Someone asked a question about the exposure times on the Slooh.com telescopes, so this post answers that question and provides other details. As described in my book, Slooh.com is unlike other ‘telescope as a...
Author: Erik
An Overview of PixInsight’s Screen Transfer Function (STF)
The Screen Transfer Function process in PixInsight stretches an image so you can see it on your screen. It’s also an important part of processing your images since it allows you to see your...
Image Processing M51 Using MaxIM-DL and PixInsight
I have been processing images for years now, and have explored various tools for image processing including JS9 & JS9-4L, FITS Liberator, SAOImage DS9, and MaxIM DL. I recently decided to try PixInsight to...
Improving The Contrast Of A Bright Core of A Galaxy Using Photoshop
Galaxies are tough to image because they often have a lot of tonal variation. There are faint outer edges as well as brighter areas. One of the main things I see is bright centers...
Creating An RGB Astro Image Using GIMP
I’ve written extensively about creating RGB astro images using FITS Liberator, SAOImage DS9, and JS9 and JS9-4L. Now, you can also use GIMP to load FITS files. FITS support has been available in GIMP...
Performing A Nonlinear Stretch in GIMP On Astro Images
I often use MaxIM DL to process my astro photos and perform nonlinear stretches using DDP, Curves and other procedures. I wanted to find out if I could replicate MaxIM DL’s stretching functionality in...
Removing Panda Eye Effect From Around Stars
The Panda Eye effect occurs in your astro images when you use over-aggressive sharpening on astronomical images. The Panda Eye effect produces dark circles around stars as a result of over-sharpening an image. This...
Creating A Negative B&W Image
Sometimes an RGB color or monochrome image contains too much information to make the image usable. A negative image can address this by making the black space white, and the light areas dark thereby...
Quickly Reduce Noise, Boost Contrast
Sometimes you’re in a hurry, want to produce a good quality image, yet don’t have a lot of tools at your disposal. This article walks you through performing some adjustments that reduce noise in...
Composing Images Using Aladin
Aladin is a free, interactive sky atlas that draws data from a broad range of sources, giving you access to a very detailed all-sky view that’s comparable to the most advanced planetarium software. Aladin...