CraigT82

Nice images, some lovely sharp detail on Jupiter. Not sure where you're located but if the planets are very low in the sky for you the and ADC should yield some improvements, it isn't a magic bullet though, practice is the best way to get better images (that applies to processing as well as capture!)

Nice image some defined cloud belts on show 👍

You need a mirror with a centre spot (donut) to use a cheshire eyepiece, and with a big hole in middle of the mirror there is nowhere to put one!

Derotation looks nicer there, well worth the effort

Good choice! I don't think you'll be disappointed. I had a 150 mak a few years ago and it really hits a sweet spot of capability and usability.

Just had to share this here as it is probably the most beautiful amateur Jupiter image I've ever seen... https://www.astrobin.com/vkp28l/B/

Very nice image, nice work👍

This is intriguing... what are these non-astro uses??

Very nice looking chair Piero. Your fabrication skills are really something, love the re-use of offcuts from the dob build too. Bit disappointed not to see dovetails on the bookcase though!😉

That H130p focuser mod actually worked really well - which is most unusual for one of my hairbrained ideas! I dragged that scope with me for three weeks around South America on a trip a couple of years ago and never got to use it, mostly because I was so ill with the South American version of Delhi belly to be motivated to go out at night, but also when I was finally feeling better in the last 4 days of the trip I we were in a major city with worse light pollution than I've got at home 🙄 Eventually the focuser got pulled off and fitted to a bigger dob which has now been sold on so the humble little H130p is back to its original focuser format, which isn't that bad really once you get used to it. The virtuoso kit linked to in the OP looks really smart. That's a whole lot of astro capability for 400 quid.

Congrats on the milestone John, I'd send you a card but your wife might find that a bit weird 😂

Very nice Simon. The thing I like about planetary imaging is you can take an image from raw to fully processed in no time at all so given them another go is no chore at all (not like dso imaging!)

Wonderful captures, I agree with the others... loads of detail anyway but especially for 8" aperture. Definitely worth spending some time getting the frames of the animation normalised. Great work 👍👍👍

The Az adjustment looks nice and smooth in your video. I wonder if Teflon pads would help it out it if got stiff under the full load? Do you have a method for locking out the car jack once the Alt is set? I would be a little concerned about it creeping down but I guess the weight acting on it will be a fraction of what it is designed for so maybe no issue there after all.

Hi and welcome to the forum. You can't capture southern hemisphere objects from the northern hemisphere, not unless you travel to the southern hemisphere with all your kit. There are quite a few deep sky objects that are close to the celestial equator and are visible to observers in both hemispheres. If you can find a planetarium app for your device (I use skysafari) you will be able to input your location and it will show you the night sky visible you.

Based on the spatial frequency cut-off method of calculating the correct sampling posted by @vlaiv, here is a spreadsheet of F ratios per colour and pixel size. Planetary Imaging Sampling Calculator.xlsx

In you opinion Vlaiv, when using an OSC camera, is it better to sample blue correctly and over sample green and red? Or would you aim for correctly sampled green and under sample blue/over sample red. I guess that as blue is usually quite poor anyway, being effected more by seeing, it won't matter if its undersampled a little... And so it's better to aim for a correctly sampled green or even red?

A fine result, the shades of colour on the globe are outatanding!

Very nice shots with the eye staring right back at us 👁 I often find a bit of haze in the sky can indicate good seeing conditions

Just thinking about it some more... winjupos shouldn't really care what the time of the capture is, what matters is the time lapsed from one capture to the next, as this will determine how far it needs to derorate the frame to match the reference frame (the middle one). As long as the measurement frame is accurately placed around the globe, (which let's WJ align the images to be stacked) and the timestamps of the individual tiffs loaded in are representative of the actual time lapsed between capturing them, then the time and date could be wrong and it should still work??

Not a bad situation to be in tbh! 😄

I wonder if your compute clock is slightly out? Have you synced it recently? if not then I guess an alignment issue may arise in Autostakkert if the timestamp of the output tiff doesn't match the time of the reference frame it used for the stack? I.e. if AS decides to use a frame near the beginning as the reference frame and the outputted tiff has the midpoint of capture time that could make the moons not line up properly in WJ? Might go and do some testing on existing Jupiter data to see what happens.

My choice would probably be a used SW ED120. Yes it's quite long for the EQ5 but with an RA motor and one of the cheap SW motor focusers you won't need to touch it at all whilst observing and so no issues with vibration.

Nice work Pete, obvious improvements in the derotated image. As Neil says play around with the LD value to control the bright limb if it appears in the final

Fantastic image.