Eris

19 minutes ago, Kon said:

Nice images Rob. Nice smooth processing.

Many thanks, always appreciated.

Hello all,

Since making this set of images I have not had a decent clear night in my area and I feel my Jupiter season is heading toward the end but I may be able to get a few more if skies are clear over the next 4 weeks.  

This night was reasonable and allowed me to obtain both IR and RGB images over a period of time through the evening and I was happy with the results.  I created so much data I had to stop mid way to download everything off the laptop as I had filled the HDD.  In all I took 110Gb of video data this evening and it took some time to process, sort out the best images and put together.

All observation details are on each image.

All the best to you all,

Rob

4 hours ago, geoflewis said:

These are excellent images Rob.

With regard to your thoughts on mono vs OSC, I too have the 290MM, but haven’t used it at all since autumn 2022. I’ve been very pleased with the results from the ASI462MC and have reached the conclusion that mono RGB is too much of a pain from the UK, though probably would yield slightly better results in excellent conditions (when do we get those though). Just my two-penneth…

Hi Geof,

Many thanks for your reply.  Yes, RGB in the UK this year has been pretty hard for me.  Although I live in a semi-rural location I have a north facing garden so always have to image over mine and other houses which in the winter is often fun as the older houses still have open fireplaces so I get a lot of heat from random chimneys to my south at times.  Can't moan about people wanting to keep warm (makes me feel terrible cursing about the heat plumes) but I would like to get the most out of the C11 I have.  I see a lot of people have started using the Player One cameras but there is a confusing choice of camera and at the moment I really don't know how they perform against the ASI camera that I am more used to.

Lets hope for dry clear skies to see out the current Jupiter apparition.

Rob

Happy New Year to you all,

I have finally processed my images from early November to mid December and have posted these into my gallery.  I was really hoping for a great apparition this year as Jupiter is new well clear of the houses to my south and in a perfect position to obtain high resolution images but I have been pretty disappointed by the RGB results.  The IR images have provided a fair amount of detail and I am pretty happy with what I have obtained with them but the RGB were not as good as I hoped they would be.  In most of my RGB images the Red channel was good to great, the green were mostly average but the blue channel was very poor for most of the apparition. From my location of South Western UK we have not had a great run of clear nights for months due to poor weather and when it has been clear the atmospherics have been average to say the least.

I use an ASI 290mm camera which is great, especially when the conditions are good but I was wondering whether the use of a One Shot Colour camera would be better during nights of average to poor atmospherics? I know the resolution of a OSC camera would be less than the mono ASI 290mm  but would there be a lot of difference under poorer conditions?  I would appreciate any advice from anyone that has experience of both types of camera.

Anyway, below are a selection of my imaging sessions from Nov through to mid December.

All the best and clear skies to you all in 2024.

Regards,

Rob

On 01/11/2023 at 22:08, Kon said:

Excellent set of images Rob, especially the IR captures. Are you derotating the IR or are they single captures? I like the banner with the details; do you generate it manually every time or is there a simpler way?

 

(I see you captured Jupiter in the future; 15 November on your title 😉)

Hi Kon,

Many thanks for noticing the wrong month in the title. 

The images are derotated in Win JUPOS  by varying degrees. I do tend to take a run of 3-4  consecutive 2000 frame videos in IR and rotate them. I usually soot in the following way.

IR x3-4 2000 frames each run

R x1-2 (depends on the frame rate on the night) 2000 - 3000 frames each run

G x1 2000 frames

B x1 2000 frames

IR x3-4...... and so on, generally until my SSD in the laptop is full!

All derotation times are on the image panel on the right.

The banner is a template I created in Photoshop and manually update details as necessary. All longitude and planetary details are sourced from Win JUPOS ephemeris.

All the best,

Rob

Hi all,

Weather not been great in my neck of the woods but finally managed to get some fairly good data on the 15th October. Initially the evening started pretty average but around 0330BST (0230 UT) there was a definite change in image stability, even the RGB capture was reasonable in the blue channel which is generally (for me at least) very poor.  Happy with the results and hope the weather improves soon.  Posting this on the 1st November I have yet to have a clear enough night without the potential for rain during the telescope cool down period and with opposition on the 3rd I'm itching to get back out and fill up my HDD with data.

All the best,

Rob

Really nice set of images you have obtained there.  Many thanks for posting.

Hi Kon,

Thank you for your comments. I hadn't realised I had posted in the wrong forum. Do you know how I get a moderator to move it?

Hello to you all,

Attached are the first images I have managed to obtain from the current apparition of Jupiter.  All images have the full observation details on them.

I hope to try and get more RGB images from  5th and 16th September and will work on them in the near future but they are not (at this time) as clear as the IR images taken.

All the best to you all,

Rob

Hi Geof,

Many thanks for your reply and your example image taken under that jet stream activity.  I, like Pete above, would generally give it a miss if the conditions were predicted to be bad unless it had been many weeks since my last observation when I would give it a try.  If I have been fortunate to have been out several times in a week I would likely take a "bad jet stream" night as a evening off. 

