Integration of 705x20s subs (= 3.9 hours) with Seestar S50 in Washington D.C. April 22-23, 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 polar deviation in both RA and Declination coordinates. Dew heater = On. Light Pollution filter = Off.
Processing was done entirely in PixInsight (PI).
Applied Cosmetic Correction and Subframe Selector to identify the sub with the highest weight*.
Ran Fast Batch Preprocessing script, with drizzle enabled, to integrate the subs to get a master image using the above-identified highest-weighted sub as the reference frame for alignment.
As regards the master image, applied Gradient Correction > Blur Xterminator > Spectrophotometric Color Calibration > Blur Xterminator > Delinearization using Multiscale Adaptive Stretch > Fast Rotation > Dynamic Crop.
Created a mask from the above result by Channel Extracting the L-channel, using Binarize to size it appropriately, and Convolution to blur the mask’s edges.
Applied Noise Xterminator (NXT) on the background after masking the galaxy.
Inverted the mask and applied Color Saturation (to enhance hue and saturation for blue and red colors) and Curves Transformation (to adjust chroma and boost intensity). Applied Local Histogram Equalization to adjust local contrast and visibility and NXT. Reinverted the mask and applied a Histogram Transformation to the background to adjust shadows and midtones as well as NXT.
* Used the weighting expression (15*(1-(FWHM-FWHMMin)/(FWHMMax-FWHMMin)) + (15*(1-(Eccentricity-EccentricityMin)/(EccentricityMax-EccentricityMin))) + (20*(PSFFlux-PSFFluxMin)/(PSFFluxMax-PSFFluxMin)))+50.
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Integration of 705x20s subs (= 3.9 hours) with Seestar S50 in Washington D.C. April 22-23, 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 polar deviation in both RA and Declination coordinates. Dew heater = On. Light Pollution filter = Off.
Processing was done entirely in PixInsight (PI).
Applied Cosmetic Correction and Subframe Selector to identify the sub with the highest weight*.
Ran Fast Batch Preprocessing script, with drizzle enabled, to integrate the subs to get a master image using the above-identified highest-weighted sub as the reference frame for alignment.
As regards the master image, applied Gradient Correction > Blur Xterminator > Spectrophotometric Color Calibration > Blur Xterminator > Delinearization using Multiscale Adaptive Stretch > Fast Rotation > Dynamic Crop.
Created a mask from the above result by Channel Extracting the L-channel, using Binarize to size it appropriately, and Convolution to blur the mask’s edges.
Applied Noise Xterminator (NXT) on the background after masking the galaxy.
Inverted the mask and applied Color Saturation (to enhance hue and saturation for blue and red colors) and Curves Transformation (to adjust chroma and boost intensity). Applied Local Histogram Equalization to adjust local contrast and visibility and NXT. Reinverted the mask and applied a Histogram Transformation to the background to adjust shadows and midtones as well as NXT.
* Used the weighting expression (15*(1-(FWHM-FWHMMin)/(FWHMMax-FWHMMin)) + (15*(1-(Eccentricity-EccentricityMin)/(EccentricityMax-EccentricityMin))) + (20*(PSFFlux-PSFFluxMin)/(PSFFluxMax-PSFFluxMin)))+50.