Space Cowboy

16 hours ago, Kon said:

I had the same feeling that it's a lot easier to focus now it's larger. We just need that excellent night. Give Astrosurface a try. Geof @geoflewis has been impressed. I will message you a screenshot of my initial settings to try when I am back from the holiday.

It will be interesting to see what AS settings you use Kostas thanks. Ive tried it on ocassions as I know Neil is a fan but haven't yet seen anything greatly different than registax. Its the batch processing and animation capability that has attracted me to waveharp.

Plenty of detail on those Geof! The last 2 images are very good. 👍

9 minutes ago, Neil_104 said:

Fantastic. The animation is truly mesmerising 👍

Cheers Neil!

20 minutes ago, Kon said:

I see you got your clear sky. Nice set of images. It will be interesting to see if you do a derotation.

The animation is excellent and it really gives it a 3d feeling to it.

Thank Kostas I'm pleased and pretty surprised how well things went as the evening started off with rain and I wasn't expecting anything.  Jupiter has grown so much since I last saw it and even in wobbly seeing much easier to focus. The animation as you say shows a different dimention with more constructed detail. Just need to process it some more. Wavesharp is starting to impress me more too.

Many hours of processing ahead unless something better crops up but I'm not holding my breath looking at the forecast.

Quick animation using wavesharp :

Good to see you got some decent data too Geof! I was out last night also.

Gave it a go last night despite the forecast being less than exciting but showing a wiff of clearish sky. Seeing was not the best but there were moments of detail. Here is a quick 3 image preview. Got nearly 30 captures from 22.22 ut to 23.41 ut.

Pleased considering how bad its been this year . 10" Dob & QHY585c :

2 hours ago, Kon said:

Thanks Stuart. We are missing good opportunities with this weather. I hope the weather holds for you. I am away for a long weekend with the family so no imaging for me.

Enjoy your weekend! I promise not to boast if I grab something magnificent 😎

On 25/10/2023 at 17:14, geoflewis said:

Very nice Stuart

Cheers Geof! 

As I said the the CN forum this is a fabulous capture Harvey! One of the best UK shots this year for sure.

On this particular image I can see some artifacts on Jupiter, possibly image compression as the text is distorted?

Nicely captured Kostas! Sounds very similar conditions to what I got on Saturn the other week. 

I'm going to try tonight for Saturn and the GRS , shows possibly of clear spells. Getting desperate now 😬

1 hour ago, geoflewis said:

Thanks Stuart,

It's been a rubbish year for imaging; I sometimes wonder why we bother......

As JFK once said " we choose to image the planets not because it's easy but because it's hard" 😉

Looks like you've been busy Geof! Congratulations on your new great grandson! 

Very good images of Saturn and Jupiter even if conditions were not great you've produced some nicely balanced images.

Hopefully the weather will improve before too long.🥴

Very nice image despite the seeing! 

You've certainly had your money's worth out of those filters Kostas 🙂

Excellent collection!

Terrific! Getting the polar hood with a 8" scope is mighty impressive.

They've come out well! I did wonder about trying Venus this morning but didn't think seeing would be any good.

Thanks Kostas. Weather is going from bad to worse!

Nice capture. As has been said it's a little over sampled so your signal to noise is weaker.

Bit like using too much water with your orange juice. 🙂

That's more than a tiny bit of detail! GRS has nice detail for starters. I reckon there could be more in those images 🙂

As the rain lashes down outside I've been messing more with this capture.

Could be as good as it gets the way the weather seems set.

Selective sharpening and median filter in IA plus the usual stuff. Stacked more frames too to try and get more control on the dreaded noise.

3 hours ago, Kon said:

Any opportunities these days are worth taking.

It seems the 585 is working nicely for you. Where your Jupiter images with it as well?

Yes Jupiter with the 585 also. I was going to take a R filter mono shot with the qhy462 but the cloud had other ideas. 😛

1 hour ago, Cosmic Geoff said:

You should use a filter as suggested above to get the colours right.  The image could be a little blurry for various reasons - slightly out of focus (what do you focus on?) or shooting over your neighbours' chimney, or just bad seeing.  

The 4 SE is a Maksutov, so the collimation should remain good unless you are unlucky.

Yesterday I took a series of images of Jupiter with an 8" SCT through thin cloud, and it wasn't any better than the above.  The setup can do far better. I have never used extremely long videos - in reasonable conditions 5000 frames seems enough - sometimes acquired in only 18 seconds.

Why restrict yourself to 5000 frames? The more frames you have more more selective you can be in Austostakert without worrying about noise kicking in. 10-20000 frames gives you far more options.

Excellent!

24 minutes ago, morimarty said:

That looks like a very clean tidy Image/capture Stuart. Colour balance. The banding and Cassini all look very well defined. if only we could get some decent weather.

Cheers Martyn! It was nice to see the ringed wonder after so many years. My first view of a planet through the eyepiece in 2009 was Saturn and I still felt that buzz from seeing this magical planet that appears as a faint point of light to the naked eye.

I should mention this image is downsized 75%.