand before my eyes...The milky ways was astounding as good from horizon to horizon, really never saw it like that before.

Technical issues, one to start , well were is the nord star, i really had to wait until i could figure it out and change the orientation of my mount and all ready mounted scope. Since i used a light set up that was doable.

Then polar alignment, i used Sharpcap, that worked, well until it stopped, it refused to solve suddenly. Luckily i had allready achieved a 'fair ' status so i left it like it was and continued. I did not find the reason why it failed...never happened at home...

Plate solve in ASTAP eventually worked but also stopped at a certain point. User error as i noticed the following day...but i could use ASPS as backup and that worked to aim to a good spot near the center of the Cyngus loop in APT

Then 58 subs of 2 minutes, 2 failed by cable snag...took flats...once at home i found out they were no good either...so i had to redo them which luckily worked all though it is not best practice. The failing was probable a driver issue for the touptek because a more recent version of APT had no issues so i found.

And then the way down from the mountain...in the dark, no lights, no road marks even no reflectors...stepfood driving about 20-25 km/hours full lights on , to the village....phew...
My wife was dead worried...promised here to be back at 1,30 AM, which i did...but i should have stayed longer up there...
Great night though, really great and worthwhile.
But boy working in almost complete darkness is something to get used to, all though i had a torch. So different in Belgium where you can see always youre surroundings..but not so in those mountains....

TS Optics EDPH 76 mm, L-enhance, IQE30 pro, and a FlashFish battery special bought for that occasion... and all that stuff went in a VW beetle cabriolet....together will the luggage for the trip to Austria....would you believe it...

After all the story I was not expecting such a pretty image! The place I went last weekend was about as dark as I can get to around here (B4), but no problem walking around in the "dark". The Milky Way was nice, but I'm sure just a shadow of the view you had! (it was warm, though - walked around with no jacket all night)

You can definitely see StarNet's "footprints" in your image.

Thanks Ron,

Yes, little tech problems but i could overcome then. And also, with small gear especially a scope with limited focal lenght is so forgiving and much easier to deal with. The guiding once running was quite ok though.

The picutre seen on astrobin is fully made in PI, i think it is better . Strange though cause i never succeeded until now to make a good one with my OSC from PI. In most cases they are all 'hybrids', started out in ST and then some refinements in PI. The only thing then went very well are 2 mono SHO images from PI.

But even if the shoot would have been a full disaster it still was worthwhile to be there just for the naked eye view of stars and the Milky Way. It was astounding. Definately B3. Maybe even better. And there was no light, cuase there was no electricity. There were a lot of wooden block sheds and little houses where some people stay there overnight (guess to work in the fields the next day)but they havo no electricity. The only light i noticed was a torch inside a small blockhouse couple of hundred meters away. Many of those small blockhouseshave 2 small solar panels.

Cool image and even cooler story and writeup, Freddy Lots of details and the expected coloring. But as Ron said you can see the scars of the star removal. Did you clean up the image before adding the stars back via CloneStamp (?) in PI or the content aware filling in PS? Or Heal in ST? And somehow the brightest star of field, 52 Cyg, wasn't added back!? At least that one should be visible

Regards
Stefan

Thanks Stefan,
No i did not fiddle much around in PI for this one since this is a Startools forum not the Pi forum.

Starnet has his issues but in my PI version on astrobin i used it when the image was still linear, somehow that worked alot better.
However the star 52 Cyg still did pose a problem there too,and showed up a bit washed out unfortunately.

But in this region , the busy starfield is a real issue. I tried the shrink module, but i found the result not sufficient.

CS
Freddy