geoflewis

2 minutes ago, yelsac said:

Just wondered what tools you & Geof used to get the balance between detail & soft appearance?

Honestly that's been one of my biggest struggles recently. For the final version of my Jupiter image from 1 Dec, I tried something that I picked up from one of Damian Peach's Patreon tutorials, which was to layer a blurred version on top of the fully sharpened version in Affinity Photo (Damian uses Photoshop, but the principle is the same), then use the opacity slider to blend the two to taste. I then used some regional sharpening to bring back the detail in selected parts of the image, e.g. the northern polar region, whilst leaving the equatorial regions softer. This approach seemed to strike that balance between detail and smoothness that I'd been stuggling to obtain.

I went out a bit later last night with fog thickening. The seeing looked good, but I was too late as the fog rapidly turned to cloud.

Was that with the 290MM, I haven’t used mine for over a year now, I just go with the 462MC. 

They’re both excellent images.

As Kostas suggests, adjusting the LD value might help, but I’m also wondering whether there was a bit of time gap between some of the captures meaning a lack detail in that region when derotating in WinJupos.

That’s superb Harvey, smooth as cream with lots of detail.

It’s one of the things I love about planetary vs DSO imaging, you only need a fairly brief gap, in good seeing to get what you need for an excellent image.

31 minutes ago, Barv said:

That's outstanding Geof. All your hard work has paid off! 👏

Thanks Harvey

26 minutes ago, dweller25 said:

I’m from Yorkshire so would describe that as “that’s not bad”

But now I live in Lancashire and I think it’s superb 👍

Thanks David,

So what colour rosette do I get?

Thanks, I knew that I had good data, but was struggling to get the best from it. I think I got there in the end though 🤞

1 hour ago, Space Cowboy said:

Tantalising! Have you tried a 610 or 685 ir filter Geof?

Thanks Stuart,

Yes, tantalising is a good way to describe it. Unfortuantely I only have the IR742 filter. Kostas said he'd lend me one of his, but I'm not keen on borrowing gear and can't justify buying a filter for what would be almost a single project. It's a bit like my reluctance to buy a UV filter just for Venus.

1 hour ago, Space Cowboy said:

Looking on my big monitor and it looks even better! The larger scale really opens out the detail giving it a more "gaseous feel" especially the north pole region.

That's great to know, thanks Stuart. I don't have a large monitor, so do all my processing on a 15" laptop screen, which presents it's own challenges when looking for noise, etc.

2 hours ago, Space Cowboy said:

First impressions are that looks excellent Geof! Lovely colour balance and a very fresh natural feel.

Thanks Stuart

1 minute ago, Kon said:

Nice to see the end result; it has the Geof look which I have been trying to achieve . Excellent work  and processing. I have learnt a lot from our discussions.

Thanks Kostas and likewise I have found our discussions both stimulating and educational.

After a lot of versions, discussions and feedback from members, especially @Kon and @Space Cowboy, I've settled on this result for my recent Jupiter image, now annotated for submission to John Rogers, BAA Jupiter section director.

After lots of experimentation, including trying to match Damian Peach's colour balance, which even included me sharing one of my versions with Damian, for whch his feedback was excellent data for the UK, but too yellow, so in the end I've pretty much gone back to my usual colours.

Sorry if any of you are tired seeing yet another version, but I wanted to share the final image, hence a separate thread.

Thanks for looking.

24 minutes ago, bosun21 said:

Thanks. I'm West of Greenwich so that's +ve for both. Now I know. By the way I've been using my newly downloaded Firecapture all day with the dummy cam and I'm really impressed with it. I'll be using it from now on despite just buying a years licence for Sharpcap. The questions will get much fewer as I progress (I promise 🤞).

I think SharpCap is very good, I bought it last year for something else, but I'm long in the tooth with FireCapture for planetary imaging, so see no reason to change that habit. That said, I have seen reports of SharpCap having an excellent live stacking focus aid, so maybe.....🤔

1 minute ago, Kon said:

They are looking excellent. I need to find the time to try the Geof approach on my captures 😉. Smooth and still a lot of details.

I suppose you can ask 'Santa' for a 0.5m telescope at the Canaries...I hear it's warm in the winter so it's a win win deal 😄.

Thanks Kostas, I could ask 'she who must be obeyed', but I might not live to report the answer.....😱

Following feedback from @Space Cowboy and discussion with @Kon I took a look at Damian Peach's processing of Jupiter from his redcent trip to La Palma. You can see an example on his website here.

I decided to reprocess both the original image in this thread, plus my image from 25 Nov 2023, with a view to trying to match Damian's colour palette and if possible obtain a similar balance of detail and smoothness. Of course I can't match the detailed capture from a mountain top in the canaries using a 0.5m scope, but I tried my best.

