Hi again Richard,
I suggest that you avoid
all forms of binning - stick with 1x1 if you hope to be able to recover colour data from your images at a later stage (and, do not worry about not 'seeing' any colour data in the early stages of any post-processing - quite often the colour does not start to manifest itself until quite late on, once you have taken steps to eradicate noise, etc.)
By 'acquisition process' I was also curious to know what software you were using to actually acquire the images, and exactly how that software was being configured to acquire and save the images.
Basically, with a suite of tools such as PixInsight, you really do not want to compromise your workflow by performing any unrequired processing steps outside of PI - this includes steps like 'auto-darks', etc.
You are not doing anything 'wrong' by wanting to see what you are getting as RAW data. However, for the very small extra effort of acquiring, say, 3 Lights and 3 Darks, and then creating a MasterDark that can be used to process each of the three Lights (ready for alignment and stacking), you might get an image that will give you far more information than an equivalent image based on just a single exposure.
Further, these extra steps are those that you will eventually be using anyway, as your skill level and confidence increases. So, learning how to do this on just a small data set will prepare you for greater tasks in the future.
Using the STF is also fundamental to PixInsight. What you are seeing is probably what is to be expected - given that this first trial image did have an unquantifiable external process, or group of processes) applied to it outwith PI.
I don't know what the cooling specs are for your imager, but you say that you were running it at -5°C for the exposure that you posted. Well, given that you are probably passing through the warmest months of your imaging year at the moment, now is also the time to experiment with the TEC settings. I would have thought that you could conceivably push the cooling down quite a bit yet, before the capabilities of the TEC system become saturated. Typically, a really good, multi-stage TEC circuit can give you a drop in temperature of around -40°C from ambient - but only when running 'maxed out'. I run my camera, all year round, at -15°C, and my camera can give me that -40°C drop. That means I could still conceivably image at an ambient temperature of +25°C whilst maintaining that desired target temperature of -15°C. Of course, that would be quite an unlikely scenario, and I would never want to run my TEC system at 100% anyway. Instead, during the summer, I am more likely to image at ambient temperatures of +5°C, so a target TEC temperature of -15°C means I am only running the TEC system at 50%. Conversely, in winter, if the ambient temperature is already at, or below, -15°C, then I am snuggled up in bed with a hot-water bottle and a cup of hot cocoa
Finally, do not believe that
"most folks have B&W and color wheel" or that you
"wonder if Id be better off with that". I very much doubt that either statement is truly the case. And I certainly would not recommend this approach for novices. It takes (at least) three times the effort to acquire data for non-OSC imaging and, quite often, the sheer time needed to achieve this can be a limiting factor for beginners who want to see at least 'something' to justify their hard-earned cash investment. (I have a little-used mono imager + filter wheel sitting somewhere out in the observatory that I haven't used for years, and which I would be only too happy to sell to someone who is ready to make good use of it !!)
Again, I hope some of this helps.
