BGazing

Here you go, just a bit of adjustments, layer 6 in R6 could be pushed for some bigger stuff and then PS saturation, denoising and contrast. Histo stretched and midpoint to the right.

Says unsupported tif format in R6. Bizarre. Image looks good. Can you convert it to png?

Hm, something is off. Seems like you did WJ before sharpening. And I cannot sharpen this tiff properly for some reason. RGB balance is there. Can you upload your best tiff? How many frames did you stack and what was the exposure? Under 5000 frames at, say 6ms, it is difficult to do much sharpening IMHO.

This is a very nice image, indeed. Would you mind sharing the tiff of your stack (or uploading the best video), I have a sneaking suspicion that one can eke out more out of it. If the seeing was exceptional, let's leave no stone unturned.

Thank you and I agree, there is something special about that photo. My wife, who basically says that Moon is great and Sun in h-alpha 'okay', looked at the photo and was impressed. There is a certain 3d depth quality due to Ganymede (it was about to go behind). I actually processed it separately as doing same processing on Jove and Ganymede creates a bit artifactey appearence on the moon.

Thank you! It has been a struggle, never handled or collimated a C11 before, C8 is tiny in comparison. Here's 6 min derotation from a previous night, collimation was almost there.

At last, I got my friend's C11 to collimate and use. Unfortunately, I did not use it in that nice seeing we had on September 2, but on our dark site. Wasted one night trying to collimate it in MG, something was off, unfortunately. On the second night I had more luck, and after some DSO hunting I managed to shoot Saturn and Jupiter in pulsating but OK seeing. (On the previous night I did not manage to collimate it properly and can post the results for 'the effects of collimation comparison). Increased resolution is immediately apparent, but oh boy is this thing sensitive to transport, upon checking it last night back home it already lost a lot of collimation and I had to do it again, this time I was quick. Sort of figured out what works.

Finally got to process these, Jupiter at 40 degrees alt but the seeing was better earlier in the evening (the trick is, I have to wait for Jove to clear the building and, at the current trajectory, it does so at approx alt 38 degrees). Anyways, this is probably the best one I did so far in a year and half of shooting, not sure I can pull more from a C8, but fingers crossed. Too bad there were no moons around, derotation would have been better. (derotation is the second image)

We had some good seeing on September 1 and 2, with high pressure dome over Belgrade. It took some time to process data (there was so much of it) and I am still not done with Jupiter. September 2 was better, so no real need to post images from the night prior. What I first noticed was a blotch that rotated out of view and assumed I have caught some mini storm. Turns out it was Tethys transit. As it is only 0.17 arcsec, I guess this is more of a diffraction blur effect, as I was unable to pinpoint the exact pixel where it was. Still, quite nice to catch it. Included also is a 30 minute derotation where Tethys was already out of view. I reckon this is my best Saturn so far.

Thank you all. Not sure what is the right way to go, here's the same night, best 6 min stack video derotated and processed in more or less the same way. You be the judge...

Big Ben....Parliament...

Thank you. Could be good in Wiltshire, here we are enjoying a bit of a rough patch. I am off to Greece. On the plus side, I am driving, so I might pack. On the minus side, projected strong winds (darned meltemi). Shame...planets are much higher down there.

Well, after some Metaguide treatment (awesome programme, by the way), my C8 got itself new prescription glasses. Surprisingly, or not, the results in mediocre to meh seeing have been very close to results in much better conditions, despite having much less material to derotate and using shorter exposures (10-12ms). First photo with Tethys, Encelladus (really dim inbetween) and Dione, this time I managed to lift them properly, with adequate variation in brightness. The last is the first IR attempt, Saturn was at approx 25 degrees but used 610 filter on top of ADC and PO 462 mono camera.

New firmare is great so far and updated without problems. Many improvements, from the planetarium to the overall handling of...everything. What is the 'refraction' setting supposed to do @Dek Rowan Astro?

I use one of their tripod bags for DZ, without extra padding. That is actually what Oklop guys gave me... Tripod bag still has, I believe, 10mm padding.

Not enough frames even in the best of conditions...

Lovely. How is RST handling it? Are you sure you have not posted this in a wrong forum, says sale/swap...

Well here is the second effort, I reckon it is even better. 36 minutes derotation but I had to cut off recording because...the tree across from my balcony.

Have you tried using ADC, at least for UV?

Thank you, I derotated the stacked images (two of them in this case). I am not sure it is always worth the trouble, especially on Jupiter, but in this case it was a bit better than a single stack. Moons were not resolved, just a trick of doing a layer where one everexposes them in PS and then combines them, learned it from the others. So it is a composite image of sorts.

Well, technically not the first but the first time I tried to shoot I could not focus. Window of opportunity, this was shot at 24 degrees above the roofs. Enceladus, Tethys, Rhea Mimas and Dione in order of appearance from left to right. 678, ADC, C8, 2x6minutes of derotation in Winjupos. No drizzling, 5x sample and a bit of resize up at the end. I like it, not bad for 8 inches. I started shooting when Saturn was already behind the roofs last year, managed to grab something in the sunset and hope I will have more opportunities this year.

10 July 2023 prom 10 July 2023 FD 10 July 2023 AR 3363 18 June 2023 25 July 2023 Lunt 80 DS, various mono cameras.

You did really well. I could not do color on 678 due to super jet stream (for lack of a better word), switched to 610 and 462mm but the results were still iffy. Bottom line is...seeing is everything, even in IR, albeit a bit less so. But still...

Thank you and what Geoff said...you have to match the scope with the pixel size. Rule of thumb is 5x pixel size, 7x in exceptional seeing (but...hey...we are never that lucky). Honestly, any of the new crop of color fast cameras will do, they all seem to be really good. You need UVIR cut filter (or IR cut only, but that is harder to source).

Hello and welcome to the planetary imaging. I have started it only last autumn, but it was a lot of fun. Some things I picked up along the way... New OSC (color) cameras are great. Much easier to deal with and just as good unless you are a master of mono processing. SCT 8 is a much better instrument for that than my Tak 100. For any decent size, I'd say 6in would be the starting point. There are some fine images at 5 inches, too, but with those super fast FPS cameras a SCT 8 is a good place to be. Doublet refractor would not have a good color correction. Any tracking mount will do, I use AltAz mounts. Aim for pixel size one fifth of your focal ratio. (e.g. 678 in my f/10) Use ADC. Not having to deal with a barlow is great, I always have the option to go for a bit of oversampling if seeing is amazing (it never is, though). ADC is a must. Cheap one will do. This is what you can do with modern cameras and good seeing. No particular experience needed or some great processing skills (just basic). This was in C8