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Mars 22/04 from Bembridge

SnakeyJ

By SnakeyJ
in Imaging - Planetary

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SnakeyJ

SnakeyJ

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Pretty good seeing tonight, though with high humidity and some intermittent transparency - but rather better than predicted and good to get out after the holiday weekend was washed out.

A quick Mars RGB derotation in WJ, from 1400 of 8000 frames per channel at 3.8m with the Expl 200P and QHY5L-IIM and an ROI of 320x240.

post-26731-0-39009400-1398206508_thumb.p

Red and green channels were pretty reasonable, though blue was rather sketchy and detracts from the combination as a whole - but overall quite pleased to get something despite the cloud/haze ;)

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SnakeyJ

SnakeyJ

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Some very nice detail in this image Jake. probably you're best so far ?

Thanks Martin - certainly one of the best, though I might have another play with my data from the 11th and 16th of April, which I think may have better data on the blue channel.   Would be nice to get one nice clear stable night to try pushing the focal length a little further now I've managed to get the frame rates up for red and green channel.    Must get strip and check my revelation x5 barlow and see if I can resolve the reflection issues.

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leelee970

leelee970

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Very nice Jake, glad to see you've been out.

I've just got hold of a QHY5 II, spending all my time upgrading the laptop and trying to get it to work. (which it does using the supplied QHY software).

I'm looking to use it with some other software, what do you use? and what approx settings. (I've been using WXastrocapture for too long and it will not control the QHY5 too much).

Lee

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Andy Milner

Andy Milner

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I've just recieved a QHY5L-II from Bernard at Modern Astronomy. Looking forward to testing mine when the weather cheers up. I'm also Interested in any tips to get started... I think I will stick with Sharpcap 2, asbot sure in the Ez planetary capture software.

Andy.

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SnakeyJ

SnakeyJ

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Very nice Jake, glad to see you've been out.

I've just got hold of a QHY5 II, spending all my time upgrading the laptop and trying to get it to work. (which it does using the supplied QHY software).

I'm looking to use it with some other software, what do you use? and what approx settings. (I've been using WXastrocapture for too long and it will not control the QHY5 too much).

Lee

Hi Lee and thanks - I'll be sorry to see that SPC retired and hope it still gets the occasional outing, but no doubts that the QHY5L-II will be a massive upgrade.   Did you plump for the OSC or Mono version?

I use the Firecapture 2.3 beta software, currently 2.3.0.20.    And the QHY ver 13-1-17 high compatibility driver from http://qhyccd.com/en/top/download/

For Mars I'm currently shooting Lum data at 200FPS on and ROI of 320x240 @ 3.8m F19 with my Exp 200P.   Gain is typically 150 and exposure around 8ms.     Red drops to 145FPS @ 300 gain and 14ms, Green 135FPS @ 300 gain and 14ms and Blue around 100FPS @ 350 gain and 17ms - aiming for a 70% histogram.     Though transparency can have quite an effect on these figures - I'll try and post some log files later.    I always record in 8bit SER format, which seems to be fast and efficient, though uses lots of space - mitigated by running everything through PIPP to centre and sort the best 25% by quality.    Typically I'm aiming for 8000 frames/channel.

The FC session browser is very useful indeed and I'm looking to purchase a Xagyl filter wheel this month to increase the degree of automation.   I went for the Baader LRGB CCD filters, which is probably a little overkill for planetary but having them near to parfocal at these f/ls is a big advantage!

If you've got the QHY5L-IIC, I've no experience on best settings - though the consensus seems to be record in raw format and do the debayering in PIPP at the end of the session.

Capturing in SER or RAW uses lots of disk space and a good night could easily run to 80GB plus - 150GB of free space is probably a sensible minimum to work with.

Hope this helps and look forward to seeing your first light results.

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SnakeyJ

SnakeyJ

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I've just recieved a QHY5L-II from Bernard at Modern Astronomy. Looking forward to testing mine when the weather cheers up. I'm also Interested in any tips to get started... I think I will stick with Sharpcap 2, asbot sure in the Ez planetary capture software.

Andy.

Sharpcap is also highly recommended and is widely touted to use less resource, running better than Firecapture on older hardware - I had only a very brief look at this in 2012, but switched over to FC after getting the Pt Grey Firefly!   I've not had any issues with FC on three older second hand laptops, though all were dual core with Win7 x64 and at least 4GB of RAM.    Personally I think the disk IO is probably the most important spec.

Bernard must be loving all the qhy5s being purchased recently, there's been a fair few.

I got mine last week but yet to try it out.

Good product and Bernard's service is excellent!   Hope the first light goes well and look forward to seeing some pictures up soon.

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Andy Milner

Andy Milner

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I will try FC as I'm hearing nice things. I am using a laptop with an i5 and a SSD hard drive do I think the performance is fine. Fingers crossed the fps will be good. I have the colour so will it be the same fps as the mono? Was trying it out indoors and I think the highest fps reported in sharpcap was 130 and in EZPlanetary was 109 fps at lowest ROI.

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SnakeyJ

SnakeyJ

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I will try FC as I'm hearing nice things. I am using a laptop with an i5 and a SSD hard drive do I think the performance is fine. Fingers crossed the fps will be good. I have the colour so will it be the same fps as the mono? Was trying it out indoors and I think the highest fps reported in sharpcap was 130 and in EZPlanetary was 109 fps at lowest ROI.

Good luck with this Andy - your laptop should fly with this and it will be interesting to hear how you get on with FC and frame rates.    Whilst I've no direct experience with the QHY5L-IIC, I think it will be well worth experimenting with the capture formats to get the optimum frame rates on brighter targets.   130FPS from Sharpcap sounds very encouraging and would give a very useful 8000 frames/minute.

Nice work Jake loads of detail. I like :)

Thanks Felix - hopefully with good conditions and better control on the blue channel I can push this a little further and improve overall resolution, but definitely in the right ball park for 8" at these elevations.    Your image from 15th April yields very similar levels of detail with the ASI120MC - out of interest what sort of frame rates where you getting from the colour sensor?

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