Pedestal Removal
Remove a known residual constant electronic offset without confusing legitimate sky signal, noise, interpolation, or an isolated dark pixel with that offset.
revision 1 · 4 tool pathsNOVA Processing Handbook
A growing process-first reference. 11 methods published now, with explicit sources, equivalence, measurements, and validation history; additional chapters will appear when their evidence is ready.
Processing methods
Subframe Inspection, Scoring, and Culling
Inspect comparable light frames before integration, exclude clearly damaging frames, and preserve as much useful integration time as the evidence supports.
revision 1 · 4 tool pathsRegistration, Alignment, Coverage, and Mosaics
Place eligible exposures on a common sky grid while retaining an honest record of their overlap, so later integration and crop decisions compare like with like.
revision 1 · 4 tool pathsStacking, Integration, Weighting, and Rejection
Combine a declared set of registered exposures so persistent astronomical signal accumulates while normalization, weighting, and pixel-level outlier rejection limit noise and transient defects.
revision 1 · 4 tool pathsCosmetic Correction
Identify and replace isolated defective pixels or very small residual defects without treating stars, compact structure, or ordinary noise as defects.
revision 1 · 4 tool pathsBackground Extraction
Model and remove unwanted large-scale background variation while preserving faint astronomical signal that occupies the same image.
revision 2 · 10 tool pathsColor Calibration
Derive reproducible channel scaling from catalog spectra, the imaging system response, and an explicit white reference instead of balancing color by eye.
revision 1 · 4 tool pathsDeconvolution
Recover spatial detail blurred by seeing and optics on linear data, before stretch makes the blur visually obvious and harder to separate from noise.
revision 1 · 4 tool pathsDenoise
Reduce photon and read noise on linear data before stretch amplifies it, without erasing the faint real structure that lives in the same tonal range as the noise.
revision 1 · 4 tool pathsStar Correction
Correct star shape -- roundness and elongation, including the FWHM inflation denoise introduces -- without sharpening or deblurring the background or nebulosity.
revision 1 · 4 tool pathsStretch
Convert linear data -- where almost all real signal sits near zero and is invisible on a normal display -- into a non-linear image a human can actually see, without crushing the sky, clipping stars, or hiding the shape of the stretch curve's own tradeoffs.
revision 1 · 8 tool paths