Diego's M20 Image
Quite some time ago, Diego Colonnello ran a tutorial on the use of APP (Astro Pixel Processor) during one of the ASV’s Astrophotography section meetings. I didn’t pay much attention as I didn’t (and still don’t) use APP. He did make all his data available for people to process themselves. Thank you, Diego! Your generosity is very much appreciated.
I got bored the other day, and with all the clouds and rain stopping me from capturing my own data, I thought I’d have a go at processing Diego’s work.
For starters, he used a monochrome camera, rather than the OSC (One-Shot Colour) like I do. Which meant I had to stack each colour (Red, Green and Blue) separately and then combine these sub-images together.
The first problem I hit was SiriL - I have no idea how to drive it’s monochrome workflow. (Yeah, I could have just swapped out the R, G, and B frames and run the OSC script 3 times. I was looking for a one-stop-shop process.) So I tried the same with Affinity Photo, and ended up stacking each colour set separately. Sometimes you end up taking the long way…
James Ritson has some very handy Affinity Photo tutorials, and one of them is about combining R, G and B data into a single image. The initial result looked nothing like what his tutorial video did - he had much more vivid colours and detail (before doing much processing, too). However, I worked my way through his tutorial (for the most part) and then went off and did my own thing when I realised I wasn’t going to get the same result as James.
The image below is the final result. I’m impressed with how well it came out, and I really, really want some clear skies so I can get the scope out and capture more photons.
