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Astrophotography

Need Help!
Bill McGeeney

Hey folks, Anyone want to show me how to process this guy? Maybe we can use this as a lesson for some of the nonlinear processing in PI.


I'm getting more comfortable at using PI, but I'm trying to take an image past the halfway mark. The nice thing about these SeeStar images is that, although they aren't going to produce amazing images, they are really good for practicing processing. This image was live stacked by SeeStar. Nothing else has been done to it.


So far my standard workflow for these little files is as follows:

* Debayer

* CC

* DBE

* Star Xterminator

* Spectro Photometric Color Calibration for the stars frame.

* Stretch

[at this point I don't know what to do in PI - I'll end up punting these over to Photoshop - manipulate in PS then clean it all up in Lightroom].


Thanks in advance!

Lou Varvarezis

Hey Bill,


Sorry I took so long to reply, I haven't been on the forum in a while. I am curious, how may subs did you stack to create this image? As far as Seestar goes, it's amazing what it can do for $500 but stacking a few short exposures will result in a noisy final image.

First, I would attempt only the brightest objects. In addition, you will want to take as many exposures as possible until field rotation becomes a limiting factor. Try your best to center objects allowing you to continue to take more exposures. In the end, the more subs you can stack together the better your final image will be. You can also try shorter exposure times and increase your exposure count. When you start with better data it will be that much easier to process both in the linear and non-linear state

Remember Garbage in = Garbage out.

Start with the cleanest data that you can collect. You can get good images from the Seestar, you just need to coax them out.

I've seen a lot of impressive images from club members who have used the Seestar. Since I don't own one, I can only guess what should work. Reach out to someone who has successfully produced images with data collected using a Seestar.


Good luck,


Lou Varvarezis

Astrophotography Chair, DVAA

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