First EAA of Spring

After my last session, I realized I was not applying calibration frames to my stacks in Siril. So, I took some time to dive into my script and address this issue.

In addition, I downloaded the latest development build of Siril, which now includes integration with StarNet++ for star removal and GraXpert for both gradient and noise removal. To make the most of these new features, I updated my script to incorporate them seamlessly.

I also made improvements to allow the script to generate multiple processed images for each target in a single run, offering different variations such as those with different target backgrounds, with or without gradient removal, and with or without GraXpert's noise removal.

Today was a beautifully clear and warm day, with the forecast predicting another clear night. I started a bit later than usual and decided to make solely flat frames. While refining my enhanced script, I had compared images with and without dark frames applied and honestly couldn't spot much of a difference. For this session, I used the focal reducer along with the L-Quad Enhance filter and chose not to bin the images.

From the start, I sensed something wasn’t quite right. I noticed some unusual diffraction spikes around certain stars. I had cleaned up the filter and the focal reducer before going outside and maybe I scratched them ?? Then, when I pointed my scope at a galaxy, it appeared incredibly faint, even with 5-second exposures. Maybe the seeing was exceptionally poor tonight or was it the lack of bias/dark frames??

After a few targets, I paused, to see if I could get any decent results with my post-processing script. With the best options (based on my experimentation while developing the modified script) GraXpert gradient removal on single frames and GraXpert noise removal on the stack, and no binning, the processing for the first target took more than 10 minutes. The results were rather underwhelming despite the heavy post-processing. Also the background was very uneven so maybe bias frames are required with flats??