CraigT82

A fine image from a 6” mak. Cracking scopes they are.

Why do you measure the disc diagonally like that? I’ve always done it across the equator as I assumed it was equatorial diameter that was given for Jupiter’s apparent size in arc seconds but I may be wrong. Jupiter is quite strongly oblate so it may make a difference?

The closer the object you’re trying to view the further out the focuser will be when it is focused. So you just need to figure out the minimum distance to the object that you will be able to focus on with your existing focuser travel. There is a calculation on here somewhere that @vlaiv posted not long ago. With my old 200p f/6 I could just about focus on a fence which was about 60m away but I had to partially pull out the adapter and eyepiece to get it

I used the APM 2.7x barlow extensively and loved it, performed well in my variety of newts but I admit I never used it at anything less than 2.7x, usually a touch more. You can buy just the lens cell rather than the whole thing if you don’t need the nosepiece and body (which are well made but heavy). I think owes it’s coma correcting abilities to it’s long focal length of 62.9mm (I read somewhere than any long FL doublet barlow will correct coma?) Alternative if you want wide field lunar is to capture mosaics, use the small centre portion where image is sharpest and capture a few panes to stitch. The faster frame rates you get with the smaller RoI offset the extra time of shooting multiple panes (to some extent)

Have a look at the currently fitted springs and measure them you can. In particular if you can get a calliper on the wire to see what diameter the wire is that would be useful. Spring strength comes from the amount of metal in the springs, so if you can get new springs with either more fewer coils for a given length, or thicker wire then they will be stronger. You will likely want your new springs to match the overall diameter and length of the originals. If you can’t find ones that will work then buying one longer length of spring and cutting it down would work, but you’d need to dress the cut ends to make them flat.This is what I did with my 300p and I used a blowtorch, pliers and a file to do this. I bought 2mm diameter wire spring which is seriously strong. Edit: Made a mistake, reducing the number of coils increased the spring rate, not increasing

Yeah I’m not sure there should be much difference optically between the Celestron and the Baader, maybe be there is, never had a Celestron Ultima. Probably need back to back testing to reveal if one is optically sharper than the other. I’d have thought the Baader would give you more than 2.25x when screwed into the ADC nose as the distance to the camera is then farther than if using it on the nose of the camera? Mine gives me 3.4x when on the nose of the ADC (measured off the captured image).

Jupiter has more reds/oranges/terracotta in it’s actual colour so you’d expect the red channel to be higher in the histogram than the other two. If you look at mono RGB captures of Jupiter the R is always brighter/lighter than the G or B. So balancing the overall image histogram so that all three channels are equal doesn’t really make sense to me. And who’s to say what the true colour of Jupiter is? Yeah there should be a way of doing it but colours will always be distorted, either by the personal tastes of who’s processing the image, or by other factors such as our atmosphere, telescope optics (eg looking through an eyepiece to get the true colour won’t work as your scope and EP will add their own colour cast and so will our atmosphere, often making things muddy). So what about space telescopes or probes, no atmosphere there so scientific imaging should reveal the true colour balance. Trouble is we very rarely see the truly unmanipulated colour images, we see the processed for the public versions that are almost always fiddled with and will contain the biases of whoever processed them. Take this official release Hubble image for example: look at these two Juno images which are presented side by side on the NASA website, both have different colour processing, I’d be tempted to say the top one is more realistic with the bottom one a colour boosted/adjusted version? Here is another one that shows the white clouds not actually white : What we really need is a Juno or Hubble image that is combined from mono RGB data that hasn’t had any normalisation or colour balancing. Then we would have a reference for what Jupiter really looks like. Perhaps someone who has done their own processing on public Juno/Hubble data could do?

Nice work, not wasted night by any stretch. Have you tried without the paracorr?

I know a couple of people who use these and are happy…. https://tms-astro.webnode.hu/eq-platform/ Based in Hungary so would have to account for fees/duties

I usually shoot 5k frames at a time which at 100 fps is just under a minute. There not really a time limit but as mentioned by Onikinnen the file sizes get huge quickly especially if capturing full sensor size

Very nice images, animation works well too you had some nice steady seeing

Very nice Neil, shows it’s worth getting out there if you can, even if only for one capture. What makes you choose the celestron ultimate barlow over the Baader Q? Just a bit less power?

Did you need more outwards focus or inwards focus? Assuming outwards like with a newt when focusing on close objects so you can use an extension tube or similar

If going with a proper planetary camera you will need to budget for a laptop to run it and store the images. You will need USB3 connections and also SSD storage to get the best from the camera. I use a Lenovo thinkpad which I picked up for around £150 from ebay IIRC.

Nice shot, tons of detail there, la Palma clearly has it’s atmospheric benefits! More frames in the stack would help with the noise, have you tried winjupos at all? It’s a game changer for Jupiter imaging

Because it’s a bmp I think, try jpg or png

Very nice image Geof, It’s slowly climbing higher, 26degs next year. Will probably be the year after before I can get a scope on it though due to trees at the bottom of my garden. Nice to watch the rings closing as you say.

Lovely! Don’t see enough pic is this crater

Very nice, love it at this phase

Haha thanks Alan… It’s usually the case that no matter how many times you pour over the data the first quick process you did is the best!

Here is a middle ground, 50/50 blend of the first two in Gimp And here are first two for reference.

Nice images, loads of surface detail coming through now. As you say the dust storm seems to be shrinking or maybe it’s migrated over to the other side and we will see it in the other hemisphere? The red feature you mention is a plain which contains Candor Chasma, a large part of the Valles Marineris. You can see it well in this one from last opposition:

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Nice work. Mars is a beaut, best I’ve seen so far I think

Thanks Alan appreciate the honesty! I think a 20% stack might be perfect but I can’t face going through the whole process again, might just overlay one on the other in gimp and combine these two