a thoughtful web.
Good ideas and conversation. No ads, no tracking.   Login or Take a Tour!
comment by kleinbl00
kleinbl00  ·  2952 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: The Lunar X, Imaged by ME!

I am practicing astrophotography vicariously through you, so I say do it.





user-inactivated  ·  2951 days ago  ·  link  ·  

What a sad night. The seeing was great, too. The new laptop is here and Windows 10 can go fuck itself with a cactus. Camera has been beaten into driver compliance, looks like the software will work, and started the calibration frames so that is done and over with.

This is about all I can get out of 4is hours of frustration. That I got anything at all is more a testament to my "Never give up, never surrender" stubborn streak than anything else. I really, really need to work on my GIMP and post-processing skills.

kleinbl00  ·  2951 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Just think of all the mad skillz you got to practice, though!

Is GIMP really what people use? 'cuz it's kind of a piece of shit. I use a combo of Lightroom and Macphun but those certainly aren't astrophotography-enhanced.

user-inactivated  ·  2951 days ago  ·  link  ·  

GIMP=My broke ass just bought hardware and there is nothing left in the cash drawer for software.

I think that I am going to drop the $100 on Nebulosity which is built from the ground up for astrophotography. Looks like Lightroom 6 is $150 on Amazon so after everything settles down I'll get something.

user-inactivated  ·  2951 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I did a work-study stint writing image processing scripts for the astronomy department as a student, and they seemed to do all their image processing programmatically. They favored IDL, but could live with me doing it in Python. Maybe that was a different thing though, all they told me was "there are stars and planets and stuff in all this noise. Make the noise go away, keep the stars. How will you know the difference? Uh, ask someone."

kleinbl00  ·  2951 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Me? I might rack up some shots and then go play with the good stuff.

user-inactivated  ·  2950 days ago  ·  link  ·  

The new laptop is already paying dividends. I can now capture in RAW 16 bit colour at 20FPS. I did not notice until I uploaded it to Imgur that the two moons in the frame managed to make it through processing! They are dim dots off to the right if you blow that image up. No GRS tonight, no transits, but all in all pretty cool. Gonna try for a very early Sunday and get Saturn and Mars for the first time of the year.

user-inactivated  ·  2951 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I don't have a camera or skills yet to justify that. Fun fact? People are using PixInsight to redo some of the older Hubble data and make some killer stuff. I need time and cash. When I have one I have none of the other.