layers/ masks, hopefully conquered after 100 hours and 3 weeks

[Mike]

The align routine for mis-rotated images in Maxim is dead easy. I can't remember the exact menu commands, but you go to the alignment menu and once inside select the 2 star align. Select two stars at opposite corners of the field in both images and then Maxim will rotate and align them for you.

[Daniel]

Hi Fay, hope you didn't mind, I took Marks version and added the Ha image into the Red channel, seems to bring out a little more contrast, although i performed a bot of unsharp masking in areas aswell (although i was quite sloppy, so it's a little all over the place)

Anyway, now I've seen this, Im going to be out there myself with the Ha next time we have the weather!

Daniel
:O)

[Fay]

Daniel, I like that!

I have been all day, getting too obsessive, trying to align these two images, Can't seem to do it in Maxim. I am just about to give up on it forever. I even restacked the image with all the mis alignment subs in top left. It seems every frame was the same. I don't know why I cannot align, like Mark did. Maxim says cannot align on stars & I don't know IRIS.

[Daniel]

You'll have to do a manual 2 star align in Maxim, instead of the correlation (which is how I aligned these images) I find that maxim has problems aligning if you've done any processing on the image.

To do a 2 star align, first pick the 2 star align method when the align box comes up, then it'll bring up a view of one of the images, select a bright star, once you do that, the image will change back to the other image your trying to align, select the same bright star.

Once you do that, it'll switch back to the first image again, once again select another bright star, by the way, it helps if the stars are in far corners from eachother. Again, the image will switch to the second image, select the same star and your done, just hit OK on the align box.

If this is all just gobbledygook, give me a call,

Daniel
:O)

[Fay]

Well, I got back from the meeting, last night, & only one lot of subs had stacked. I had done it once in the day, but only 16 had stacked then, also.I had been trying to combine the two evening's worth of M42, 17 + 27.
The 17 stack, did come out better than the original, so used it with a processed image of the other 27 subs  & managed to align in Maxim using 2 star method.

Will see how it turns out & then that will be that!!!!!! It would be easier just to go outside & start again. The reason I only got the 17 in the first place was because of the leaving of the cap on, in error, for an hour!! 

[Mike]

Maxim says cannot align on stars & I don't know IRIS.

Fay, if you are coming to the imaging session next Thursday then bring your laptop, with Maxim and these images on it, and we will figure out what is going on. I have always found aligning in Maxim dead easy, even on images well out of alignment.

[Fay]

Mike, I did manage to do 2 star alignment, but when I put the images in DSS, it refused the second group. It must be to do with size orsomething. These are Canon images.

[Fay]

This was 2 star alignment with two stacked images

[RobertM]

Fay, I can give you a MaximDL lesson if that would help.

[Fay]

I will take you up on that, Robert, thanks

[Fay]

Daniel, when you added the Ha version into the red channel, do you have to make the image RGB & then past into the red?

[Daniel]

Fay, yup, that's precisely what i did, I got some Ha on M42 myself last night, seems that the 13nm Ha filter worked with the Hyperstar pretty well, although It did bloom a lot in the blue channel. Fortunately, I only extract the red so this doesn't affect me. managed 4 minute subs and could probably go to about 8 minutes If I were to push it, although at that length the core was blowing out quite a bit.

Not sure if I'll publish the results yet though as the subs I got were pretty poor on account of the dew heaters not being on last night and everything fogging over through most of the subs.

Daniel
:O)

[RobertM]

If you're using Ha for luminance then you'll find it better to partially blend the Ha to the Red channel first otherwise the red channel gets over enhanced.   I do HaRGB as Ha+HaR+G+B and not HaHaGB the colour balance works out better that way.

[Fay]

I have not got the hang of getting the Ha into the red channel

[Daniel]

Fay, have a look at this tutorial, it covers a few different techniques for merging the Ha http://www.robgendlerastropics.com/HARGB.html

For your image though because the Ha was a lot better than the Red I just pasted the Ha straight into the red channel, so this is a Ha,G,B composite rather than a Ha,R,G,B.

Hope this helps

Daniel
:O)