UPDATE FROM MABULA
I have had a very rough 2 months unfortunately health wise. I was struck 3x in a row with bacterial infections. The second infection occurred after a routine hospital checkup and I became very sick. I had to rest and take a lot of antibiotics. Once I was recovering and restarting work 1 month ago, I again became sick. The infection was not yet gone, so even more antibiotics and rest was needed. Needless to say, it took a lot of my energy and I needed a lot of rest.
Finally, the infection is really gone and my energy is coming back step-by-step now and I have started work again. I am terribly sorry to have kept you waiting for support. I will address all outstanding questions and e-mails step-by step and will be on the forum daily from today.
APP 2.0.0-beta47 will come soon as well, a lot of work was already completed before I became very ill, so the release is also nearly ready for you. Beta47 will be much faster actually. Many workflows will be more than 2x faster, mosaics can even be 10x faster than before because registration really received a major boost... all compared to beta46. Before I release it, I will make sure that everything is working properly and then I will release it.
This artifact just showed up in the stack after removing the LP filter from my setup. But the circle in the middle of the image does not look like light pollution nor vignetting - maybe stray light? Could this be a processing issue? The effect is stronger when I use background normalization.
(I have an Explore Scientific ED102CF scope with Explore Scientific flattener, and ASI294mc-pro.)
I don't see the circle in the sub (1st image), only in the stack (2nd image).
Could you switch on "neutralize BG" on the panel on the right? Just to get a clearer picture. Are you using calibration files (bias, flats, darkflats, darks)?
@vincent-mod
Hi Vincent, thanks for the reply. I'm not using any calibration in these images but the results are similar with calibration. Attached is the image with neutralize BG set in normalization.
A friend though I had a some dew on my lens but this has happened both times trying no filter and I checked there was no dew - always have the dew heaters on in this humid weather. But it made me think, could it be IR light from the dew heater, since I don't have an IR filter in these shots?
Good question, but hard to answer. Calibration data would show a bit more possibly. I would definitely look into taking those as I can also see amp-glow on the top right, which is dealt with with darks. It could be dew, maybe, as it's in the center of the image. At least I would take a very close look in the entire system for IR or other possible light sources.
Thanks, I’ll start from scratch and remove everything including FF and dew heaters and see what I find.
@astrogee Same camera, similar scope, same problem.
I've been very suspicious of dew/frost on camera window and even bought a $20 ZWO camera dew heater even though ZWO says it's not required because heat from the cooler is routed to the window. Didn't seem to help.
Was suspicious of a light leak in the image train, but everything is a screw fit now and the problem persisted.
Last two sessions I hung an opaque curtain to block two local light sources. Problem solved!
Apparently, that light was bouncing around in the dew shield and found it's way into scope and camera.
All that said, I'm still suspicious of dew or frost in the camera. I've been careful to cool to zero and then after a bit cool to -10ºC. So maybe that helped?
I don't cool to -20ºC because light pollution noise far exceeds camera noise even at -10.
All that said, I'm still suspicious of dew or frost in the camera. I've been careful to cool to zero and then after a bit cool to -10ºC. So maybe that helped?
Thanks @tailspin45, I think in this case, it should be somewhat sealed by the field flattener. But I'll keep an eye on camera dew. Lots of experiments to do on this one 🙂
