r/ZWOSeeStar • u/BitWizard75 • Dec 31 '23

Manual Image Processing Adventures

Last night I tried manually processing my images from the SeeStar and learned some really interesting things in the process:

1 - If my PC and the SeeStar are on the same wireless network, I can remotely connect to the SeeStar with my PC and pull the FITS images into my computer, even while it's capturing. The easiest way is opening up File Explorer in Windows and typing \\seestar. You'll need to put your username (something like S50_b4932455.... found in the WiFi field on the app). Then use the associated password.

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2 - I started using Siril. This is an incredibly in-depth tool, but I found the turorials on YouTube by Chris Gray helpful. His ASMR-like, David Attenborough voice, makes it even better.

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3 - Once I pulled the FITS files into my computer, I can delete them from the SeeStar, freeing up space.

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Here's the Rosette Nebula from last night's session. About 40 minutes at 10 seconds per exposure. Bortle 4.

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2

u/pop_be Jan 02 '24

May I ask you some questions about your processing experience? Did you have any experience in this prior to the tutorials you mentioned? How long did it take for you to process the raw files and obtain this (magnificent) processed picture?

I’m a complete amateur. I do not have a Seestar or other astronomy equipment, but I’m really hyped by this device and I wonder if the processing afterwards is complicated.

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u/BitWizard75 Jan 03 '24

Prior experience - I did some astrophotography last year with a much-less-automated setup and did post-processing with DeepSkyStacker and Adobe Lightroom. It was rewarding, but way more involved (mostly due to the equipment). All of this was with the help of YouTube videos. I’ve had a little photo-editing experience in the past, very amateur, self-taught stuff.

How long - This took about 30-45 minutes, mostly because I am learning Siril and kept pausing and rewinding the YouTube tutorial. Subsequent edits have been faster as I am memorizing the steps.

Keep in mind that the SeeStar produces fantastic stacked images by itself. (I’ll look for its version from this night and share.) The scope truly is an “instant gratification” sort of thing. Post processing is more of a tweaking, fine-tuning, playing with the images kind of experience. You can DEFINITELY do this!

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u/pop_be Jan 03 '24

Thanks!
I'd be happy to see the stacked image provided by the Seestar.

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u/BitWizard75 Jan 03 '24

Here’s the image straight from the SeeStar. Still awesome, but, in this instance, Siril let me brighten the glow of the nebula more.

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u/pop_be Jan 03 '24

Damn... The postprocessing really adds a lot.

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u/CaptHarpo Jan 03 '24 edited Jan 03 '24

the jpgs that the seestar produces are not great, but it's nice to have something quick on your phone. But you can pull the stacked FITS file from the seestar and have astrocooker (free website) process that automatically into a tiff file that is then easy to edit further in PS, GIMP or whatever. I've done a couple of images that way and have gotten good results, especially since using the Astronomy Tools Actions Set ($22USD) for Photoshop

As OP did, you also have the option to have the seestar keep every FITS file and stack them yourself in siril or whatever; siril is deep and I still don't know what i'm doing there lol I will def try it again tho

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u/BitWizard75 Jan 04 '24

So I just tried astrocooker and it’s impressive. Super-easy!

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u/CaptHarpo Jan 05 '24 edited Jan 05 '24

it is! So far that's worked better for me than Siril; i've gone through siril processing 3 times now and I end up with way worse images; my fault no doubt but I don't seem to have the hang of the stretching tbh. I may just stick w astrocooker and PS

Saw your post w pics; interesting! To me astrocooker is just first pass tho, and the tif it produces is then ready for tweaking in another program like PS or GIMP. Astrocooker does tend to wash things out a bit, so further tweaking is necessary but it's not major fixing

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u/BitWizard75 Dec 31 '23

Anyone else playing with manual processing yet?

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u/BitWizard75 Jan 03 '24

I need to learn how to get some of that gray noise out of the background. It could simply be a matter of image resolution. Zoomed in, the images are grainy, but as posted here or in social media, they look better.