Star Deblooming

[llpastro]

I am just learning PixInsight and my camera is an SBIG ST-10XME which is a non deblooming camera.  Are there any processes in PI to perform deblooming?

Larry

[dgbarar]

Hi Larry,

There are no deblooming processes in Pixinsight.  The company's is philosophically opposed to deblooming as they consider it "in-painting", i.e. filling in data with something artificial.

The Pixinsight teams believes either that the blooms be left in the image or,  if you do not want blooms they suggest you use HDR techniques.  This consist of taking images that do not have blooms and use their HDR algorithms to combine with longer exposures that have the blooms.  By using HDR techniques you effectively remove the blooms.

HDR does work to eliminate the blooms but it is time consuming.  The images obtained from using the HDR technique end up looking better because you do not have saturated stars that are devoid of color.

Like you I also use an ST10 XME and also have had to learn the HDR technique to deal with blooms. I like working with this camera because it is very fast.  However, much of the advantage of a fast camera is lost because I now have to take short exposures images to deal with the blooms.

Don Barar

[llpastro]

Thanks Don.  Yes the blooms can be difficult to deal with.  In some star fields I can get extensive blooms in less than 5 minutes using my 140mm f8.3 Astro-Physics refractor.

Larry

[Warhen]

Larry, as I understand it TGVInpaint is being developed for deblooming and other artifacts. You may also want to ask Vicent Peris about a technique he's demonstrated at NEAIC, etc.

[dgbarar]

Hell must be freezing over.

Don Barar

[MikeOates]

Check out an article by Vicent Peris called
NGC 6914 with Calar Alto Observatory: Processing Notes:
http://www.pixinsight.com/examples/NGC6914-CAHA/index.html

This covers Blooming Suppression.

Mike

[llpastro]

Thanks Warren and Mike.  Warren, is the technique you are referring too the one Mike has pointed out?

Larry

[Warhen]

Yes Larry, that's it! I'm reminded it's an acquisition technique. Be nice to have a software fix, an I'm hopeful for NABG users that TGVInpaint will address this.

[mads0100]

Good luck getting Vincent to share his technique beyond just telling you it's using HDR .  I tried for two years before I ended up selling the ST-10 and buying a KAF8300. 

You'll find that HDR works in some cases... and in others it doesn't work at all.  The best routine I found (that is painting), was Wodaski's debloomer.  You need MaximDL to use it, but it was pretty effective. 

The solution, per the PI guys, is to just not shoot exposures that get blooms.

Good luck,
Chris

[andyc67]

I am using a trial version of CCDSTACK and so far it's doing a very good job at removing blooms. That is a less expensive alternate to Maxim.