Hi all. First contribution here in a long time after I had issues with my mount from an inexpertly performed belt mod (by me!). However, I think I've mostly sorted the gremlins and so managed to get a little bit of data on a target I've not tried before and seems really pleasing. Please excuse my likely shoddy processing, this is probably my weakest area now given the hardware is working mostly well. Moon is bright and my house is in the way and there's not much dark time in the UK at the moment but I am pleased enough with the result to share it.
All in all for just 1 hour of data and my very amateur playing around in Siril/Photoshop, I think it could be worse. I have a horrid tendency to "overcook it" especially with stretching and noise reduction, but learning a bit more about star removal and recombination has helped a lot with that. Any constructive critiques gratefully received.
Equipment:
- Skywatcher 130-PDS with 0.9x CC
- NEQ-6 mount with belt mod
- ZWO ASI294mm pro cooled to 0 C with ZWO 7nm narrowband filters
- Guided by a Startravel 80 with ZWO ASI120MC-S
Software:
- Image acquisition with AstroPhotographyTools
- Guiding with PHD2
- Stacked with sirilic
- Processed mostly in Siril with some Photoshop at the end
Subs:
- 8 x 180 s Ha (24 mins)
- 6 x 180 s OIII (18 mins)
- 6 x 180 s SII (18 mins)
- TOTAL: just 1 hour integration across 2 sessions on 25th and 26th May 2026 in suburban location (Bortle 5-6 ish)
Processing:
- Stacked in sirilic using winsorised sigma clipping
- 6 library darks
- flats and dark flats for each session
- Siril:
- RGB composition with SHO palette (no pixelmath)
- Crop and colour balance
- Denoise and histogram stretching
- Star removal
- More stretching and denoising and colour balancing
- Re-added stars and moved to Photoshop for selective colour, levels, noise tweaks, and a couple of lines of content aware spot removal to get rid of some pesky satellite trails!
- Wasn't happy with the end result so back to Siril for a star removal and recombination with reduced star size and a touch more denoise
by sagramore