StarTools

Hello,

I'm new to astrophotography and Star Tools and I am having an odd problem with my images when I use the AutoDev command and I'm not sure where I'm going wrong. I have a one shot color camera. I stack the images and convert them to color and then load the resulting FITS file into Star Tools. I then do the AutoDev command and the resulting image has a strong yellow tint to it. Do you have any thoughts on what may cause this? This is happening to each image I have tried. Like I said, I'm new to all of this so I'm sure I'm missing a step or doing something in the wrong order but any guidance would be appreciated.
Thanks!

Jon

Hi Jon,

Welcome to the forums and thanks for posting your image - it really helps getting to the bottom of your issue.
What you're seeing here is the the effects of light pollution.
Fortunately, there is an easy way to get rid of it - the Wipe module will 'wipe' it away and reveal the real signal.
Assuming you have 'Tracking' on (you should!), then, after applying 'Wipe' just redo AutoDev to let it calculate the new optimal stretching curve, this time *without*, the light pollution. The Wipe module will also direct you to do this.

After a restretch (e.g. Devlop or AutoDev) and little color correction (e.g. Color), you should end up with something waaaay better than this (because I just used your non-linear 8-bit compress JPEG); Hope this helps!

Hi,

Thank you so much for the response! This does help! I live in a highly light polluted area so this does make sense but I'm glad there are ways to fix it. I'll play with the various modules and let you know if I have any more questions.

Thanks!

Jon

No problem and keep up the good work - your data appears to be very smooth, with no tracking issues that I can see. It's very promising!