lefty7283

Few hundred pixels is definitely enough, and kinda overkill (mine goes a few dozen). I think the frequency of the dithers is probably the main thing that could help with the noise

It could also be that you're not dithering often enough. Dithering every 30 mins means you're taking 180 frames before each dither and that'll really let the walking/raining noise build up. you could try doing 30" subs and then dithering every ~10 minutes if that's practical? For me personally I dither after a max of 5 subs (or dither after a sequence of something like LLLLRRGGBB) , but I know I'm also taking longer exposures and have the benefit of automation.

Personally I've never used a GTi or Lumix camera, but if you're able to hook them to a computer with NINA, there is an option to have it dither automatically even without an autoguider

Nice improvement!

WR-134 is the purple looking star in the middle. Don't think the purple color itself is 'natural' but I thought it looked neat and decided to keep it like that. The nebulosity in this image is false color (although the HOO palette is kinda close to true color), and the stars themselves are RGB true color. Even though I was able to get some of the entire Oiii shell around WR134, I decided not to push it too much in processing. At some point I'll shoot it again from darker skies. Captured over a bunch of nights in November 2025 from a Bortle 9 zone.

Places where I host my other images:

Flickr | Pixelfed

Equipment:

• TPO 6" F/4 Imaging Newtonian

• Orion Sirius EQ-G

• ZWO ASI1600MM-Pro

• Skywatcher Quattro Coma Corrector

• ZWO EFW 8x1.25"/31mm

• Astronomik LRGB+CLS Filters- 31mm

• Astrodon 31mm Ha 5nm, Oiii 3nm, Sii 5nm

• Agena 50mm Deluxe Straight-Through Guide Scope

• ZWO ASI-290mc for guiding

• Moonlite Autofocuser

Acquisition: 28 hours 20 minutes (Camera at unity gain, -15°C)

• Ha - 51x600"

• Oiii - 113x600"

• R - 32x60"

• G - 30x60"

• B - 30x60"

• Darks- 30

• Flats- 30 per filter

Capture Software:

• Captured using N.I.N.A. and PHD2 for guiding and dithering.

PixInsight Preprocessing:

• BatchPreProcessing

• StarAlignment

• Blink

• ImageIntegration per channel

• DrizzleIntegration (2x, Var β=1.5)

• Dynamic Crop

Narrowband linear:

• MultiscaleGradientCorrection using MARS Project data

• BlurXterminator

• StarXterminator to completely remove stars (extracted stars processed separately)

• STF applied via HistogramTransformation to stretch nonlinear

RGB Linear:

Channelcombination to make color image from RGB stacks

• MultiscaleGradientCorrection

• SpectrophotometricColorCalibration

• BlurX (correct only mode)

• HSV Repair

• StarX to extract a stars only image

• ArcsinhStretch + HistogramTransformation to stretch nonlinear

• Slight curves saturation boost

Nonlinear Processing

• PixelMath to combine stretched Ha and Oiii images into a color image (HOO --> RGB)

• Shitloads of curve transformations to adjust luminance, contrast, saturation, etc

• DeepSNR Noise reduction

• ColorSaturation adjustments (with Oiii mask)

• More curves

• LocalHistogramTransformation

• Even more curves

• NoiseXTerminator for some small scale chrominance noise reduction

• Guess what more curves its the best tool in pixinsight 10/10

• Pixelmath to add in the stretched stars only image from earlier

  This basically re-linearizes the two images, adds them together, and then stretches them back to before. More info on it here)

  mtf(.005,

  mtf(.995,Stars)+

  mtf(.995,Starless))

• Resample to 70%

• Annotation

Not to be confused with the butterfly planetary nebula, this is the one in Cygnus next to Sadr. I shot this thing years ago in SHO palette, but decided to shoot it again in Ha/Sii since there's very little Oiii in this region. Captured over a bunch of nights in November 2025 from a Bortle 9 zone.

Places where I host my other images:

Flickr | Pixelfed

Equipment:

• TPO 6" F/4 Imaging Newtonian

• Orion Sirius EQ-G

• ZWO ASI1600MM-Pro

• Skywatcher Quattro Coma Corrector

• ZWO EFW 8x1.25"/31mm

• Astronomik LRGB+CLS Filters- 31mm

• Astrodon 31mm Ha 5nm, Oiii 3nm, Sii 5nm

• Agena 50mm Deluxe Straight-Through Guide Scope

• ZWO ASI-290mc for guiding

• Moonlite Autofocuser

Acquisition: 22 hours 10 minutes (Camera at -15°C)

• Ha - 59x600"

• Sii - 74x600"

• Darks- 30

• Flats- 30 per filter

Capture Software:

• Captured using N.I.N.A. and PHD2 for guiding and dithering.

