15th Feb 2024: Astro Pixel Processor 2.0.0-beta29 released - macOS native File Chooser, macOS CMD-Q fixed, read-only Fits on network fixed and other bug fixes
7th December 2023: added payment option Alipay to purchase Astro Pixel Processor from China, Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, Korea, Japan and other countries where Alipay is used.
Hay everyone,
I am kind scratching my head about a potential issue that I might be having. Im trying to evaluate my HA lights, I'm trying to figure out why my background is so poor with my 180 sec and then all over the place with my 300 sec lights, I know that there are other issues going on, but my OIII and SII backgrounds are good, but the HA seems to be really poor, am I missing something, or is there something I should be doing to increase the quality of my background ? Does this represent a potential issue in my calibration frames maybe.....
Thank you
@thextra10th Hi Zachary,
Can you give us more information? What camera and what filters are you using? Where do you image from? Any potentially interfering light sources around? What object have you been imaging? What altitude did the object have when imaging? What Moon phase (I know that it shouldn't interfere with Ha but you never know)?
Please answer these questions and perhaps we will have more 🙂
Thanks, Wouter
@wvreeven sure…. I’m using the ZWO 294MM in bin 2 mode with the Explorer scientific ED127 with a .7x reducer/flattener. I am also using the Antilia 3.5nm filters. I have been working on M16; which is relatively low (about 15 degrees below the celestial equator) from my home front yard at about 44N latitude. I believe most of the data was acquired just after the meridian. I am in a Bortal 6 (est 19.04 mag ) zone for LP. When those images were taken I don’t remember the moon phase, I’ll need to look that up
I was out again last night capturing Ha data, and thinking about my issue, besides the challenges of such a low target and LP I’m thinking it was either not ideal seeing conditions or I just don’t have enough data….
Thank you
@wvreeven I think I figured out my issue...... based on what I did last night, and when un forecasted clouds helped to abruptly end my session, I normalized the images and looked at the graph and the background now looks great, until the clouds rolled in, still not as bad as the other screen shot, but Im thinking that the conditions were far from ideal to image in those sessions........ Ill be curious to what you think
@thextra10th It looks to me like you found the cause! Also, 180 sec is not very long for 3.5 nm filters.
Then another thing. You may want to increase that to 300 sec or even more, if your mount and guiding are able to handle that. It will increase the chance of catching an unforecasted cloud but when those remain absent you'll get a better SNR in your images and less chance that APP will complain about clipping pixels.
@wvreeven yeah, I ran 240 sec last night. My mount can handle the 300 sec no problem, I’m still trying to figure out the the best number to use….
