EAA from city with raiser fix, L-Enhance filter and new scripts
The sky was clear in the evening so I decided to go out to see how the L-Enhance filter would perform in the light polluted sky of the city compared to Sonoma. The evening was cut short by clouds that showed up around 10pm.
Also I wanted to try out some scripts I worked on in the past couple of days:
- a stacking script: it looks for directory with single frames then runs Siril to register and stack them then remove green, extract background and autostretch the stacked image.
- a polar align script (actually an enhancement to "syncstella"): when monitoring a single frames directory, it computes deltas of right ascension / declination / rotation between frames and suggest adjustment to the platform.
I ran the polar align script and kept adjusting the platform speed and direction and back height (by screwing/unscrewing the south foot) until it the suggestion flipped from one frame to another. Once I was done however there was still a visible drift at times. Either the problem is the script (maybe it should average deltas over multiple frames), the transmission of movement between axis and the segment above and/or the wind.
The stacking script was less disappointing. Because it is configured to stack the best 80% frames (by FWHM), bad frames (e.g. satellite trails or star tails from a gust of wind) that I might have failed to revert during live stacking are not stacked.
Also because the stacking in Siril is configured to auto-crop during registration, it's possible to evaluate the drift speed (by looking at the stacked pictures sizes and how long it took). I got different results from image to image somehow. One had 0.8 px/s drift, another >2 px/s. I should enhance the stacking script to compute that value and report it.
The only processing I did with the generated JPG was some manual cropping to better frame the DSO, some color adjustment in Preview and denoising with Topaz Denoise.
Observations:
Nebulas were easier to see thanks to the L-Enhance.
There was visible vignetting unlike Sonoma - but maybe less pronounced than without the filter and the background extraction of the stacking script took care of it.
There was visible vignetting unlike Sonoma - but maybe less pronounced than without the filter and the background extraction of the stacking script took care of it.
- IC 1396 Elephant Trunk Nebula
- C19 Cocoon Nebula - Cygnus
- C33 East Veil Nebula - Cygnus
- C34 West Veil Nebula - Cygnus
- C27 Crescent Nebula - Cygnus - clouds came over while I was stacking - but somehow the stacking continued with a decent result
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| IC 1396 Elephant Trunk Nebula - 16x8s |
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| C19 Cocoon Nebula 41x5s |
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| C33 East Veil Nebula 28x6s |
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| C34 West Veil Nebula 30x4s |
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| C27 Crescent Nebula 33x4s |




