Zoom, zoom...

2025/02/14. In this computer is a somewhat long-in-the-tooth Nvidia GeForce GTX 960 graphics card. Here's more than I know about it:

"The GeForce GTX 960 was a performance-segment graphics card by NVIDIA, launched on January 22nd, 2015. Built on the 28 nm process, and based on the GM206 graphics processor, in its GM206-300-A1 variant, the card supports DirectX 12. This ensures that all modern games will run on GeForce GTX 960. The GM206 graphics processor is an average sized chip with a die area of 228 mm² and 2,940 million transistors. It features 1024 shading units, 64 texture mapping units, and 32 ROPs. NVIDIA has paired 2,048 MB GDDR5 memory with the GeForce GTX 960, which are connected using a 128-bit memory interface. The GPU is operating at a frequency of 1127 MHz, which can be boosted up to 1178 MHz, memory is running at 1753 MHz (7 Gbps effective). " from www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/geforce-gtx-960.c2637

I mention that because I have just now figured out that the card can indeed run Nvidia's CUDA toolkit which will let its GPUs offload some processing from my computer's nice-enough hexacore i7 CPU. After fiddling with this and that and mostly following Russell Cronan's instructions, RC-Astro's BlurX and NoiseX each run against a full ASI1600MC image in about 50 seconds rather than 3-4 minutes. That doesn't sound like a lot, but it's enough to encourage quite a bit of experimentation, to decide between this and that, and then refine the results (especially when combined with the just-discovered ability of PixInsight to preview small portions of an image -- 'doh!). Basically, it's the same level of acceleration I could otherwise achieve by spending a few thousand bucks.

Here, for example, is Sharpless2-308 in Canis Major, cranked out in half an hour or so from data refined from a stack of 60, 180-second exposures (see last month's show and tell).

105mm F1.4 Sigma at F1.4
60x180s, Gain 300, -15C, Svbony Duoband filter, dark calibrated
SWSA. Worth enlarging.

Maybe I've misplaced some H-a, especially in the lower left, but overall, the use of BlurX, Starnet2, NoiseX, and PixInsight's more "ordinary" tools produced what I think is a much improved version. So... let's look back at a version from several days ago, steal its red channel, and put some of that H-a back:

105mm F1.4 Sigma at F1.4
60x180s, Gain 300, -15C, Svbony Duoband filter, dark calibrated
SWSA. Still worth enlarging.

Next up: get the guide 'scope and camera dialed in so the 400mm F2.8 will be ready for less moony nights.

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