Not to self promote my own community too much, but [email protected] if you wanna see amateur photos of space
Decided to just shoot a semi-random part of Cygnus. The large extended Ha region in Cygnus is unofficially called Smaug, and this is a photo specifically of the area around LBN 325/326. The nebulosity in this pic is false color, but the stars are true color RGB. I really love how this turned out with the narrowband palette, especially with the Oiii region on the right side looking almost like a true color Ha region. Captured over a shitload of nights from Aug-Oct 2024 from a bortle 9 zone.
Places where I host my other images:
-
TPO 6" F/4 Imaging Newtonian
-
Orion Sirius EQ-G
-
ZWO ASI1600MM-Pro
-
Skywatcher Quattro Coma Corrector
-
ZWO EFW 8x1.25"/31mm
-
Astronomik LRGB+CLS Filters- 31mm
-
Astrodon 31mm Ha 5nm, Oiii 3nm, Sii 5nm
-
Agena 50mm Deluxe Straight-Through Guide Scope
-
ZWO ASI-290mc for guiding
-
Moonlite Autofocuser
Acquisition: 57 hours 40 minutes (Camera at -15°C), NB exposures at unity gain and BB at half unity
-
Ha - 111x600"
-
Oiii - 127x600"
-
Sii - 94x600"
-
R - 48x60"
-
G - 48x60"
-
B - 44x60"
-
Darks- 30
-
Flats- 30 per filter
Capture Software:
- Captured using N.I.N.A. and PHD2 for guiding and dithering.
PixInsight Preprocessing:
-
BatchPreProcessing
-
StarAlignment
-
Blink
-
ImageIntegration per channel
-
DrizzleIntegration (2x, Var β=1.5)
-
Dynamic Crop
-
DynamicBackgroundExtraction
duplicated each image and removed stars via StarXterminator. Ran DBE with a shitload of points to generate background model. model subtracted from original pic using the following PixelMath (math courtesy of /u/jimmythechicken1)
$T * med(model) / model
Narrowband Linear:
-
Blur and NoiseXTerminator
-
StarXterminator to completely remove stars (to be later replaced by the RGB ones)
-
HistogramTransformation to stretch nonlinear
RGB Linear:
-
ChannelCombination to combine monochrome R G and B frame into color image
-
SpectroPhotometricColorCalibration
-
BlurXTerminator for star sharpening (correct only)
-
HSV Repair
-
StarXterminator to generate a stars-only image
-
ArcsinhStretch + HT to stretch nonlinear (to be combined with starless narrowband image later)
-
Invert > SCNR > invert to remove magentas
-
Curves to saturate the stars a bit more
Nonlinear:
- PixelMath to combine monochrome Ha Oiii and Sii images into a color image with Jimmy's Royale Palette
R = 0.3*Oiii+0.7*(Oiii^~(0.7*Ha+0.3*Sii))^1.2
G = ((Oiii*Ha)^~(Oiii*Ha))*Ha + ~((Oiii*Ha)^~(Oiii*Ha))*Sii
B = 0.9*Sii+Ha-Oii
-
NoiseX again
-
Shitloads of Curve Transformations to adjust lightness, hues, contrast, saturation, etc
-
more curves
-
Extract L --> LRGBCombination for chrominance noise reduction
-
even more curves
-
Pixelmath to add in the stretched RGB stars only image from earlier
This basically re-linearizes the two images, adds them together, and then stretches them back to before. More info on it here)
mtf(.005,
mtf(.995,Stars)+
mtf(.995,Starless))
-
Couple final curves
-
Resample to 60%
-
Annotation
Decided to just shoot a semi-random part of Cygnus. The large extended Ha region in Cygnus is unofficially called Smaug, and this is a photo specifically of the area around LBN 325/326. The nebulosity in this pic is false color, but the stars are true color RGB. I really love how this turned out with the narrowband palette, especially with the Oiii region on the right side looking almost like a true color Ha region. Captured over a shitload of nights from Aug-Oct 2024 from a bortle 9 zone.
