The Sun on August 12, 2024

AR3784 (left on the cropped image) has the potential to produce X-Class flares, as does AR3780 (right on the cropped image). Click the crop to see the full image.

Lagoon Nebula "Hubble" Reprocessed

 I reprocessed my Lagoon Hubble for greater contrast and detail; I also cropped it a little. The result is not too bad, but the "blown" core is a little more apparent.

The Lagoon Nebula in Hubble Palette--an easy way to get this result in Siril without using scripts!

 Here's a reprocess of the Lagoon Nebula with pseudo-Hubble look. I use Siril to achieve this look, but I do not use the Hubble script. I stack using the Seestar drizzle script. I perform the following steps: background extraction, green noise reduction, photometric color calibration, and star removal. I then do the Asinh transformation and the histogram stretch. When I have the image looking as I want it, I go back to the color calibration option. This time, I select the color calibration option. I then draw a small box in the darkest part of the image. I click the "use current selection" under background neutralization and click the background neutralization button. I then draw another box over the brightest and most colorful part of the nebula. I click "use current selection" under the white reference option (I don't do anything else under this option), and click Apply. The result is a Hubble Palette like image. I boost the saturation on this image, and sometimes do additional processing on other packages (you don't have to). I then add some of the stars back in using the star mask Siril created when I did the extraction. The result can be quite pleasing. Please note, I did not develop this technique; you can find it on YouTube

The Lagoon Nebula in 20 minutes with the Seestar!

 The Lagoon Nebula is a bright gas cloud in Sagittarius. I can’t image it from my home observatory, but I can from my daughter’s home in rural northern Indiana. I hauled the Seestar with me and was able to capture the Eagle Nebula on a clear night. I had no such luck with my attempt to image the Lagoon. I was only able to image 114 x 10 second frames—-19 minutes in all—before the clouds rolled in. However, due to the Bortle 2 skies (!) and the brightness of the Lagoon, I was able to capture a very pleasing image. The first inage is the jpeg straight off the Seestar with no additional processing at all. It’s the image your phone saves when you stop imaging. The second  image

is what you get with additional processing of the FIT files saved by the Seestar. Stacking, drizzling, star removal and reconstitution were performed in Siril, as was the histogram stretch. I made very small adjustments in Affinity; I did not do any noise reduction. It’s amazing how much detail the Seestar captured in a mere 19 minutes!

M16 Hubble Palette

 Here's a pseudo-Hubble Palette image of M16, just for fun.

The Sun on August 9, 2024.

 The Sun on August 9, 2024. There are several active areas on the sun today. AR3780 is especially complex, and I have included an upsampled crop of that sunspot group.

Messier 16 Fully Processed Seestar 50 Image

 M16 captured during my trip to Indiana. This is a stack of 531 x 10s integrations. Stacked, drizzled, star removal/restoration in Siril; noise reduction in Topaz, with curve adjustment in Affinity. Final tweaks in PS Express. I’ve also attached an even more contrasty version (which somehow is the first image on the page !). I’m not sure it’s a better image, but it shows a little more detail.