Hi, I am new to deep sky Astro and am trying to process Andromeda shots in Siril. I used a Canon R5 with 70-200 f2.8. @ 200mm. I followed Astrobackyard and took 1000 lights, 50 flats, 50 darks and 75 bias frames. My problem is, following the instructions to the letter as far as I can see, that the photos will not stack. There is quite a lot of activity in the panel on the right hand side for several minutes then it stops and simply says at the bottom ‘script execution failed’. I don’t think I’m doing anything wrong. Any ideas?
Welcome! Above the script execution failed message will be the reason for its failure. Please look at the text from the end until you see an error message, I you don’t find it, copy the last 30 lines or so, we should be able to understand.
Hi Vincent,
See lines below as requested. Although I think I can see the reason why!
11:41:50: Filter pattern: RGGB
11:41:50: Saving FITS: file …/process\light_00990.fit, 1 layer(s), 8191x5463 pixels
11:41:50: Saving FITS: file …/process\light_00992.fit, 1 layer(s), 8191x5463 pixels
11:41:50: Saving FITS: file …/process\light_00991.fit, 1 layer(s), 8191x5463 pixels
11:41:50: Saving FITS: file …/process\light_00993.fit, 1 layer(s), 8191x5463 pixels
11:41:50: Saving FITS: file …/process\light_00989.fit, 1 layer(s), 8191x5463 pixels
11:41:50: Reading RAW: file C20A2791.CR3, 1 layer(s), 8191x5463 pixels
11:41:50: Decoding Canon EOS R5 file (ISO=3200, Exposure=1.0 sec)
11:41:50: Filter pattern: RGGB
11:41:50: Decoding Canon EOS R5 file (ISO=3200, Exposure=1.0 sec)
11:41:50: Filter pattern: RGGB
11:41:51: Saving FITS: file …/process\light_00994.fit, 1 layer(s), 8191x5463 pixels
11:41:51: Decoding Canon EOS R5 file (ISO=3200, Exposure=1.0 sec)
11:41:51: Filter pattern: RGGB
11:41:51: Saving FITS: file …/process\light_00995.fit, 1 layer(s), 8191x5463 pixels
11:41:51: Reading RAW: file C20A2792.CR3, 1 layer(s), 8191x5463 pixels
11:41:51: Reading RAW: file C20A2793.CR3, 1 layer(s), 8191x5463 pixels
11:41:51: Reading RAW: file C20A2794.CR3, 1 layer(s), 8191x5463 pixels
11:41:51: Saving FITS: file …/process\light_00996.fit, 1 layer(s), 8191x5463 pixels
11:41:51: Saving FITS: file …/process\light_00997.fit, 1 layer(s), 8191x5463 pixels
11:41:51: Saving FITS: file …/process\light_00998.fit, 1 layer(s), 8191x5463 pixels
11:41:51: Saving FITS: file …/process\light_00999.fit, 1 layer(s), 8191x5463 pixels
11:41:51: Decoding Canon EOS R5 file (ISO=3200, Exposure=1.0 sec)
11:41:51: Filter pattern: RGGB
11:41:51: Reading RAW: file C20A2795.CR3, 1 layer(s), 8191x5463 pixels
11:41:51: Saving FITS: file …/process\light_01000.fit, 1 layer(s), 8191x5463 pixels
11:41:51: Conversion succeeded, 1000 file(s) created for 1000 input file(s) (1000 image(s) converted, 0 failed)
11:41:51: Running command: cd
11:41:51: Setting CWD (Current Working Directory) to ‘C:\Users\J Oliver\Pictures\process’
11:41:51: # Pre-process Light Frames
11:41:51: Running command: preprocess
11:41:55: Reading FITS: file dark_stacked, 1 layer(s), 8191x5463 pixels
11:41:55: Reading FITS: file pp_flat_stacked, 1 layer(s), 8191x5463 pixels
11:41:55: Preprocessing…
11:41:55: Preprocessing: with the current memory and thread limits, up to 16 thread(s) can be used
11:41:56: Normalisation value auto evaluated: 0.021
11:41:56: 221447 corrected pixels (0 + 221447)
11:41:56: Not enough free disk space to perform this operation: 219.5 GiB available for 500.1 GiB needed (missing 280.6 GiB)
11:41:56: Setting CWD (Current Working Directory) to ‘C:\Users\J Oliver\Pictures’
11:41:56: Script execution failed.
I hope you can, it’s quite clear 
To process 1000 images you need a larger disk.
Thanks, Ys I can. Can’t understand why I didn’t see that before! Not sure if I can make that much space in my C drive. Just checked, it’s only 500GB in total. I have a 1TB internal drive as well for storage - could that be used?
if it’s a rotating disk, I would discourage it, but if you have no other choice it will still work.
Hi Vincent,
The 1 tb drive is also SSD. I’ve asked my computer shop about installing a bigger system disc which is probably the best way forward. The PC’s only 2 years old and was bought with space for expansion so there will be room to add a drive. I guess I could save all this hassle if I used a tracker and took longer but fewer photos in the first place? Thanks for your help.
then the 1TB drive would be perfect, if most of it is free, why don’t use it?
I don’t know what would be the ideal exposure for this camera and lens, it depends what you want to do and the sky quality too, but small disks and short exposures are generally not a good combo.
Hi, I’m clearing that drive out now and will try it out with Siril later on. The 1000 lights were taken at f2.8, ISO 3200 and 1 sec exposures. I have stacked them in DSS and to be honest there’s not a lot to stretch according to the histogram. There’s almost no gap on the black side, then a slight, thin, peak and a scattering of data to the right. I’ll keep trying different things and see if I can get better results. I have managed to get something that looked like Andromeda but it was very noisy. It was my first attempt and in a class 5 area so I can’t really complain I guess.
If you have a tracking that allows you to make longer exposure, I’d suggest going to at least 10s to get more signal and 10 times less disk space
Thanks again, I’ll give it a try as soon as I can.
Hi Vincent, I moved everything out of my 1 tb SSD disc and located the files there in the folders, biases, flats, lights and darks. I have told Siril to look in there for them and it does. I’m still getting same lack of space message though when the script execution fails so Siril must be looking for more space in the C drive? Is that you’re understanding of my issue too?
I should have thought about it, the 500 GB needed warning you had before was only for calibration of the light images. Another 500GB is needed for the registered images… There is one way to avoid creating registered images: not using rotation during registration. If images are only translated, they can be stacked by shifting them in memory during stacking. But if you have field rotation or a bad tracking it will not produce a good result.
You could use compression in Siril to save a lot of disk space.