Jupter from this morning

[JohnSadlerAstro]

Hi guys,

Here are some pictures of Jupiter that were taken this morning. I'm wondering whether getting a 3xBarlow to replace the 2xone that I'm using at present will help me capture more detail. Does anyone have any comments/suggestions? One of the images shows Jupiter's moons, with labels. Io is just visible peeping round the planet.

John

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[PeterCPC]

Well done but can't make suggestions without knowing the equipment/method used for capture.

Peter

[MarsG76]

What equpiment did you use, scope and CCD?

[JohnSadlerAstro]

I used:

Telescope: Skywatcher Explorer 130, (130mm aperture, 900mm focal length) with a 2XBarlow.

Camera: Orion StarShoot Solar System Colour Imager 4 (what a mouthful ) webcam, running off Orion AmCap.

The images were stacked and edited in Registax.

Hope that helps?

John

[PeterCPC]

Stacking - I would use AS!2 rather than Registax and then export the result into Registax for wavelet adjustments. You could try a 2X drizzle to get you a bigger image scale.

Capture - It looks to me like the gamma is set too high but I don't use AmCap so I can't be sure. You don't say how many frames were taken but you should take maybe 2000 if your frame rate allows. The images showing the moons are overexposed but I know that you need to do that to see the moons. You could take some images showing the moons and images showing Jupiter not overexposed and blend them together as different layers.

Peter

[Stub Mandrel]

I don't know if your camera has an IR filter, but I got a similar colours that became much better when I added a cheap (~£10) IR filter.

[Pete Presland]

A nice start some decent detail showing, conditions have not been the best recently either. How long are your imaging runs?

[JohnSadlerAstro]

A nice start some decent detail showing, conditions have not been the best recently either. How long are your imaging runs?

I usually take videos of around 1 minute (around 1200 frames) and then limit the stack to about 750 of them. I read somewhere that any longer than that, and the planet would have rotated and the bands, and any detail on them, would blur. I don't know whether that would happen at the magnification I'm using, though. Could I get better shots with more frames?

John

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Your camera has a 3.6 micron pixel size, so something around F/16 is near optimal. You are currently using F/13.85, so you will lose some detail. A 3x Barlow gets up to F/20.77, which is probably better. A 2.5x would get F/17.3, which close to optimal.

[JohnSadlerAstro]

Thanks for the suggestions! I took a look on Telescope House, and they sell a pretty neat looking piece of kit for not too many £££s. http://www.telescopehouse.com/barlows/meade-127-2x-3x-variable-barlow-lens-1-25.html

I guess that would allow me to get the optimal focal length, and I'd be able to change magnification without having to take out the camera, Barlow, etc.

John

[Pete Presland]

I usually take videos of around 1 minute (around 1200 frames) and then limit the stack to about 750 of them. I read somewhere that any longer than that, and the planet would have rotated and the bands, and any detail on them, would blur. I don't know whether that would happen at the magnification I'm using, though. Could I get better shots with more frames?

John

You can at least double your video length time, probably up to 3 minutes would be ok. The important thing is to get the focus as good as possible and keep checking before starting your video.

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