Because the file sizes for Astrophotography can get insanely big. So what you see here are really, really shrunk down to the 20 megs allowed.
Suffices to say, good job Brian!

When I downloaded it I thought Oh! What happened here?
Then I clicked on it to open it up and it's really beautiful!
Great framing, too!

Must be turning cold there by now. Poor puppies.
You're up there under the droopy part of the witches mammary.
I remember a -38° cold snap my first fall in Wyoming, it was mid November. My face burned running from the crew car to the front door.
I wondered what frozen hell I'd moved to.

Thanks for posting that, Brian.

Beautiful Marc!
I'm going to see if I can get in on that action. At least see how it frames up.

I keep looking up at Orion when I go out to do my flats @ 05:00-05;30ish. Stellarium has it (M42) good at around 23:30 ish to dawn for my spot on the globe.

I'm always up for some fresh ideas. Even if they are old targets, my equipment has changed. (for the better)

Got the T7 and sent back the defuncted one yesterday.
Had to contact Samsung support, but got the same tech as before.
Yashiro helped me get it working really quick. No fooling in the Bios this time.
I even transferred my folders and files from the SanDisk drive, so back to normal.

Last night was clouded again, so no soup for me.
But watch out tonight. I'll be sucking down the photons.

OK, back to class on PixInsight.

My last night was cloudy.
But tonight shoud be good.
My Samsung T7 Shield is fubar. So working on who to send it to.
Samsung wants my life history. So I sent a message to the vendor.
Wow, got right back to me, sending a replacement with a pre-paid shipping lable. They say they have never had a T7 have a problem.
Thank goodness I have a perfectly working San Disc drive as a back-up. (Snark, snark.)
I guess our Indian Summer is giving way to winter skies now. Poop.
I went out to collect flats the other day and saw my old buddy Orion is back.
Was/is about mid way between the Southern meridian and the Western meridian. Hanging up there at 05:00 taunting me.
Yeah, slowly worming my way into PixInsight. But it is like trying to learn a forgien languish.
I never liked symbolisom. I always liked word icons. But I'm getting there in my slow way.
It would be nice if a user could customize the menu icons.
Whah!

The way I'm going, I probably have years of processing ahead of me now.

But I'm still gathering. It's addictive.

Glad you got to get out and gather.

Something from my career in industrial electrical work. Everything was plumb and level. Motor shafts and pump shafts were lined up to the .0001ths of an inch. (1/10,000 of an inch)
Anyway, when i got into this insanity, i figured if the mount was as plumb to the earth as possible, it would stick straight out towards space.
I got banned from that English site for arguing my point with one of the admins buddies.
Say La Vey.
Anyway, plumb and level! It's the American Way!
(OK. It's my way anyway.)

For all the same reasons you said, Ronnie.

My first scope came with a Crayford focuser. In automating that type of focuser, I discovered it had no repeat accuracy. It would slip.
So one of my requirements for my next telescope was a geared focuser.
Now, when it steps, it is accurate. And backlash can be easily accounted for. (But I use HDR for better focusing accuracies)

This might begin to get me where I'm trying to go:
https://youtu.be/OI-7fr4Vt7c?si=6jLYGQw-FHthlhDj

Going to try and get a grip on this yet! Why PixInsight is so darned far from normal is beyond me. (IE: Shade = minimize. And forty dozen picture symbols to the functions. Who thought this up and why is it so far removed from the norm? Probably Linex or Apple users.)

So last night was funky and cloudy, no picturds.
But no problem I have piles of files. Many have narrowband and LRGB in 2 night scenarios.
As soon as I can generate a color image from my data, I'll share it for critique. It need not be pretty for me. I have no shame.

I'm finally peeking through the doorway to processing.
Hopefully I can step over the threshold.
Well, crawl over at my snails pace...

Have you bought into the Xterminators? Blur, Noise, and Star, from Russel Croman?
Geese, just bought into PixInsight, and get hit with more to buy?
I think I'll hold off a bit.

Yeah, I'm beginning to learn about scripts. Boy, it sure seems like they did as thoroughly a job as they could to cover things few would need. Good Grief!
Yeah, there has to be a lot of things that can work without making any more. I just have to ferret them out and experiment. I need to drag and drop a few triangles.

