Smoother Background, Sharper Stars
One of the great things about Seestar is the continual improvement of its capabilities. The mosaic/framing mode allows larger fields of view, and the AI Denoise feature significantly improves image quality. I'm usually a little late discovering these new features, but when I eventually get around to using them, I'm quite impressed.
I recently tried AI Denoise for the first time on April 28th. It smoothed and darkened background sky and sharpened star images. The first image below shows the effect. It's a 10-minute exposure of globular cluster M107 in Ophiuchus. (Enlarge all images for the best view.)
Here's a GIF animation to show the effect of AI Denoise on the noisy original M107 image. Notice how cluster stars become sharper. (I also used Photoshop to adjust background darkness.)
Next, close interacting galaxy pair NGC4490 and NGC4485 in Canes Venatici are nicely visible in the following 60-minute exposure. AI Denoise brought out detail in distorted spiral NGC4490 on the right. The two galaxies are separated by about 3.5 arc minutes.
Here's another animated GIF to illustrate how AI Denoise improved the Hickson 44 image.
After seeing these initial results I anticipated applying AI Denoise to many other Seestar images taken over the past year. Unfortunately, this turned out to be impossible because I had deleted the original FITS files from my laptop and Seestar itself. AI Denoise needs access to original stacked FITS files in order to carry out its magic.
The M107 image above adds one more to my Messier collection bringing the total number captured to 103. Only 7 more to go!
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