Space Cowboy

Thats a terrific image!

That is a dramatic improvement! Superb image Peter!

That's very good Peter! Love the vibrance.

High quality detail! 

On 01/11/2020 at 18:43, neil phillips said:

Your working through the problems just fine. Its calm air you need.  Mars needs it even more than jupiter. Because of its size i reckon.

I am going to be rusty thats for sure, when i am running again. Best thing is to enjoy the imaging problems and all.

Quick squirt of WD40 and you'll be fine Neil 😉

Super images! Love your processing.

Don't know how I missed these. Good to see you are still keeping busy Darryl! Very nice collection of Mars shots!

I did try defrag but it didn't need any according to windows. Yep tried turning off WiFi & antivirus too. I've left a question about unity gain on the ZWO forum.

This coming week looks like the best chance of getting some sharp images with high pressure dominating. Hopefully it won't mean fog. 

I've tried a few different processes and can't beat this one which only took 10 mins after capture.

One thing I will try is lowering gain while focusing. Really struggled focussing with the high gain setting.

2 hours ago, neil phillips said:

Improvement from the day. You clearly  just need good seeing. Good shot for the conditions. You defraging ?

Thanks Neil. Defragmenting the laptop?

Cheers Bryan!

Thanks Dweller & Nigella! 

Cheers Peter it didn't look very clear on screen but the result was better than I expected. After doing some testing it seems 375 unity gain was the reason for all the dropped frames. Every other gain setting and the laptop records everything.

This has got me baffled. It appears when I set my 224mc to 375 unity gain  about 40% of frames are dropped as RAM falls on the firecapture readout. Any other gain setting and there is no problem. My laptop has 60% RAM available in system resources when unity gain is used so I can't figure out why the RAM readout on firecapture drops so much until frames are dropped? I have USB traffic set to the lowest value as is recommended.

Btw used 3x TV + extension tube with Dob & asi224mc which according to firecapture produced f22 & focal length of 5700mm.

Quick process from tonight. Laptop driving me crazy running low on RAM and dropping frames even though system resources showed only 40% memory usage.

Think I've probably over cooked the wavelets on this.

Impressive detail with the 127! Gotta love that scope  😉

Thanks Geoff!

Excellent detail Geoff!

Love the Mars animation!

Cheers guys! Might be  3 more years before I get another shot looking at the forecast!

Well done! That's exactly how I felt the other night taking the scope out for first time in 18 months even though I started planetary imaging 10 years ago it was scary how much I'd forgotten but surprising how quickly it starts coming back! The cloud usually returns first 😉

Nice detail! Definitely benefited using the 3x for highly signal to noise ratio. Something I should have done the other night. I guess 5x is for those super calm nights but it's good to experiment with both.

My first planetary image for at least 3 years last night after brushing off the dust on my 250 flexttube Dob and scraping off the rust of my skills from the past! I was pleased just to capture Mars on the cam chip!

Used 5x powermate which was probably overkill for the cloudy and windy conditions. Think back in 2014 I used 3x powermate looking back.

Its not a show stopper but pleased to get this with the asi 224mc :

Taken at 22.22 ut :

That's another super image Simon!

Very nicely done!

Remarkable image of Saturn at that elevation!

That's a lovely image of Mars Simon! I need to bring my gear out of hibernation!