PixInsight Preprocessing:

• BatchPreProcessing

• StarAlignment

• Blink

• ImageIntegration per channel

• DrizzleIntegration (2x, Var β=1.5)

• Dynamic Crop

Narrowband linear:

• MultiscaleGradientCorrection using MARS project data (had to do good ol fashioned DBE for the Sii channel)

• BlurXterminator

• StarXterminator to completely remove stars (extracted stars processed separately)

• STF applied via HistogramTransformation to stretch nonlinear

Stars Only:

• Channel combination to combine stars images into color image

• SpectrophotometricColorCalibration (Narrowband working mode)

• HSV Repair

• ArcsinhStretch + Histogram transformation to stretch nonlinear

• Slight saturation curve boost

• Stars only image saved for later addition

Nonlinear processing:

• Pixelmath to combine stretched narrowband images into color image (HSS palette)

• SCNR > Invert > SCNR > Invert to remove some greens and magentas

• DeepSNR

• Shitloads of curve transformations to adjust luminance, contrast, saturation, etc

• LocalHistogramEqualization

• more curves

• NoiseX for some small scale chrominance noise reduction

• Pixelmath to add in the stretched stars only image from earlier

  This basically re-linearizes the two images, adds them together, and then stretches them back to before. More info on it here)

  mtf(.005,

  mtf(.995,Stars)+

  mtf(.995,Starless))

• Slight SCNR

• Resample to 65%

• Annotation

Yippie my comment never posted from last night! here's the writeup:

Decided to give this one a reshoot under darker skies. My shot of it from 2019 had a lot more light pollution and less exposure time than this pic. M46 also has a small planetary nebula, NGC 2438, in the cluster. Captured on November 23rd, 2025 from a bortle 3 zone (Deerlick Astronomy village)

Equipment:

• TPO 6" F/4 Imaging Newtonian

• Orion Sirius EQ-G

• ZWO ASI1600MM-Pro

• Skywatcher Quattro Coma Corrector

• ZWO EFW 8x1.25"/31mm

• Astronomik LRGB+CLS Filters- 31mm

• Astrodon 31mm Ha 5nm, Oiii 3nm, Sii 5nm

• Agena 50mm Deluxe Straight-Through Guide Scope

• ZWO ASI-290mc for guiding

• Moonlite Autofocuser

Acquisition: 1h 14m minutes (Camera at -15°C)

• L - 20x90"

• R - 10x90"

• G - 10x90"

• B - 9x90"

• Darks- 30

• Flats- 30 per filter

Capture Software:

• Captured using N.I.N.A. and PHD2 for guiding and dithering.

PixInsight Preprocessing:

• BatchPreProcessing

• StarAlignment

• Blink

• ImageIntegration per channel

• DrizzleIntegration (2x, Var β=1.5)

• Dynamic Crop

linear:

• DynamicBackgroundExtraction

duplicated each image and removed stars via StarXterminator. Ran DBE with a shitload of points to generate background model. model subtracted from original pic using the following PixelMath (math courtesy of /u/jimmythechicken1)

$T * med(model) / model

• BlurXterminator (correct only)

• STF applied via HistogramTransformation to stretch nonlinear

• Channelcombination to make color image from RGB stacks

• SpectrophotometricColorCalibration

• HSV Repair

• ArcsinhStretch + HistogramTransformation to stretch L and RGB images nonlinear nonlinear

• Slight curves saturation boost for the RGB image

Nonlinear processing:

• LRGBCombination with stretched L image as luminance

• DeepSNR noise reduction

• Lots of curve transformations

• Slight SCNR to remove greens from some stars

• more curves

• Resample to 65%

• Annotation

It was a gift ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Honestly he gave 0 shits about it and kept it on all day

Bad Romance by Lady Gaga. Idc if I’m a man in his late 20’s I’m putting my heart and soul into it

Doesn’t seem to, they announced this a couple months ago

Anki is great! Half my med school class uses it

100% true. Can’t also forget about nearly everyone getting cataracts by the time they’re in their 60’s!