Artisanal Fish Heads; testing PI Local Normalization and StarXTerminator (David Redwine)

Artisanal Fish Heads; testing PI Local Normalization and StarXTerminator

I was testing some new (to me) processing tools starting with data I have on the Fish Head Nebula. To minimize dithering loss I was learning to use Local Normalization in PI, which seems to work best on drizzled data. I also wanted to test StarXTerminator on the full sized 2X drizzle version to see if it crashes on very large files.

When I was done playing I had an over-processed version of the Fish Head that was actually quite colorful. If you dig down to the dirt on this there is significant over sharpening and some posterization , but to me even that is oddly attractive.

The StarXTerminator version shown here is the down sampled version, shown without any cloning corrections applied. At full 2X resolution, 9312 X 7040, there were a few star remnants, but StarXTerminator did not hang or crash!

This is my first test of StarXTerminator and I am very impressed. I've used Starnet++ and Straton but neither of these tools has ever given me a nearly perfect result immediately, with almost nothing to clonestamp.

Images from the EdgeHD Series
Central USA
Imaged with APT
CMOS Imagers
Fine Art Astrophotography
Schmidt-Cassegrain Telescope (SCT) Imagers

Please note: The following tables are updated every 24 hours.

Distribution of astrophotographers

This table shows the number of distinct astrophotographers who have been assigned and IOTD/TP award compared to the total number of images awarded.
	Distinct awarded users	Total awarded images
Image of the day
Top picks
Top pick nominations

Distribution of subject types

This table shows the distribution of awards per subject type, compared to the popularity of images of that subject type.
	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Deep sky
Solar system
Extremely wide field
Star trails
Northern lights
Noctilucent clouds
Landscape

Distribution of data sources

This table shows the distribution of awards per data source, compared to the popularity of images acquired from that data source.
	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Backyard
Traveller
Own remote observatory
Amateur hosting facility
Public amaeteur data
Professional, scientific grade data
Mix of multiple sources
Other
Unknown

The “AstroBin Image of the Day and Top Picks”, or IOTD/TP, is a long-running system to promote beautiful, interesting, peculiar, or otherwise amazing astrophotographs, with a focus on technical excellence. Learn more.

Submitted The date and time when you submitted this image for IOTD/TP consideration.	...
Views by Submitters (available since September 19th, 2023) Every image is assigned to 50% of available Submitters. In the event that at least 80% of them don't view the image before its time in the IOTD/TP process expires, it's assigned to the other 50% of Submitters and the process begins anew.
Promotions by Submitters When 3 distinct Submitters promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for Top Pick status. This requirement, in addition to anonymization of images and distribution to only a subset of them, prevents biases and ensures that the best images are selected.
Promotions by Reviewers When 3 distinct Reviewers promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for IOTD status.
Early dismissal Staff members have a lot of images to inspect on a daily basis, and they can dismiss images if they believe they don't meet the requirements for IOTD/TP selection. If an image is dismissed 5 times, it's removed from the process. This streamlines the process and ensures that any bias present in promotions could be overruled by other staff members.

Status	Basic failed
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	5021440
PixInsight job	n/a
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

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