Places where I host my other images:
-
TPO 6" F/4 Imaging Newtonian
-
Orion Sirius EQ-G
-
ZWO ASI1600MM-Pro
-
Skywatcher Quattro Coma Corrector
-
ZWO EFW 8x1.25"/31mm
-
Astronomik LRGB+CLS Filters- 31mm
-
Astrodon 31mm Ha 5nm, Oiii 3nm, Sii 5nm
-
Agena 50mm Deluxe Straight-Through Guide Scope
-
ZWO ASI-290mc for guiding
-
Moonlite Autofocuser
Acquisition: 57 hours 40 minutes (Camera at -15°C), NB exposures at unity gain and BB at half unity
-
Ha - 111x600"
-
Oiii - 127x600"
-
Sii - 94x600"
-
R - 48x60"
-
G - 48x60"
-
B - 44x60"
-
Darks- 30
-
Flats- 30 per filter
Capture Software:
- Captured using N.I.N.A. and PHD2 for guiding and dithering.
PixInsight Preprocessing:
-
BatchPreProcessing
-
StarAlignment
-
Blink
-
ImageIntegration per channel
-
DrizzleIntegration (2x, Var β=1.5)
-
Dynamic Crop
-
DynamicBackgroundExtraction
duplicated each image and removed stars via StarXterminator. Ran DBE with a shitload of points to generate background model. model subtracted from original pic using the following PixelMath (math courtesy of /u/jimmythechicken1)
$T * med(model) / model
Narrowband Linear:
-
Blur and NoiseXTerminator
-
StarXterminator to completely remove stars (to be later replaced by the RGB ones)
-
HistogramTransformation to stretch nonlinear
RGB Linear:
-
ChannelCombination to combine monochrome R G and B frame into color image
-
SpectroPhotometricColorCalibration
-
BlurXTerminator for star sharpening (correct only)
-
HSV Repair
-
StarXterminator to generate a stars-only image
-
ArcsinhStretch + HT to stretch nonlinear (to be combined with starless narrowband image later)
-
Invert > SCNR > invert to remove magentas
-
Curves to saturate the stars a bit more
Nonlinear:
- PixelMath to combine monochrome Ha Oiii and Sii images into a color image with Jimmy's Royale Palette
R = 0.3*Oiii+0.7*(Oiii^~(0.7*Ha+0.3*Sii))^1.2
G = ((Oiii*Ha)^~(Oiii*Ha))*Ha + ~((Oiii*Ha)^~(Oiii*Ha))*Sii
B = 0.9*Sii+Ha-Oii
-
NoiseX again
-
Shitloads of Curve Transformations to adjust lightness, hues, contrast, saturation, etc
-
more curves
-
Extract L --> LRGBCombination for chrominance noise reduction
-
even more curves
-
Pixelmath to add in the stretched RGB stars only image from earlier
This basically re-linearizes the two images, adds them together, and then stretches them back to before. More info on it here)
mtf(.005,
mtf(.995,Stars)+
mtf(.995,Starless))
-
Couple final curves
-
Resample to 60%
-
Annotation
0, I’m just raw dogging /all (minus whomever .world is defederated from)
Med student here. I probably would’ve failed a lot of in house exams/step 1 if I didn’t use anki. IMO it’s best for solidifying knowledge and quick recall of facts, but doing a shitload of practice questions is the best way to apply what you’ve memorized through anki (this last bit is most applicable to med school/mcat prep).
Really the main cost with it is your time. If you miss a day or two it can be daunting to get back in the groove and work on your review backlog. I usually have enough downtime during the day and time on the shitter to get through my reviews + whatever new cards I add. Anki itself is free but they do have a paid iOS app that I got just to use whenever I had a few mins of spare time.
As for the learning curve, this will vary if you’re making your own cards vs using a premade deck for a large standardized exam. Once you know the formatting it isn’t that difficult to make cloze cards for what you’re trying to learn.
The starliner astronauts are still up there (and will be until they return on the crew 9 capsule in February). This is the crew that went up before them returning to earth
What did you use to capture/process this?
Love the colors!
Holy fuck they did it
He’s just a skeegy little guy
Mildew is ‘eepin
no effort november my beloved