You do realise however I may not now be able to relax when conditions are predicted to be bad based on your image just in case I am missing something! :O)   

Hi,

I thought I would have a crack at your original image and see if I could denoise it a little.  I put it through Registaks again and applied some gentle wavelets and then another with a little denoise on channel 1 of the wavelets.  Put them both in to Photoshop and blended a little. 

Having uploaded a few images from September and the Oct I thought it would be interesting to compare two images taken with the same equipment, same capture software, same settings and RGB filters but taken under very different conditions. 

The image taken on the 24th September was with the jet stream fully over the UK and all the jet stream forecast sites at the time were displaying it in a strong red colour.  The video capture shows the very fast high frequency turbulence present at the time and you can see that most details are blurred and only the larger features are obvious.

The image taken on the 10th October was the almost at the other end of the scale with the jet stream well to the east of the UK and we sat in a trough between two peaks of activity.  Conditions on this night were so different with just low frequency disturbance allowing the capture software to "grab" more stable frames then was possible on the 24th September.  The October images is one of the best I have taken over the years in regard to detail visible.

I know we all see the differences these nights can bring at the scope but I thought it interesting to show just what a difference the jet stream can make when imaging this wonderful planet.

All the best,

Rob  

The jet-stream moved out of the way for most of the UK over the 10th October and I managed to obtain my best images of this 2022 season so far.  I was really pleased with the level of detail I managed to pick out across all latitudes of the globe  in RGB and am currently processing the IR images to see what I can pull out of them, particularly in the 2259 image which has the edge slightly over the 2236 one.

The jet-stream has been back over the past few days but lets hope for more nights with it out of the way over the next half of the apparition.

Clear skies all.

Rob

Managed to get some imaging of Jupiter firmly underway in September.  Only a few nights were good enough to get a full set of RGB and retain some detail but IR images were easier to obtain with the conditions that generally prevailed through the month (locally for me anyway).  Despite conditions being at most average it was great to actually get out for extended periods of time over multiple days.

Hello all,

Attached is an image I acquired on the 7th August under good conditions.  Only my second Jupiter observation from the current apparition and really happy with the level of detail already visible.  Really looking forward to the next few months and longer evenings to really get to grips with imaging.

Clear skies all.

Really well done for the image and the commitment to imaging with (if I understand the previous post correctly) manual tracking.

Keep up the good work.

Wow.  I imaged Jupiter on the 18th with a C11 but my local conditions were not great.  Fantastic level of  detail on Jupiter, really does look like it was with a much larger scope, you really must have to good skies where you are.

First image of Jupiter since mid 2018 after it became too low for me to see from my location due to buildings to the south of me.  Poor conditions and Jupiter was only just over the roof tops but I am pretty pleased with the results.  

Equipment details are on the image.

Hi CraigT82.

Yes this is the ASI 290mm (and not 270) which was a typo which I have corrected above.  Thanks for noticing and thanks for the comments.

The conditions on this evening were good and allowed me to put the C11 and ASI270mm through their paces.  The series of images below I believe are my highest resolution images of these features so far and I am really pleased with how the scope and the ASI camera are performing.   The original scale images do really show a great deal of detail that is lost somewhat in the compressed JPG images shown here. All of the images here are the result of multiple images stitched using the MS ICE panoramic application.

Details for each image as follows,  All images taken with Celestron C11 with ASI290mm camera, 2.5x Powermate and Baader IR pass (685nm) filter.

CLAVIUS - x4 images 

MONTES ALPES and PLATO - x16 images

MONTES ALPES and VALLIS ALPES - x6 images

MONS HADLEY DELTA and HADLEY RILLE - x2 images

COPERNICUS - x 5 images

Clear skies all.

Very nice captures.  I have had one of these scopes since the early 90's and visually it is still the best scope I have owned.  Even better than the C8 Edge HD and C11 I have.  Very well made and something rather special about the mirror.  I have retired it now as it was not on a driven mount (old Fuller EQ mount) but you have yours driven so may look into resurrecting.  It is a best of a scope, I would be interested to see how you have mounted yours on the mount.

Both lovely images and a great deal of detail on Mars.

Two images of Mars from the 22nd November showing the Solis Planum and Vales Marineris region.  There is dust all over this region making it quite milky in appearance and is especially obvious along the preceding limb on the first image.   Only the region around the pole seems to be clear of dust at this time.  The Tharsis region is not overly obvious at the moment either so maybe shrouded in dust as well.  Olympus Mons can just be made out on the first image appearing from the night side of the planet.  The dust seems to clear further round the globe as seen in the second image which is less affected.

There seems to be a lot more activity around the globe so could be an interesting few weeks as the planet recedes from us.  

That is definitely the Elysium region which is north of Mare Cimmerium, the prominent dark region on the image. Olympus is at a similar latitude but around the planet a little further north of Daedalia Planum and the Tharsis volcanoes. 

Image of Theophilus (right), Cyrillus (middle) and the rather worn crater Catharina.  Taken back in May this year but only just got around to processing it recently.

Celestron 8" Edge HD. x2.5 powermate, IR pass (685nm) and ASI120mm camera.

6 pane image panorama of the southern highlands showing the crater Moretus on the mid left half of the image.  

Celestron C11, x2.5 powermate, IR pass (685nm) filter and ASI290mm camera.