Incredibly detailed Peter. You're a master of extracting details without introducing noise, or perhaps I should say a master of noise suppression as well.
I'd be on cloud nine if I could get anywhere close to that. I'll eventually get around to trying that one when I've found better ways of dealing with certain issues I struggle with.
Brilliant gallery images Peter, all first class. I know that it's way too much to ask Phil for, but it would have been nice if there was a separate gallery section for novices and the over 70s. That might encourage us mortals to participate. Steve did point out that it was him that gave you your moniker, but it is well deserved.
Do you still have that early short exposure image of M31, possibly taken 8 or 9 years ago. I think it was the manufacturer AG that used your image in an advert. Not much wrong with my longer term memory if I'm correct.
Best Regards,
Ray
Thank you Ray....Ah yes Steve and the 'The Sky God' was just an embarrassing inhouse joke....I think one of Steve's attempts to keep things a little fun and more casual...
Please do post your images on the Galley page Ray as they are more than worthy and it will soon push mine down the list.
Yes you do have quite a memory I did a lot of development work for Orion Optics on the AG and still have my AG12 at home running in my garden. The image you refer to was done with the AG8 prototype which I wished I never got rid of that scope....but that is the way it is, things come and go......I do still have that image
I have a few techniques dealing with noise, I've developed over the years....it was only forced by the lack of clear skies in the UK, able to only grab a few hrs of data and having to squeeze every last photon out of the kit.
Pixinsight is superb and really is invaluable but in my opinion it can be a bit binary, one can get easily lost in numerical values. There is nothing you can't do in it that you can do in Photoshop, however some of the methods to reach the same goal can become quite convoluted. I don't like the way you need to create a preview window to try something out, where in Photoshop has a live preview all of the time. Even if you go a fraction too far with something you have an option to fade it back, so in effect a sort of middle ground. But then Photoshop doesn't have the same ability to correct for say complex gradients like DBE, Deconvolution etc. and making accurate star masks can be a chore....That's why I use both swapping from one to the other during my workflow....anyway I'm rambling now...lol