As I’m imaging with a monochrome camera, I need to image through red, green and blue filters to create a color image.

In a heavily light polluted area, I am limited to when I can effectively use these filters, which is why I often opt for narrowband imaging. However, certain objects, like reflection nebula and galaxies are better when using RGB filters than narrowband.

For the best results, I try to limit the use of RGB filters for nights where

  1. Moon: The moon is less than 50% full and not in close proximity to the object being imaged
  2. Transparency: The sky transparency rating must be average or better.

Once I have the images captured, I following this workflow. Overall, these workflows are very similar to each other, but each one does incorporate a few different steps.

The Reference Frames and Pre-Processing steps can either be done manually or with an automated process by leveraging the Weighted Batch Preprocessing Script

Reference Frame Workflow

Image Pre-Processing Workflow

AUTOMATED PROCESS (Continued)

Weighted Batch Preprocessing Script

Image Publishing