I have been thinking about what I should buy to advance my astrophotography hobby. A new camera?…a new filter?…a new mount? None of these seemed appropriate for me right now. I finally realized that my ability to develop my astrophotos has always been a struggle, so I considered purchasing Photoshop or PixInsight. Photoshop is subscription-based, which will add up over the years and PixInsight is an upfront price with add-ons. I decided that PixInsight is for me and I have been having a ball with it reprocessing my old photos. I also bought the RC Astro add-ons StarXterminator, NoiseXterminator and BlurXterminator. Overall cost was less than a new camera or mount so I am good.
The images on the left are the originals I created back in 2020 using Deep Sky Stacker and Startools. The images on the right are the same light frames processed in PixInsight. I made a mess of Alnitak…climbing the learning curve. I like how smooth the image is and how easy it was to control the stars. I was also able to pull out more details behind the Horsehead and Flame Nebulae. Back in 2020, my Flats were terrible. Ironically, the light pollution caused by the Flats in the PixInsight image is kinda cool.
The images on the left are the originals. The images on the right are the same light frames processed in PixInsight. The Rosette PixInsight image also suffers from the bad Flats but the wash of light pollution looks mysterious. The detail in the Nebula is balanced and sharper. Pushing back the stars gives more focus on the Nebula, which I really like. I have lots to learn.
PixInsight has its own image calibration, registration and integration routines, which are fabulous. The digital development routines in PixInsight are numerous, and the RC Astro add-ons are well worth purchasing. PixInsight is both a CPU and a disk hog. I have a Lenovo Laptop with 2TB of disk space, 24Gb of RAM, 8 Cores and 16 threads. PixInsight can benefit from a powerful Nvidia graphics card because it can leverage the Nvidia GPU to significantly speed up the program. Luckily, I don’t stack 100s of light frames, so the time to calibrate and stack is less than 10 minutes. My QHY294C camera is an 11Mpx camera, which also cuts down on the time to process them.
Both of these DSOs were imaged with my QHY294C with the cooler set at 0 Celsius. I used a Baader Moon and Skyglow filter for these images. Obviously, I want to image these again using my LeNhance Narrowband filter.
I am watching lots of PixInsight videos by Peter Zelinka and making lots of notes. Soon I will begin processing my 2025 photos and posting them to my website. The learning curve is big, but this is supposed to be a hobby so I am enjoying the climb.
Peter