Field Notes
Processing guides
A working library for astrophotography: capture, calibration, processing and the tools that tie them together. Built from finished guides, kept here so they are easy to find again. Newer guides come with an A4 PDF to take to the laptop at the scope.
SyQon Studio and DeepPrism V2 (OSC)
Stack, flatten, calibrate and restore in SyQon Studio, or drive the same neural models from PixInsight. DeepPrism runs in two passes: Advanced while the data is linear, Ultra once it is stretched.
SyQon Studio: Raw Frames to Finished Image (OSC)
My end to end SyQon Studio path for colour camera data: organise and stack in Fusion Stack, solve and flatten while linear, calibrate colour against Gaia, restore, then stretch stars and background separately and finish on layers.
The Core PixInsight Workflow (OSC)
Flatten, calibrate, correct, separate, denoise, stretch, recombine. The fixed order I run on every one-shot-colour stack before any creative work starts.
Astro Color Mixer: Targeted Colour Control
Band shaping, Range Mask targeting, probe feedback and the pass system in PixInsight. My working reference for the second half of the tool, where the sliders stop being global and start being surgical.
OSC Dual-Band to the SHO Palette
One-shot-colour data through a dual-band filter, taken from a linear master to a Hubble-style palette in PixInsight. Every step checked against current vendor documentation.
Better Astrophotos, Part 1: Planning and Data
A repeatable framework for better deep-sky images, built around the one variable that controls everything else. Part 1 covers planning the shot and gathering clean data.
Capturing the Signal
Two families of exposure do the work: the light frames that hold your target, and the calibration frames that strip the sensor signature. How they fit together.
Ten Tips for Better Astrophotography
Ten habits that lift image quality and make the whole process less painful, distilled from a deep-sky tutorial into a quick reference.
The Summer Astro Survival Guide
Short nights, bright skies and the odd rain shower. Six practical habits for getting good data out of the hardest season to image well.
M27 Dumbbell Nebula with the Optolong L-Ultimate
A field decision guide for imaging the Dumbbell from a UK garden in June: when the L-Ultimate earns its place in the train, and how summer twilight shapes the plan.
Narrowband, RGB Stars and the Milky Way
Combining narrowband nebulosity with natural RGB stars over a wide Milky Way field, and the processing choices that keep both looking right.
A Streamlined Narrowband Processing Workflow
A lean, repeatable PixInsight workflow for narrowband data, from calibrated stack through to a finished image.
Parallax: Sharpen and Round the Stars
SyQon's aberration correction, star reduction, and non-stellar sharpening. The working reference for running it in Seti Astro Suite Pro, PixInsight, Siril, and Photoshop.
PixInsight Processing Notes — Wizard Nebula (NGC 7380)
SPCC dual-band settings, a full processing order, and gradient-removal notes for the Wizard Nebula shot with an Optolong L-eNhance on the Seestar S30 Pro.
Astro Color Mixer: Refine Colours Without Leaving PixInsight
A PixInsight script for targeted colour adjustment, letting you refine channel balance and saturation without round-tripping to Photoshop.
Narrowband Normalisation
Workflow card and learning notes for the NarrowbandNormalization process by Bill Blanshan and Mike Cranfield — balancing SII/Ha/OIII intensities without clipping bright cores.
PixInsight Mosaic Processing
A working reference for assembling multi-panel mosaics in PixInsight — plate solve, MosaicByCoordinates, GradientMergeMosaic — with a complexity ladder so you only do as much as your data needs.