geoflewis

Thanks Stu, It seems to be a new feature since last week as it didn't appear in my images with the GRS up to 30 Oct. However, it is in Chris Go's image from opposition on 3 Nov that he put up on his website. https://astro.christone.net/jupiter/index.htm

Thanks Kostas, I was very envious of your opposition images yesterday, so had to try despite the conditions. I also wanted to try autoguiding, so that's something I could do regardless of the seeing. Actually I had a couple of reasonable patches of mostly clear sky, so quite pleased that I got out there.

Having missed the night of actual opposition on 3 Nov 2023, I did manage to get out in the early hours of 4 Nov, less than 24 hours after actual opposition. The seeing was fair at best, but transparency quite poor and variable, with periods of quite thick cloud. I managed a few runs and have worked out how set up up Autorun and use ST4 auto guiding in FireCapture, so was experimenting with that. These images were all captured at 10ms (100fps). I stacked best 1200 frames (~20%) from each SER, the first image being from 5x1min SERs, the other 2 from 9x1min SERs. Jupiter had already transitted, so was declining in elevation. Of note is how close Europa and it's shadow are in the 3rd image, compared with my images of it's transit on 27/28 October and also that the shadow now trails behind the moon, as Jupiter is now being illuminated by the Sun from the right side of the planet. I always find it interesting that you can work out the direction of the Sun from seeing Jupiter's moons and their shadows.

I know, I know.... Maybe..... Those images by you and @Space Cowboy are superb.... 👏👏

Sounds like I missed something; I think that I didn't even open the observatory in June this year.....

That's an excellent comparison and goes to show that derotation of inferior data can spoil a better single result, something the we have to be aware of in processing.

Nicely done Kostas. I recognise those clouds, but it shows what can be done imaging the planets despite the clouds, if the seeing is good enough. Now we just want to have our cake and eat, with good seeing and no clouds.

Another excellent capture Kostas

These are excellent images Rob

Well done Kostas, those turned out well. It's clear, though very breezy here this morning, but wasn't clear last night, just wet and very windy. I didn't have the desire to get out of my warm bed at 4am to check whether the conditions were worth trying for the actual time of opposition.

Ok, so here's the final compilation from my long session with Jupiter. There are a few jumps when the clouds that were plaguing me most of the night became too thick to image. You can also see the variable seeing and transparancy and how poor the conditions were at the end of Europa's transit, where I've briefly paused the GIF.

I think these are much better Reggie. They look really good. My planetary imaging teacher & mentor used to keep saying to me, 'whoa there Trigger, you're not making pizza'.....

Thanks Kostas, you're very generous, but I'm not ready to start imaging Venus yet. It's very encouraging to know what you achieved with those very reasonably priced filters. I wonder whether as @Pete Presland commented, I'd lose out because I'm using an SCT (I'm presuming it's the extra glass eating the UV).

Thanks Kostas, Yes, I tried down to 3ms on Mars last year and also 5ms on Jupiter this year. I remain unconvinced about the benefits of capturing at those speeds, as the loss of signal in each frame is pretty significant, plus if the seeing is that bad, that I need those speeds to freeze it, then I'm probably not going to be imaging anyway. As we discussed my 'normal' used to be what my Aussie friend uses which 13ms (76fps). I definitely feel that faster than that has it's benefits here in the UK, hence I upped it to 8ms, but am now thinking that 10ms might be fast enough, so very interest to know where you're currently at. It's not too many years ago when my old ImagingSource colour camera's max speed was 30fps and I achieved some pretty good results with that. In those days,I was imaging Saturn at 5-8 fps...

Thanks Pete, I turn 69 tomorrow, so getting up there..... 🎂

Thanks Stuart, That link is to an internal drive, but I do have a few 1Tb, 2TB and 4TB My Passport external USB drives, which I believe are NVMe, so I could use one of those, which is what I was considering using in my reply to @Pete Presland

I have a few 4TB HDs that I use for archiving data as well as uploading to the cloud. Are you ripping data from your laptop to the external HD on the fly whilst imaging, as I have wondered about doing that?

Thanks Pete, I think the concensus is that there is no material gain in quality for shooting at the fast speed, at least during that session. That was my initial conclusion and indeed if anything I think the the additional signal per frame from the slower speed may have been a slight advantage. It was certainly worth experimenting and I appreciate the feedback received from you and others.

I also use auto center ROI, but as you say, still have to watch that it doesn't drift off the sensor. That become even more of an issue if/when I add a barlow into the imaging train, which of course also leads to bigger file sizes. Sorry, I don't know what an NVMe SSD is, but it's not the speed of transfer that's an issue, just the size of the SSD.

So very true, other than international flights to somewhere better.....

I agree, not much difference in speed, but a 20% reduction in file size, which is a significant win I think. Yes, I use a combination of FireCapture's ROI and Cut Out features to reduce file sizes. I could probably go a bit tighter, but I'm not using auto guidimg, so the target does drift within the ROI a bit, requiring me to nudge the mount with the HC every few minutes. I guess my next experiment might be to try autoguiding, though currently I don't know what I need for that with planetary imaging....

That has been my thinking too, but when I chatted with Kostas about it he told me that he was using a very cheap filter, so maybe I don't need to spend £00's.

I never even considered that. I don't have a UV pass filter, hence why I've never really bothered with Venus. I also never considered a particularly interesting target until I saw what @Kon achieved with is dob earlier this year. I should get one (UV filter not dob) and give it a try sometime.

Thanks, I agree with all your points, will be interested to see if others view differently. Of course Jupiter was very slightly higher elevation, but really both were close to max so I thought it a good test. I also wonder whether the more central GRS of the one on the right, influences opinions. Maybe a test when the GRS isn't present might be less subjective.....🤔

As the title indicated, the session on night of 29 Oct was me experimenting a bit. I've never really automated any of my planetary imaging sessions as for years I've used a mono camera with RGB, etc. filters in a manual filter wheel, so I've always sat at the scope to start individual captures and manually cycle through the filters between each capture or group of captures. Now that I'm using a colour camera, I don't need to touch the filter wheel unless I want to shoot IR or CH4 data, so I started to look at the Autorun feature in FireCapture. Also after running out of HD space on my laptop SSD during my last long session, I want to test using different capture speeds. Unfortunately, by the time I'd worked out how to set up Autorun, I only got to do a couple of speed tests before clouds shut me down. However, I've processed the two sets of data and put them in my usual fully annotated format to submit to the BAA. I'd be interested to know what difference, if any, anyone can detect in their comparative image quality. I won't say which is which yet, but one was from SERs captured at 100fps (10ms) and the other at 124 fps (8ms). I was intending to capture at some other speeds, so maybe that's for another session. Also one of these images is from a stack of 10x1m SERs, the other from 13x1m SERs. So what do you all think? Aside from the speed test, the Autorun feature was great success. Whilst the seeing was fairly good, it was decidely breezy, which not only was shaking the scope quite abit, but the wind chill on my body was something else 🥶. I therefore reconfigured where I'd set up my table and laptop in the observatory, so that I had easier access to the observatory warm room, meaning that once I set Autorun going, I could retreat out of the wind to a much more comfortable location for several minutes at a time.