CraigT82

Very nice work Peter!

Found this on CN. Failing that I'm sure that Andy at Astronomiser can make them up for you too, not sure on costs there.

Yes, yet another Mars... Better get used to them we haven't had it this good for a long time! Went with the 290mono this time and without the ADC, only went out for 30 mins as was on baby duty but managed to get a couple of R and B runs, and made a synthetic G from those two. This was the best of the two runs. 8.75" Fullerscope and Altair 290m, APM 2.7x Barlow (working at 2.3x / 0.16"PP). Baader filters. 3 mins red and 3 mins blue, stacked best 30% > Registax > Gimp

Very nice, Lovely detail in the SPC!

Possibly starting to get some of the smoke from the Cali wildfires? though I was looking at Mars at around midnight and it looked bright and colourful as normal

That's a really nice image, Yes the end result will be more pleasing, and If it's easier to sharpen that may be because there is more frames in the stack, not necessarily because it's been derotated. Have you tried just stacking together around 10 mins of video without derotation to compare with the derotated image? NOTE I'm assuming 10 mins, don't know what your sampling rate is, might be worth calculating to see what the longest capture time for your sampling is?

That's a great result, nice work!

In that case you will need one of these... https://www.365astronomy.com/ts-optics-2-visual-back-for-skywatcher-and-orion-us-maksutov-cassegrain-telescopes.html

Is the thread on the back of the 127 Mak an SCT thread? (50.8mm diameter) If so you just need an SCT to 2" visual back like this... https://www.firstlightoptics.com/adapters/astro-essentials-2-visual-back-eyepiece-holder-for-sct-telescopes.html

I think that the differences are quite subtle is telling (although they are more obvious on a monitor)... I don't think I'll bother with long captures and derotations on Mars anymore, not least because I find trying to fit the alignment frame in winjupos actuallly quite stressful! For the middle column, I stacked each 2 minute capture individually (best 30%) and then stacked the resulting stacked tif images together. you could also join the videos together in PIPP and then stack the best percentagre of that long video, or even simpler I could have just captured for 10 minutes!

Have started another thread on this....

Following some advice and calculations on rotational smearing from @vlaiv, I decided to do some testing on the processing of Mars images, specifically whether or not Winjupos derotation of long runs is worthwhile, here are some results. From left to right we have... Column A = a single 2 minute capture, best 30% stacked Column B = 5x 2 minute runs stacked together giving 10 minutes total. No derotation. Column C = 18x 2 minute runs derotated in winjupos. From top to bottom we have... Row 1 = Wavelets applied after stacking. No other processing Row 2 = Wavelets applied after stacking, plus some additional unsharp mask in gimp Row 3 = Wavelets applied after stacking, plus some additional LR deconvolution Presented without further comment!

Very nice work, loads of delicate detail

These are great Tom, I love the Mars especially. What an intereesting OTA, what prompted you to get rid of the secondary?

Thats very interesting, thanks Vlaiv. I will try stacking 16 minutes worth of captures together without derotation and see how that looks.

Thanks Mark, yes it's quite irregular in shape now, you can see it in higher res in Peter's @astroman001 thread here...

ROI was 375x275 and exposure was about 2.5ms I think with about 1/3rd gain... just seen Vlaiv's post on exposure times and probably should have lowered the gain and gone to 5ms exposures!

Thanks! Yes Mars rotates much slower so I think you can load up to around 60 mins of data in winjupos and it should work (FL dependent). Jupiter is max 20 mins I think, but i always have trouble getting the image frame aligned on Jupiter if there isn't a moon in shot.

Fantastic work Peter, I dream of getting the Encke gap!

Some really steady seeing early this morning 1am to 2am, definitely worth dragging myself out of bed for. Solis Lacus bang in the centre and Valles Marineris nicely seen. 40 mins worth of 2 minute captures with 30% stacked and derotated. AS3>Registax>Gimp. 8.75" Fullerscope with Altair 224c (Baader L filter), 2.7x APM barlow & ZWO ADC.

Fantastic results on Mars there Simon, well done! I missed last night as had a long drive this morning, but am set up for tonight so praying for more good seeing! Agree that Saturn is well past it's best

Wowsers! Feels like I could climb down into Valles Marineris! 🤯

Have never used BVs so cant help there sorry 😐

I had he same issue with the same frac and the tak prism... the scope is optimised for 2" diagonals with much longer light paths. Nothing to do about it but use and extension!

Nice one, Ganymede looks great. Couldn't believe how obvious and large the shadow transit was when I looked the the EP lining up the shot. I remember the first transit I ever saw and it was so subtle, like a tiny speck of darkness and took ages to tease it out. Last nights was like a smack in the face!