CraigT82

Thanks Peter/Jeremy, was definitely worth getting out there. First time imaging mars this year where I had to wear a coat, was omly 4°c apparently!

Last nights seeing was worse than it has been last week but still not terrible. Transparency was very poor with lots of high cloud and a distinct halo around the planet visually by eye... Histogram was all over the place! Fullerscope 8.75" newt and Altair 290mono. 5ms exposures for each channel. This image is LRGB with IR685nm as the Lum at a weighting of 50%. 3 mins for Red and Blue, 2 mins for Green, and 2 mins for IR. Stacked best 20% for each channel. Used winjupos to derotate & combine the channels together to the same time point. Thanks for looking

This is interesting... I think you said on another thread that it's the interpolation during derotation that harms the data, can you go into more detail on that please? (if you don't mind!)

Yes you can collect IR with the 224c. The bayer matrix is transparent beyond 800nm so if you just want IR (and not red + IR), then you want the Astronomic proplanet 807nm or the ZWO 850nm. These filters may be a bit dim depending on what scope you have, so you could try the astronomic 742nm or even the Baader 685nm.

Not bad attempt at all, a dedicated planetary camera will certainly help

Are you getting a discount for being a beta tester?

That's a superb animation, really well done! Loads of detail and can barely see any difference in the frame quality as it goes, the seeing must have been nice and consistent. Is this with the 200p in your signature? The frames of the animation look slightly more detailed than the singe image.

Superb effort Simon, so much fine detail!

Fantastic work! The little mak punches well above it's size in skilled hands.

I would concentrate on Neptune Mars and Uranus. Jupiter and Saturn are just too low to make the most of the big scope. Capture Neptune and Uranus with the 685nm, maybe 30 mins worth? And maybe a single RGB run just to get the colour. Mars just straight RGB maybe or even IRRGB. I would think an ADC would be beneficial with that big scope. Whatever you do good luck!

Just open your best sharpest image in gimp or PS or whatever you use, and set it to 100% zoom (make sure the image hasn't been resized) Hover the mouse pointer over the right edge of the planet at the equator and you should get a readout number somewhere on screen of what pixel in the row that is (lets say 500), in gimp there is a kind of ruler at the top of the display. Next hover over the edge of the planet at the left hand side at the equator too, lets say this is pixel number 300, so your image of the planet if 200 pixels across (500-300) Plug that number in along with the camera pixel size and the planet apparent size in arc seconds (from stellarium or skysafari or whatever) and oyu'll get your FL. Note, the planet has to be 100% illuminated ideally, but you're near enough there with Mars currently.

You can calculate you FL pretty accurately from your images. Just need to see how mamy pixels across the target (mars?) Is on your image, then you just need the pixel size and the apparent diameter of the target and you can get focal length. Sixth formula down on this page... http://www.wilmslowastro.com/software/formulae.htm

That's a cracking Mars, very nicely done!

Well done, good contrast on the disk there

Loads of detail there Kev, nice work

Nice images there Bryan, you might be able to get the frame rate up without the Neodynium filter. The SPC looks great and very nicely controlled, wonder if the filter helps with that actually?

Fab images Simon!

I really need to pay more attention to the text I'm putting on the image!

In photoshop or gimp, you might have layers of different versions/stages of the image on the right hand side. Flattening the image just basically means combining those layers together (the ones that are visible anyway) into one single layer for saving.

Those are superb Geof, looking forward to seeing the finished version. Yes I agree about the atmospheric details n the B channel. I have seen a Mars image by Jean Luc Dauvergne where he synthesised blue and it was an impressive image but I cant find it now. Perhaps the best way forward for me on my next outing is to capture all three channels and play with them to see what works and what doesn't. I do like experimenting!

Thanks Geof, Basically juts to save time on stacking and sharpening, only having to do two images for each sequence rather than three! The other night (17th Sep) I captured RGB and I tried composing an image using all three and compared that with an image composed of just the R and B with synth G, and I found I preferred the synth G image. Wasn't much in it really but seemed a touch sharper to my eye. I think next time I'll try R and G and then synth the B as Vlaiv describes above.

Not delivered but collected... a vintage David Lukehurst dob (~20 yrs old). 12" f/6, with a Norman Oldham 1/4 PtV mirror. Had a quick go last night and had some nice bright views of Jupiter, mushy seeing but GRS and equatorial bands immediately visible along with startlingly bright Galilean moons. Not the best test of optics but I'm sure they are good and smooth being hand figured. It doesn't need much doing to it, a new 2" focuser and a decent finder, and perhaps a mirror recoat sometime soon. The movement on both axes is perfect, even at 250x I could place the target wherever I wanted it on the first nudge with no backlash. This should get me back into visual observing!

I just add the R on top of the B as a layer, then set its opacity to 50% and flatten image and save as green.

How do you do that??

Great seeing last night, captured four red and blue runs from about midnight to 1am, this is the second run which was the best of the four, and also my best ever. Fullerscope with Altair 290m, APM 2.7x barlow (at 2.3x) and Baader filters (didn't use an ADC). 4.5 mins red & 4.5 mins blue with a synth green. No derotation. AS3 (best 15%)>Registax>Gimp 2.1