Hi Richard, That's a great effort, because as you say it's a rather weak target, although it doesn't look it judging by your image. I've put this one on the back burner for now as I wasn't happy with the colours I was initially getting. I'll have a look at mixing the blends in the channels when I eventually return to it. Concentrating on M31 right now, but it's taking ages and occupying great chunks of disk space. Have you started on it yet? Cheers, Ray

Started on M31 last night. The WBPP mega-run to calibrate, align and stack all five filters took 10 1/2 hours!

Hi Richard, I bet you were relieved that you didn't have a power cut midway. I just used WBPP to do the calibration, and ran each alignment and integration separately. I thought that it had taken a long time, but didn't time it. As I spread it across 2 days I guess around 10 hours sounds about right. I think this pier needs to come with a warning of some kind. Cheers, Ray

Reduced the level of green in the background with SCNR. Will have a play with the SHO version later, but first, M31.

Hi Richard, I bet you were relieved that you didn't have a power cut midway. I just used WBPP to do the calibration, and ran each alignment and integration separately. I thought that it had taken a long time, but didn't time it. As I spread it across 2 days I guess around 10 hours sounds about right. I think this pier needs to come with a warning of some kind. Cheers, Ray

;-) I have learned that lesson. My PC is on a UPS! Yep! People need to know what they are letting themselves in for with this pier! However, if I can batch up the really time-consuming stuff to run overnight it will make it easier.

I'd have been happy with that latest version you posted but nevertheless look forward to seeing another version. Way back in the day I had a couple of UPS and I found they needed replacing after a few years, so I never bothered when the second one gave up. Now I use a gaming laptop so that gives me some peace of mind, but I wouldn't risk running pixinsight on anything that might take a long time. I assume you use a desktop for your commercial work and an UPS is pretty much vital. I think people need to be made aware of just how much data storage they'll likely need. A second 8tb backup drive is starting to look necessary. Cheers, Ray

Reduced the level of green in the background with SCNR. Will have a play with the SHO version later, but first, M31. [attachment]SH2_132_Final2.png[/attachment]

Your colour balance techniques are improving Richard, nice improvement Steve

Yes I agree lol we should probably warn everyone when it's CMOS Ray, your going to need a 100TB NAS soon lol

Yes I agree lol we should probably warn everyone when it's CMOS Ray, your going to need a 100TB NAS soon lol

Don't joke!

It might work out less costly if I buy 2 x 50 TB instead, what do you think Phil. Only joking, I'm waiting for a 1 petabyte just to be prepared for what Steve buys next!

I'm waiting for a 1 petabyte just to be prepared for what Steve buys next!

One never knows.. Ray you might need the combined storage needs of Amazon and Google and Microsoft put together at this rate. Old eyes.. nice avatar

I'm waiting for a 1 petabyte just to be prepared for what Steve buys next!

One never knows.. Ray you might need the combined storage needs of Amazon and Google and Microsoft put together at this rate. Old eyes.. nice avatar

Thanks - it's the one I use on SGL Largest Synology NAS I can find without going to rackmount is 12 bays - £1,400 Largest widely available HDD is 18TB. Seagate IronWolf 18TB for NAS applications are £528 So 216TB NAS storage (about 1/5 PB) would cost £7,736. Hopefully, prices fall faster than our needs but I doubt it. It is a variant of Parkinson's Law - Storage requirements expand to fill the available space, and compute needs always slightly exceed the fastest PC you can afford.

These CMOS cameras are going to keep the hard drive manufacturers in business for the next millennia

I wonder if Roboscopes could get a bulk deal on storage solutions ;-) Disk space and performance are key aren't they.  I run a 20TB NAS with 4 spinning drives (an older Synology 416Play) for my storage, but have 4 x 1TB SSD drives in my PC arranged in a single stripe to give the best possible process for my now aging (4 years old) gaming PC which I bought for astro processing.  I also have a bonded pair of 1GB network connections to the NAS with a wired 1GB network round the house and to my observatory at the bottom of the garden.  On Monday, County Broadband are hooking me up to their new fibre to the house installation on the village - then I'll have a 1GB connection to the internet.  Yippee!  But will that turn into a purely local win as I find out that the services I use cannot supply a fast enough link over the web.....  time will tell!  I'll have a warm feeling either way ;-)

To be honest Mark, I can only think of one reason i'd need internet that fast coupled with alot of storage haha jokes aside, I wish I had internet that quick I'd have my server just downloading completely 'legal' full movies all day long haha

That's a serious set-up Mark. I particularly like the SSD's. I had been thinking about adding one for Pixinsight swap files. Transferring around my LAN I am limited by the Synology NAS - it's a consumer version and not all that fast. I have had FTTP for a couple of years. I ended up going for the 80Mb/s offer, because I have found many of the sites I use can't deliver at a really high speed. What I do get with this subscription is guaranteed service and low contention ratios, so I rarely have any practical problems. I may go higher at some point, but for the moment we are all revelling in the improvement over the previous 2Mb/s (max!) ADSL connection.

Indeed - I went through that a few years ago.  For 2 or 3 years now we have had fibre to the cab then copper as usual to the house with BT.  My biggest complaint about BT is that they award the highest priority to the person who phoned last.  We get good speed for a while (60mb minimum supposedly) but then the contention builds up on the BT network.  the ned County Broadband network doesn't touch BT as far as I understand so won't have the same limiting choke points - we hope!

Hello off topics discussion about storage  in my point of IT ingeneer , you have to split  your storage in 2  one fast SSD harddisk  , or even better an M2 disk for preprocessing of the data , it make a huge difference when reading writing the data.  large disks for raw data and processed data , can be on a NAS if you want , but NAS are not really made for extensive wrting, especially public NAS  Also , you have to think about backup , never buy a disk alone, always 2 , one for live operation , one for backup (offsite backup if you can do it ) .  i prefer small disk ,  i never go over 4To disk for live operation  , a disk failure on a 18To disk , you lost sooooo much data ...  NAS are not made for backup but to share data across network . If your synology raid card is faulty you lost everything !  always backup your data  mine are : -in my computer (10years old, still ok to process data !) -in a huge WD 12TO external drive nin my house , synchronise every day,  -Synchronise in a distant NAS at a familly house , synchronise once or two per month -very cold backup on spare HDD , drop in my office, synchronise two time / years I m obbsesed with data loss    Cheers  florent

Florent I agree with you - spoken by someone who knows!   I am a n ex CIO - you know what they say about CIOs - a little knowledge in dangerous  :-) I do use my NAS for backup but I also do a cloud backup too - great point about off site disks too - my wife has a hard drive backup in her office!   All the best Regards Mark

what cloud backup do you use for such a volumetry ?  i ve got on dropbox account , but it is fullllllllllllllll