PixInsight Forum (historical)

PixInsight => General => Off-topic => Topic started by: Rory on 2012 May 02 12:45:29

Title: So where do I start?
Post by: Rory on 2012 May 02 12:45:29

Hey there, everyone.
I'm Rory and I am a 16-year-old amateur at astrophotography, residing in the impressively-polluted Houston, Texas. I don't have anything resembling a clear view of the sky to use a personal telescope, but fortunately I can use the CTIO/PROMPT telescopes through Skynet (http://skynet.unc.edu), access courtesy of PARI (http://pari.edu), where I spent two weeks learning the basics of radio telescopes and studying the jets of SS433 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_433). I even published a tiny research paper!
I should make it very clear that I have no idea whatsoever how any of this works. All of my previous astroimaging escapades have taken place in Photoshop. Here's an image I put together of M20 with LRGB images.
(http://s18.postimage.org/vnudgkdi1/LRGB_Comp_Small.png)
 (Pretty cool, right? I mean, if you know what you're doing in PixInsight, it's probably not very impressive, but I'm rather proud of myself for it.)
But I want to learn the real way to do all of this! That image is the only one that came out well in PS; I've tried more than a dozen objects (mostly Messier) with results nowhere near that.
I'm looking at all of these tutorials and trying to find my way around on my own, but I have no background experience with any of this. Most of the information means nothing to me, due to sheer ignorance. All I have to go on is the internet (being as I am in high school), and I'd like to know where I can find some more basic stuff. Seems like everyone here knows what's going on but me!
That said, I'm excited to have found out about this program and community. I'm working on a PixInsight trial right now, and I've got until about 28 May to learn it. If that works out, I'll definitely consider purchasing the software.

Trivia and Ephemera about Rory:

• Yesterday I went to school in a penguin costume.
• I have a pet rabbit. Her name is Hoppenheimer
• Octopuses are my favorite things on the planet. I for one welcome our new Cephalopod overlords.
• I volunteer at an animal shelter on the weekends with the large dogs. This is not because I want to feel like a good person by volunteering, but because I like large dogs.
• I firmly believe that the greatest piece of literature ever published is Infinite Jest, by David Foster Wallace.
• I spent a solid half-hour writing this post because I'm ridiculously calculating about my word choice.
• It is my birthday! It will probably not be my birthday when you read this.

Thanks for reading, y'all.
-Rory

Title: Re: So where do I start?
Post by: georg.viehoever on 2012 May 02 13:13:16

See this thread http://pixinsight.com/forum/index.php?topic=4203.0 for some pointers

Title: Re: So where do I start?
Post by: troypiggo on 2012 May 02 13:23:50

G'day Rory.  Here are some links for you to bookmark.  They certainly helped me:

From the PixInsight homepage:
Video tutorials (http://www.pixinsight.com/videos/index.html)
Processing examples (http://www.pixinsight.com/examples/index.html)
Tutorials (http://www.pixinsight.com/tutorials/index.html)

The PixInsight YouTube Channel (http://www.youtube.com/pixinsight)

Harry's PixInsight User Guide (http://www.harrysastroshed.com/pixuser/pixuserhome.html)
Harry's PixInsight Video Tutorials (http://www.harrysastroshed.com/pixuser/pixuserhome.html)

I'd recommend checking out the ones that show you the PI user interface first, so you understand how to find what you want in PI.

Next I'd recommend thoroughly reading through the master frame generation and image calibration docs.  Can't find the links right now.  Will come back when I find them.

Then, I found the processing example using NGC1808 LRGB 2 part videos on the YouTube channel very helpful for my first LRGB combination image.

Title: Re: So where do I start?
Post by: chris_todd on 2012 May 02 14:04:30

Rory, as a PI noob myself, I found Harry's video tutorials to be an excellent introduction to the basics, as well as a decent guide to some basic workflows.  View all of them in the order he has them, and then you can refer back to his guide pages for slightly more detail.  The PI docs seem to be really thorough, but sometimes so detailed on the math it makes my brain hurt (though for understanding exactly what a tool does, how it does it, and what all the options are for, there's probably no better source).