geoflewis

Really nice set of images

A couple of nice captures there Fedele

These are excellent images Rob. With regard to your thoughts on mono vs OSC, I too have the 290MM, but haven’t used it at all since autumn 2022. I’ve been very pleased with the results from the ASI462MC and have reached the conclusion that mono RGB is too much of a pain from the UK, though probably would yield slightly better results in excellent conditions (when do we get those though). Just my two-penneth…

Excellent images, both up and down 😎

Excellent capture Ian and very good advice from Kostas; your revised image is much improved and as Kostas says, maybe yu left a little bit on the table as I also think you could push a bit (but not a lot) harder with this version.

Excellent capture and processing Graham

Also captured on 1 Dec 2023 with the ASI462MC, C14 and Astronomic IR742 Pro Planet filter, here is Uranus, showing it's 5 main moons and the northern polar hood. Colour data was captured with the same camera through an Astronomic L filter, instead of the IR filter. The moons were enhanced by masked stretching of the IR data to bring them out of the background, whilst not blowing out Uranus.

Here is a late season Saturn captured on 1 Dec 2023 with the ASI462MC camera through the C14, with the ADC also in the image train. With Saturn more than 3 months past it's opposition on 27 August 2023, the shadow of Saturn's globe extends a fair way along the rings.

Here's my Jupiter entry from 6 November 2023, just a couple of days past opposition. It shows Io now leading it's shadow across the planet's disc, whilst the GRS is starting to rotate out of view. The data was captured with the ASI462MC through a C14, using an ADC.

John, that's a good animation, well done. Regarding you above 2 questions:- That is the GRS. Be aware that many apps and planetarium software are not updated with accurate display of features on Jupiter's surface. IMO the best resource to look at is WinJupos, which has a graphic display and in my experience is far more accurate. The old convention was South Up as that reflects how images were usually seen in old telescopes, but really there is no longer a 'correct' way. I used to display all mine South Up, but now usually go for North Up.

Excellent image

That's excellent Ian. Kostas is an excellent person to critique images, I also get a lot of good advice from him.

It’s a nice image Kostas. 42 fps on Jupiter isn’t a disaster in good seeing, but when it’s marginal, as I suspect it was tonight, then you do pay a price. We’ve all ‘been there done that’, but nevertheless you’ve processed it well, so it shows both your skill and what can be salvaged from difficult circumstances.

Thanks Reggie, however, I wasn't happy with the colour balance so after several attempts settled on the version that I posted on this separate thread...

Thanks Reggie, however, I've had a couple of very experienced and highly respected planetary imagers review my image and they are not confident to call it, so as @Space Cowboy said, it's tantalising, but maybe not a done deal. Regarding minimum aperture, I'm not sure. @Kon has no issue capturing the polar hood with his 8" dob, but the only images of the rings that I have seen are from 16" and 18" scopes. I think that I should be able to get them with my 14" in excellent seeing, but until I do, then I guess the jury is still out.

Thanks Reggie, you too.

Thanks Reggie, Neptune will probably have to wait until next year. The weather here has been awful recently and seems set to continue. I’m listed for hip replacement surgery on 3rd Jan and with Christmas just around the corner, I’m not sure that I’ll be doing much, if any, astronomy over the next few months, other than perhaps reprocessing data already captured.

Well done, in this version you’ve extracted what is available from the data set without over processing it. The main features are visible and the image has a nice smooth gaseous look to it.

Thanks for sharing the raw TIFs. I've reviewed most of them and I think that either your seeing was terrible, or your focus was off, or maybe a combination of both. There is very little detail recorded, so I've also had to push very hard in Registax to show the main features. I've only processed the data from 5 Dec, taking through WinJupos for derotation and building the RGB image. I then applied a light wavelets in Astrosurface and even then it's probably too much, but here it is for comparison with your version.

These first one (with GRS) is still overprocessed, the 2nd one also but less so. They have some good details, so gentler handling should produce quite nice results. Would you be willing to share the unprocessed TIffs, so that I and others could take a look at what you're working with?

Nicely done Lee, but as others have said they’re a bit over sharpened. I think it was me that posted the ‘pizza’ likeness comment a few weeks ago, so sorry for that, but it can be a very apt description for what some Jupiter images end up looking like. It was something said to me repeatedly by my planetary imaging mentor Dave Tyler many years ago and it really stuck, so I hope the analogy is helpful, not offensive to anyone where I’ve said that.

There are some excellent images here. The 1st (mono) one looks very noisy, so how many images did you stack in that one. The non derotated colour images look well processed with good colour balance, but I think you’ve push a bit too hard on both the derotated images, with the last one (5 RGB) being the better of those 2. All in all though you have a good well processed collection, so it’s probably a case of capturing in better seeing, which has been challenging for most of us this year and possibly will have been even more difficult from your further north, Norwegian location.

Nicely done Ian. 50fps is still a decent capture rate, it wasn’t too many years ago when that would be considered fast 🙄and your processing is excellent.

No, I wrote that wrong. As you state east of Greenwich is +ve, west is -ve. Thanks for pointing out my mistake.

Yes exactly that. Place a feathered raster over the region you want to sharpen.