CraigT82

In AS3 if you leave the 'sharpened' box ticked it will output two images... one raw stack and one which has been sharpened a bit: the _conv file. The conv files can be useful to quickly assess the quality of the stacks if you have lots of them to flick through. But usually the raw stack file is best to continue on the processing

Yeah was looking good for next week here, but forecast has changed and looking pretty rainy now. Did you use your ADC for this one or leave it off?

Fantastic work Neil! 👍👍👍

I downloaded your AVI and had a go at processing, this is what I got out of it... It's a really nice result for your first attempt, well done! What I did was: 1) Stacked in AS3. I used the auto placement of alignment points function. It looked like this... I then opened the image in Astrosurface and used the RGB align function, the auto white balance function and increased brightness/saturation slightly. Then I applied wavelet sharpening using both a low frequency and high frequency sliders. Exported as PNG.

That's a nice image, plenty of detail to see there. First thing I notice is the blue fringe at the top of the planet and the red fringe at the bottom. This is the classic symptom of atmospheric dispersion. You can tackle this somewhat by realigning the red and blue channels to match the green (use the RGB align function in registax to do this for you). An atmospheric dispersion corrector (ADC) would improve things even more so worth considering if you're going to get into this. I'd probably boost the colour saturation a bit just to give it a bit more visual impact. Focus may have been a little off. It is difficult to nail focus right off the bat and it takes practice so don't feel bad about that, it will come with practice. Poor seeing does make it hard to focus too. Other than that there's not much wrong with it tbh. Try to capture more frames and have a go with winjupos.

Nice work! Have you done any sharpening at all? The wavelets in registax work wonders

Haha my thoughts exactly!

Skyvision in France offer a convertible Cassegrain (f/16)/Newtonian (f/4). Range starts at 10" and goes up to 20". https://skyvision.fr/boutique/produits-skyvision/cassegrain-‐-mt/

For what it's worth, Firecapture's UI is customisable so you can set it to show whatever you want...

No that's wrong, you can set it to collect AVI or SER uncompressed files for planetary imaging

And the manufacturing specs given to LP by those placing the orders

I love it and don't use anything else for planetary and lunar capture. I do use sharpcap pro for other things though.

The Altair scopes are also made by Long Perng. So they, the Founder Optics and the StellaMira scopes are likely all made in the same factory.

Very cool! Great detail in the final image too.

Very nice results, would be well pleased with those. Nice to see old scopes doing their stuff still

Have you cropped the dodgy edges from the stacked image? Edit: I.e.stacking artifacts as per newbie alert

That's a good question. I've got that figure by using a method for calculating optimum sampling which is based on having 2 pixels sampling the minimum spatial cut off frequency (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spatial_cutoff_frequency). I recently made a spreadsheet which gives the F ratios required for a given pixel size and wavelength of light, based on this method (attached). BTW this method of calculation is something that I've learned from @vlaiv. As you can see from the link it assumes perfect optics and perfect seeing, so even these focal ratios may be a bit overkill for our slightly imperfect scopes and really imperfect atmosphere! Others will advocate for longer focal ratios and that's absolutely fine, there are a few ways and methods for calculating the ideal sampling for any give scope or camera and everyone is free to decide on which way they think is best. Planetary Imaging Sampling Calculator (2).xlsx

I find the triangle centre spots useful (can get them from FLO - along with a centering template). If you orientate the mirror so that each corner of the triangle points to a collimation bolt, the primary collimation with a cheshire becomes really quick and easy. Especially if you have a little note on the tube that reads "tightening bolt pushes dot away" or something like that, the dot being the reflection of the Cheshire's peephole. Then just by looking through the Cheshire you can immediately judge which bolt to turn and which way to turn it.

This isn't quite right. Loosening the centre screw moves the secondary towards the primary and the three adjusters will then need tighetning. Tightening the centre screw moves the secondary away from the primary and the three adjusters will need loosening. However the OP will certainly need to loosen the three adjusters a tad before the centre screws can be adjusted. Put a clean (new) microfiber cloth around the mirror and grab hold of it to prevent too much turning force bending the vanes out of shape.

Great Post 👍 Never seen pixels under a microscope before, they don't look like I expected

Wonderful image, full of life and sparkle!

Excellent Peter, the top one is sharp as a tackle and you can just about see the latest outbreak to the lower right of the GRS in the 23.45 image.

Nope... amazing images can be produced with any sized pixels, as long as they are appropriate to the focal ratio used!

It is this one... https://www.modernastronomy.com/shop/cameras/lunar-planetary/qhy-lunar-planetary/qhy5iii462c-planetary-and-nir-imaging-camera/ I use the qhy version because the shape of it allows a bit more inwards focus travel which is useful when used with newtonians. The body of the camera can be slid down right into the focuser to get the sensor further in to reach focus. With an SCT though you won't have any inwards focus issues as you've got loads of focus travel.

Wow! Well worth a good look at full res. So much detail, and an almost 3D effect. Absolutely stunning 👍