Space Cowboy

On 03/01/2023 at 22:21, GordonD said:

Excellent!

Cheers! 

Struggling to get a satisfactory single image from this nights captures.

Running the sers through winjupos I can see seeing wasn't great maybe 4/10.  The 465fps and OLED laptop made conditions look better than they were.

Because conditions were consistent the animation shows off the detail better.

Loving the animation!

On 24/03/2021 at 07:14, Astrocut said:

Bit of an older thread, anyway.

 

when the rubber collar removed the collimator’s collimator screws are there.

2 x 3 screws

cheers

Need to try this with mine. Not sure if it's the baader collimator or my eyepiece holder train that's at fault.

Very good detail on those Geof! 

27 minutes ago, Kon said:

Excellent animation Stuart. It brings it to life. I regret not getting out last night.

Thanks Kostas I nearly didn't bother myself as I thought seeing would be rubbish the way the weather has been but it was ok! Animation images are a bit overdone with wavelets just going through all the images to see if any stood out.

Crystal clear sky and decent seeing last night. Got just over 1 hour of consistant data before the seeing nosedived and my feet got too cold.

Thrown together a quick animation of 27 stacks consisting of 2 min runs. (I've put the wrong date it should say Jan 2nd!)

GIF and AVI format :

20.42ut to 21.52ut :

Mars Jan3rd2023.avi

Glad you were able to take advantage of the better conditions last night Geof. They look promising.  I too got some decent shots. Sky was clearer than it's been for a long while and seeing wasn't too bad.

1 minute ago, geoflewis said:

I thought about checking manually, but 120k frames per SER.....😱. Yes, I use 'normalise stack' at 70% in AS3! - is that a good or bad thing for this issue? 🤔

Not sure but might be worth trying without normalize stack and the same in PIPP.  

Yep, thats the problem with high speed cams.

2 hours ago, geoflewis said:

Thanks Stuart, it was crazy really, but I was mostly disappointed that AS3! just saw the sharp edges when Mars drifted through the edge of the ROI as best frames / good seeing. Even PIPP still included some of them, but got rid of the worst, so the combination of PIPP and AS3! eventually got it done.

I'm surprised PIPP missed some. You could always use virtualdub to remove those frames manually if you have some time to kill 🙂  Happy memories from the past when cams didn't produce so many frames 😉  One thought, did you check "normalize stack" in AS3?

PIPP to the rescue! Very good effort in such difficult conditions Geof!

I'd probably need a ROI of several feet to cope with that kind of wind.🙂

57 minutes ago, Kon said:

Nice reprocessing. I think the derotated video has brought out more details.

Cheers Kostas I'm thinking there is still some field rotation coming through in the 3 min stacks. Might try 2 min next time.

Thanks Geof it does appear sharper for sure.

1 hour ago, yelsac said:

Absolutely love the fine detail you've got there, excellent. The second one has even more detail jumping out.

Would love to know your process after autostakkert!

Thanks Yelsac.

Wavelets in registax, rgb align & auto colour balance then the rest is in image analyser with extra sharpening, colour vibrance and colour noise reduction. Use frequency domain filter for any other noise control and finish with contrast adjustment. If the limb artefact is popping out I would use some of these steps using the paint selection tool.

Oops! Forgot to mention both images are 1.5x drizzle in Autostakkert.

Couple of repros from this night. Both over the same 9 min period but one using derotation of images (three 3 min stacks) and the other a  9 min derotated video stack.

1st derotated images :

2nd derotated video :

Very nice!

18 hours ago, Tommohawk said:

My current set up for planetary means I have to focus manually - which at high mag is pretty much impossible - so Bahtinov on a nearby star is really the only option.

For the life of me I can't see why it wouldn't be appropriate, from an optical standpoint, for planetary imaging - the Bahtinov image lines are nice and crisp and tiny focusing adjustments throw the alignment quite markedly. Yes, focus will vary due to turbulence etc  - but it will for any method.

I know some of the top planetary imagers prefer to focus subjectively, but I'm not sure that means a Bahtinov is inappropriate or innacurate. The only issue is if your scope/train suffers flexure such that moving from the star to the planet shifts things - and this may be a real problem in some cases.

I think you would be better investing in an electric focuser. It's not impossible to focus manually but it is impossible to expect focus to stay constant for more than 10 mins after using a bmask given changes in seeing and temperature.  Are you going to then slew back to a star to refocus and possibly miss a period of good seeing or even cloud moving in? 🙂

Animation from nearly 1 hour's worth of captures.

Cheers Geof! Considering how bad the seeing was when I first set up I can't complain too much.

This might be as good as it gets this season Kostas so I'll keep messing with the processing on these.🙂

Bit more detail on this one from just 3 combined images :

Very nice image Graham!

I think often people over sharpen lower sampled images which produces more artifacts and thickening of detail.

Personally I find a larger image easier to focus during capture but obviously seeing conditions dictate how high a f ratio I would go. 

Changes in planetary elevation, seeing conditions and temperature mean bmasks are unreliable at the high magnification needed.

On 21/12/2022 at 19:29, BGazing said:

Very nice. I'd say tone down the blues just a tiny bit...perhaps.

Thanks. Yep I used more colour vibrance than I would normally to try and enhance detail without overdoing the sharpening. Mutton dressed as lamb you could say 🙂 Oh for good conditions when the detail peels away without being forced.

Thanks guys!

Another frustrating night where clear sky and wobbly seeing was replaced by stable seeing and thin hazy cloud.  There was a 23 min period when conditions were at their best before the haze grew too thick.

I've combined 7 images in winjupos from 3 min SER runs.

Auto Dob 250 & asi224mc :

f18 @ 21.01ut

1.5x drizzle

Very nice Kostas! I had a similar experience last night.

Nicely processed!