My collecting is rather simplified. I had to learn to Post Process with time back when I started. So I'd take longer and longer exposures to get a semblance of something I could see. I still use time to refine my images, and I'm using 180 seconds as my setting currently because it gives me the detail I'm looking for in the collection of a particular object. I don't split hairs, I just use my "Kentucky Windage" without further calculating.
If I can see what it is, I just run the batch. (I was using 300 seconds. But dropped back to 180 seconds and gained a lot of detail because the bright stuff wasn't blown out.
Usually narrowband one night, then the LRGB to next, for example.
Same with my sensor temperatures, currently -15° C, and staying there as a constant.

I have templates in NINA I typically work from, so most of it is set-up before I begin and I only fine tune the filters or time. Same with dithering, currently at dither every 5 images, it seems to be a working median for me.
I use Stellarium as my Planetarium Program, pick an object and import it to the template, Save it as (Name) and let the program roll. Call it Lazy Automation. Then I casually monitor the collection, storage, and time to Meridian Flip, which has been working fully automatic for a while now since I got settings that work with my mount.

I don't know if you use YouTube videos to pick-up tricks and tips from, but I offer these I am finding are helping me on this new quest of colorizing my images.
I continue the crusade to learn to use my equipment.

Adam Block - He is a Guru with PixInsight. Rather monotone, he is brilliant with PixInsight. But like most, he moves very fast and you don't see what goes on off screen. But I stop, rewind, and pause to study the buttons being displayed and pushed. I have to "get" what is being shown, then learn by repetition of my own.
PixInsight is going to be impossible for me to learn much of what it is capable of. But I knew nothing when I started out and now know... oh a couple anyway.

But Peter Zelinka is more to my learning skills level. Smaller bytes, slower presentation, and it's more for "Dummies like me."

Oh, what a world, what a world!

Something that throws me is Adam Block refers to screens I do not see on my copy of PixInsight. And I cannot find. My copy is Up to date, but not showing things like the color picker, which would likely be my doorway to progress in colorizing my images.
Maybe if I boldly go where no Dummies dare to tread, the PixInsight forums.
I was always the one to asked the questions others would not. Once I've pulled the instructor down to my level, we could both rise with a greater knowledge.
I was never one who remained silent. Even if others thought me to be an idiot. Sometimes I even got a "Good Question!" in response.
Often I would take an engineers canteen and drink as much knowledge from them as I could. Made them feel good, and quenched my thirst for their knowledge.
Sometimes I'm the devil in disguise.

Thank you for sharing your hard won knowledge with me. It is much appreciated!

Onward through the fog, and clouds....

So, for example, bias and dark frames might be scripted since they don't really change in my normal shooting?
(IE: I typically use 30 second Darks, and .001 second exposures for bias. And i have a dark filter in the EFW that I use for that in NINA. 20 each. It has worked well.)

Make sense?

I see scripts in AP the same way I used to see macros in word programs.
It does several steps with a single click. Kinda deal.
Or do i need to revise my thinking?

Trying to find all these setting and initiate them.

Will PixInsight remember all these for the next time it's opened?

I like that even better now. To me it looks even more natural.
I went ahead and joined the ranks today. I might be the newest PixInsight user you know.
I was watching some "PixInsight for Dummies (like me)" this afternoon. But it made me drowsey. So I just woke up from a nap.

It appears quite complicated, but I think that I can eventually start getting some color into my picturds.
One thing is that the ASI files already store in the way PixInsight wants them (recognises them). Bias, Flats, Darks, Lights.

I think I might do my stacking outside of PixInsight. Because apparently PixInsight takes a laboriously long time stacking.

But i finally can dump my 2012 Photoshop Elements 12, I think.
Did I mention I evolve like Gibraltar?

🙄

Beautiful Ballard!
So... I recon I need to get Pixinsight.

I can understand why they weren't aligned to each other, I had them in the ASI .fits storage format and took the individual R, G, B, and L files, and the R, G, B, and L flats, with the bias and darks, and stacked each color channel to itself with no reference to the other color files.
So what I need to do is save each color channel separately (R. G. B. L.) then stack each one to it's channel. Then color them R,G,B,L. Then stack them to each other to get them aligned? And wa-la.

Will Pixinsight help guide a new user along to accomplish the steps? I guess I need to do the 45 day trial and see if I can use it before I buy into it.