Acquired 1413x20s subs (= 7.85 hours) with Seestar S50 in Washington D.C. Mar. 13-14, 2026.
Mounted the Seestar on a TH-10 fluid head; put it in equatorial mode; did a polar alignment to less than a degree in both RA and Declination coordinates. Used a Bahtinov mask for manual focus. Replaced the Bahtinov mask with a diffraction spike mask prior to initiating the acquisition of subs. Seestar LP filter* = Off.
PixInsight** (hereafter “PI”) was used to process the captured raw subs.
Integrated using PI to get a master image as follows: Ran FBPP (fast batch preprocessing) script, with drizzle enabled, on 1413 raw (fit) captured files. FBPP integrated 1411 of these files for a success rate of 99.8% of the captured raw subs.
Postprocessed the above master image as follows: Applied Gradient Correction > Blur Xterminator > Spectrophotometric Color Calibration*** > Blur Xterminator > Delinearization by transferring image data from Screen Transfer Function to Histogram Transformation > Fast Rotation > Dynamic Crop. Created a mask using Range Selection. After masking the background applied Curves Transformation (to adjust saturation and boost intensity), Local Histogram Equalization (to adjust local contrast and visibility), SCNR (to lower green chromatic noise), and Noise Xterminator to the target image. Inverted the mask and applied Noise Xterminator and a Histogram Transformation to adjust the background’s shadows and midtones. Reinverted the mask and reapplied Curves Transformation and SCNR to further enhance the target image.
* Seestar S50 has a built-in OIII 30nm / Hα 20nm duo-band light pollution filter.
** PixInsight Core Version 1.9.3 Lockhart, build 1646.
*** For SPCC’s R, G, B filter settings when the LP filter is off I used Sony Color Sensor (R-, G-, B-) UV/IRCUT.
2 Comments
Acquired 1413x20s subs (= 7.85 hours) with Seestar S50 in Washington D.C. Mar. 13-14, 2026.
Mounted the Seestar on a TH-10 fluid head; put it in equatorial mode; did a polar alignment to less than a degree in both RA and Declination coordinates. Used a Bahtinov mask for manual focus. Replaced the Bahtinov mask with a diffraction spike mask prior to initiating the acquisition of subs. Seestar LP filter* = Off.
PixInsight** (hereafter “PI”) was used to process the captured raw subs.
Integrated using PI to get a master image as follows: Ran FBPP (fast batch preprocessing) script, with drizzle enabled, on 1413 raw (fit) captured files. FBPP integrated 1411 of these files for a success rate of 99.8% of the captured raw subs.
Postprocessed the above master image as follows: Applied Gradient Correction > Blur Xterminator > Spectrophotometric Color Calibration*** > Blur Xterminator > Delinearization by transferring image data from Screen Transfer Function to Histogram Transformation > Fast Rotation > Dynamic Crop. Created a mask using Range Selection. After masking the background applied Curves Transformation (to adjust saturation and boost intensity), Local Histogram Equalization (to adjust local contrast and visibility), SCNR (to lower green chromatic noise), and Noise Xterminator to the target image. Inverted the mask and applied Noise Xterminator and a Histogram Transformation to adjust the background’s shadows and midtones. Reinverted the mask and reapplied Curves Transformation and SCNR to further enhance the target image.
* Seestar S50 has a built-in OIII 30nm / Hα 20nm duo-band light pollution filter.
** PixInsight Core Version 1.9.3 Lockhart, build 1646.
*** For SPCC’s R, G, B filter settings when the LP filter is off I used Sony Color Sensor (R-, G-, B-) UV/IRCUT.
Nice!
Best $500 rig ever!!!