Why are my OSC FITS files being saved as greyscale using SGP?

Captured 4 hours of data at my dark site last night and realized this am that all of the images are saved as greyscale. Anyone else experience this? What am I doing wrong?

should mention I am using SBIG STF-8300C

They are not greyscale, they’re Bayered. You’ll need to use a processing application to de-Bayer the images.

Thanks,
Jared

I am coming from Nebulosity which saves images as RGB automatically. So I have to have another program beyond SGP (it doesn’t have this capability?)? Any suggestions on software to use?

SGP and Nebulosity actually save in the same format. Nebulosity just displays them in a debayered format, SGP does not.

Our philosophy with SGP is to only do image capture and no processing. You can continue to use whatever application you were previously using for processing (sounds like maybe Nebulosity). As for recommendations PixInsight is excellent and probably what most folks here use. There is a rather steep learning curve though but it does and excellent job.

Thanks,
Jared

So–I am trying to transition from DSLR and BYE, DSS and PS5 to a CCD and SGP, DSS and PS5 (hopefully). I have used Nebulosity only a little bit as I have started imaging with a CCD (trying to decide which acquisition software package is for me).
I hear great things about PI, and might be willing to buy it and learn it eventually, but would like to try to stick with DSS and PS5 for stacking and processing to minimize the pain of transitioning to a CCD. (I don’t want to learn new acquisition software AND processing software at the same time).
With that as context, where does the debayering process happen? Deep Sky Stacker identifies the SGP FITS files as 16 bit grey scale and outputs a grey scale image after stacking. Also, I like to evaluate my images as I am acquiring, including color. Is there no way to do this in SGP?
Thanks for all of your help!
Casey

Debayering should be done by DSS as part of the stacking. From their FAQ:

[quote]
My FITS files were create by a color CCD camera and I see only B&W images.
Your FITS files are using a bayer matrix (like a DSLR). To decode the colors correctly DeepSkyStacker must know which kind of Bayer matrix is used by your camera…
You can use the FITS tab of the RAW/FITS DDP settings dialog to tell DeepSkyStacker which Bayer matrix must be used. Most of the time you will just have to select your CCD camera from the list.[/quote]

http://deepskystacker.free.fr/english/userguide.htm#rawddp

Hope that helps.
Jared

I should also mention that you should never using binning with a OSC camera as it will effectively “disable” the bayer matrix and you will get no color no matter what you do. Everything should be shot at 1x1. If you zoom in on the greyscale image you should see something like a screen door effect. This is the bayer matrix.

Thanks,
Jared

Thanks Jared! I have color images now after stacking!!
I appreciate the simplicity of SGP and the desire to make it an acquisition only program. But I would love to see a way to analyze (not process, per se) my images better within SGP (including color). Sitting at the computer for 5 hours at a dark site can be boring stuff. And the one thing I really want to do during that time is inspect my images as they come in to catch anything that might be an image-killer.
Thanks for your help,
Casey