One Last Image; Winter Hobby Time: Watchmaking Resumes

I did manage to collect RGB frames to go with the luminance I had for the California nebula. You may recall earlier this year I had a miscue with NINA and spent a night collecting only L frames. I had three targets in mind, M31, the California Nebula, and M42. Now two of those are completed; M42 will have to wait.

Here is a scale version as preview; you can see the full scale version at its AstroBin page.

I think it turned out very well! Over the winter I'll probably reprocess it to apply some deconvolution and masked sharpening.

One thing I was initially skeptical of concerning PixInsight was how well it would stretch images. Pre-PixInsight I used Photoshop for this by doing iterative applications of Curves and Levels. I appreciated the way Curves gave me fine control over the shape of the stretch and I was afraid PI would be too coarse.

What I've found is that PI's Histrogram transformation is really quite effective for stretching when used to mimic the iterative application of PS's Curves and Levels. It seems particularly good at avoiding harsh edges on nebulae. (Note that I don't start with the PI's STF, I begin iterating with the linear image. And I do use PI's CurveTransformation after the initial stretch.) 

Once I become more adept at masking in PI, it's likely I'll drop the use of PS entirely.

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I'm a cold weather wimp, particularly when it comes to imaging. As much as I'd like to continue imaging right through the winter months I've come to realize I simply don't enjoy it. It might be different if I had my own observatory, but that's not possible at this time--there are too many trees and too much light pollution. Therefore I've switched to my new winter hobby as of last year: watchmaking. 

Technically, it's more like watch servicing or salvaging. Some (perhaps most) of the mechanical pocket or wrist watches you find don't run well if at all. For many of these it's simply because they've never been serviced or their last service was decades ago. Even if the watch has been kept clean and dry internally solidified lubricating oil can provide enough resistance to disable a watch. 

It's sometimes possible to rejuvenate these old watches with a good cleaning and re-oiling. That's where I come in. What I've been doing is finding watches on Ebay to work on. Last year I mainly disassembled and reassembled older non-working pocket watches to learn the basic process. This year I've obtained some working examples that run, if only somewhat, and will see if I can tune them up to run halfway well.

I'm taking a short class from a local watch repair shop in January, and slowly building up my gear. Last year I purchased the basics; this year I've added proper oils and a device called a timegrapher. Timegraphers assess mechanical watch performance so that I will have an objective measure of any improvement my servicing provides.

I'm currently working on a Waltham model 1890 that was made in that year. Yes, it's 132 years old. It works, but poorly. I'll have more about it in my next post.