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Finally finished my first SHO image of NGC 2070 Tarantula Nebula using the 2600MM and Antlia 3nm filters. Very happy with the result under Bortle 8 skies and Full to first quarter Moon. It’s taken just over a month due to persistent cloudy nights but managed to put together about 5 hours of data. I ...

Apologies for deviating off the blackpoint topic ….. I’ve had the dreaded checker pattern too in Startools after an initial AutoDev. Here’s the post and threads on the DSS forum a month ago https://groups.io/g/DeepSkyStacker/topic/1st_light_with_2600mm/101355106?p=,,,20,0,0,0::recentpostdate/sticky,...

Looks great to me. Are you planning to take color too? Thanks Yes it’s a works in progress with Mono and filters At my City / suburban residence I only get a glance at this object (just under 2 hrs ) so I captured a bit of Ha last week on a rare clear night to test out the filter under the extreme ...

I imaged the Tarantula at my Dark Site with a much bigger telescope back in September and wanted to see how these Antlia 3nm filters hold up when subjected to a heavy light polluted Sky with a Full Moon overhead and more importantly limited data.Same object NGC 2070 but completely different conditio...

Well I still haven't found a totally clear, nuts and bolts explanation of things. Maybe if one could dig into the DCRAW options it might be better explained. Or maybe not. Aren't DCRAW and LIBRAW sort of mystical in their operation? :lol: But this is a DSLR RAW issue only, so nothing that needs to ...

Well I still haven't found a totally clear, nuts and bolts explanation of things. Maybe if one could dig into the DCRAW options it might be better explained. Or maybe not. Aren't DCRAW and LIBRAW sort of mystical in their operation? :lol: But this is a DSLR RAW issue only, so nothing that needs to ...

This is becoming a very interesting topic and have learnt so much from everyones comments especially Mikes. In relation to ASTAP and DSLR / OSC stacking , I noticed Han has not included a checkbox for “setting black point to 0” so like Mike mentioned previously it maybe a “behind the scenes” process...

Some practical suggestions 1/ Why not try the latest DSS version 5 with one of your data sets and see how it compares to the previous version where you had a choice of SBPTZ Personally I don’t think it will matter , as why would David Partridge unintentionally force 1000’s of DSS/ DSLR users to have...

Mike, I agree the ASTAP article in the manual didn’t address the specific SBPTZ issue in DSS but I thought it provided a bit more understanding about blackpoint and Bias. Anyway your explanation of SBPTZ was excellent , clear concise and easily understood without the need to go into deeper technical...

I found a good article in the ASTAP manual relating to zero black points , the pedestal and Bias / Flat Dark frames

https://www.hnsky.org/astap#why-flat-darks

To hopefully add further understanding of the DSS blackpoint 0 issue

Clear Skies
Martin