Leo Triplet and Markair's Chain in one night

Wouter,
A stretched image is shown a couple of posts up (it's not stretched really and also linear but processed with a different philosophy).
There's no problem except for my Bortle 8/9 location and different people using different software to look at fits files.
All is solved and settled.
Thanks!

The Regim debayered frame looks perfect!

Great milkyway shot Max. I bet your Markarian's Chain is going to turn out great also with that kind of data.
One thing I've found out is unless your ready for narrowband (mono camera, filter wheel, spacing issues, filters, three to five set of everything and another processing learning curve) a decent filter for light pollution does have it's place. I use an astronomic's lp filter for galaxies and clusters to remove a bit of sky glow and a DMG Omega NB filter to pull out much greater detail in HA (the dmg even works with a lot of moonlight). They have some new ones for osc that are supposed to be really nice like the triad but they are expensive.
But then my suburban sky is a Bortle 7. The thing is my backyard is just so much easier to use.
Have fun and thanks for sharing those shots.
Casey

maxthebuilder wrote: OK guys - thanks for helping! The main thing I got out from all this - it's hard to get good results @ Bortle 8 site. Interestingly enough, yesterday, I got a decent picture of the Owl nebula with just 45 x 60 sec (it's high up in the sky - maybe less pollution reaches there). Leo Triplet was OK too two weeks ago. Just Markarian's Chain was awful (shot next day after the Triplet).
I'll play with gain, offset, exposure time to get better results.
Thanks![/quote

Higher is always better - Bortle 8 is NEVER GOOD. I'm in Bortle 6 and it's hard... I have learned I must use mono and NB filters. As I said before with OSC and (no NB filters). I never can get longer than 60 second exposures without the background sky washing out the target if there is any moon at all.
For this reason and finding out that my ASI094 doesn't work if there is any moon at all at home. I built that camera into a light small portable setup that I can bring to my daughters house about 20 min N of me. They have Bortle 3 and I can see the milky way every night there.
While at home Best I can see is the dipper. Best bet - shorter exposures and try DSS live . It will debayer, stretch and stack your images live as each shot it taken. I use it with Ekos because the Kstars/ekos suite has a LOUSY FIT VIEWER.
You will also have the best luck with brighter targets. M42, M33, M101... M42 etc.

This is M42 with my OSC camera (which often does poorly at home) however M42 is bright...
Dates:Jan. 4, 2019

Frames: 8 X MIX of 8 second to 120 second exposures. So like 8 - 20 - 30 - 60 - 120

Avg. Moon age: 28.10 days

Avg. Moon phase: 2.31%

DDS live - then photoshop enhanced.

F8 APO, L-pro filter

Ron that is beautiful and not just for the simplicity of it. Mind sharing your settings for live stacking. I’ve never done that nor knew it was available. I guess you’d just have DSS monitor a folder and anything new is just added on top of the last as long as they line up? Then bring the black levels up/sky glow down in photoshop? And of course you could just watch your project coming together in a kinda rough draft work flow?

with DSS live (free) you set the path that it will monitor. I had some issues with it debayering at first. There are no settings. Someone told me I had to go into DSS (not live) and set those settings... and DSS live will use the same settings. I have no idea how to use DSS... I tweaked a couple settings to debayer and stack a test. I then exited and then DSS LIVE worked. I use pixinsight for stacking normally... but I do love to use DSS live during acquisition. This is one of the first OSC images I did with the 094 and the only one that was any good. Other targets were to weak for my LP.
I've moved this camera to a little 80mm and a little mount that I plan to use at my daughters (darker skies) this summer.
The only time I ever used DSS was to set debayer. Else should be defaults. (the two programs confuse the hell out of me). Luckily - DSS LIVE has no options. Just set the monitor folder... let some get saved and hit go... or stack. And let the fun begin.

When I downloaded and unzipped DSS there were two .exe programs. DSS for manual stacking. And DSS LIVE. The later monitors the dir your capture program is saving into. You can stack the mono NB subs as well. I love doing that too.
For OSC it's awesome to see your right a.s.a.p. That M42 is the fastest image I ever aquired and finished. It was exciting to have something in 30 minutes "shot n done".

Caseyfinn wrote: Ron that is beautiful and not just for the simplicity of it. Mind sharing your settings for live stacking. I’ve never done that nor knew it was available. I guess you’d just have DSS monitor a folder and anything new is just added on top of the last as long as they line up? Then bring the black levels up/sky glow down in photoshop? And of course you could just watch your project coming together in a kinda rough draft work flow?

Here are the 8 subs I stacked. You can see by the hot spot the different exposures. I threw the worst out into the non stackable folder and kept the best 8.
DSS LIVE will look at these and produce a color stack.

hahah I just noticed. These were not even shot as a sequence. I often just test new gear by shooting "frame n focus" shots with the focus and framing tool in SGP. That's why they're named frame and focus

This is another target I did that night. Probably my worst image ever. I had a hard time picking out the nebulousity with the OSC camera. This too was a DSS LIVE stack.
PUSHED to the max and some = ( There are histogram sliders in DSS LIVE you can adjust during stacking. something EKOS fits viewer needs BAD (it's the only fits review that doesn't have any histogram controls! = (

Anyway this made me realize I have to go to darker skies with the OSC (or wait for perfect nights with no moon. All 30 sec subs to try and stay under the light pollution.

Sorry... have to share this.
I took a plunge and bought APP (Astro Pixel Processor) software. It actually did a pretty good job on my original data set shot at Bortle 8/9 site.
Comparable (worse but still...) with the result I got at Bortle 2.
Almost no photoshopping after APP.
DSS/Photoshop on the same dataset - www.indilib.org/forum/gallery/5097-leo-t...t.html?start=0#38462