The colour palette is quite different to what I usually produce, but hopefully is similar to Damian's and other's that I have seen published. I am interested to hear what folks think about these latest versions please.

38 minutes ago, yelsac said:

That is truly fascinating, didn't think it was possible to get that through the earths atmosphere, well done Geof & thanks for sharing 👍

Thanks. It is definitely possible as I've seen a couple of other version just from the UK, but it certainly ain't easy. I had a few failed attempts and even several failed attempts with the same data from which I generated this attempt. I want to try some different capture settings and go even longer, maybe over 2 hours data, to see if I can get a clearer/cleaner result.

48 minutes ago, petevasey said:

Thanks, Geoff andf Pete.

Geoff I wonder, like you, if somehow the GRS is feeding matter into the belt which is then smeared by rotation - it will be interesting to keep an eye on that.  Your images are superb.  I know the C14 seems to be the instrument of choice for planetary work, but even when I had my 12" Meade ACF I never got anywhere near your standard.  I suspect your Norfolk skies have something to do with it!  My location in the lee of the Pennines and on a ridge doesn't exactly promote steady skies.  But quite dark for other stuff.  Horses for courses 😉

Cheers,

Peter.

Peter,

The C14 really comes into it's own when the seeing is excellent, but in poor seeing it can yield poorer results than smaller scopes. I had some good results with my previous 10" Meade Lx200 and older inferior cameras from very light polluted skies when I lived in NW Surrey. Also see what @Konis achieving with his manual 8" dob. Nevertheless, poor seeing will kill almost everythng planetary imaging wise, so in the UK it's a case of try, try and try again.

2 hours ago, Kon said:

It's impressive, the thought alone to do it is mad! I was mad to try with my 8" and failed miserably.  I seriously think you got them. For others reading this post, and wondering, Geof sent me the stacked files after as!3 and I independently processed them without knowing what settings he had used. We both came to a similar conclusion. Although the animation is a bit grainy, aligning the SETI on the image is clear; there is a sharper ring coming through the halo.

Exquisite capture and meticulous processing!

Thanks Kostas, your help has been truly invaluable, not only on this challenge, but processing tecniques and capture details for the other planets.

31 minutes ago, phantomgod_06 said:

i wasnt able to see the moons either. im pretty sure i was well focused so could it be a collimation issue?

 

If you were in focus and couldn't see any moons then maybe you weren't looking at Jupiter.... Even a very poorly collimated scope would probably still show Jupiter's moons, but not if it was out of focus.

18 hours ago, phantomgod_06 said:

I used the normal scope i got with the telescope for general viewing i believe, the place where i observe is pretty light polluted, i saw it as a bright spot of white rather than the normal colours you would expect to see, although i did focus it.

Were you able to see any of Jupiter's 4 Gallilean moons. They are easily revealed even in binoculars, so you should be able to see those. If you can't then I think that maybe you weren't properly focused.

So after not getting Neptune on 1 Dec 2023, but some nice captures of Saturn and later Jupiter, I concentrated on my lastest goal to capture Uranus ring system.

I captured 44 x 2m SERs using 40ms exposures with the ASI462MC camera through an Astronomic IR742 Pro Planet filter. I processed each SER for best 70% in AS3! (actually I tried 10%,25%, 50%, 70%, 80%), then ran them through WinJupos measurement and derotation. Aggresive gain and offset settings, in Astrosurface, combined with wavelets and deconvolution revealed what appears as an oval ring feature along with Uranus 4 main moons (again huge thanks to Kostas @Kon who showed me how to use the offset and gain settings in Astrosurface to reveal the halo / rings around Uranus). At this long elapsed duration (1.5 hours), WinJupos shows the moons as arcs rather than points and of course Uranus is completely blown out.

I next used the SETI Uranus Viewer to generate an image of the ring system and main moons for the same time stamp as the derotated midpoint of my image, which I overlayed in Affinity Photo by aligning Uranus and it's moons. The below video is a screen recording as I change the opacity of the SETI overlay to show how well it aligns with the oval ring feature in my image.

At worst I think I can say it's an interesting attempt (it's definitely my best attempt yet), but who thinks that I can actually claim to have captured Uranus's rings?

I have some colour data too (just for Uranus), so my my current challenge is working out how to combine the IR and colour images, together with the stretched 'rings' version and overlay them together in a single snapshow image - not sure if that is even possible.... 🤔

Excellent images and animations.

47 minutes ago, bosun21 said:

Is this any better?

 

 

Yes, but still looks a bit yellow. Details look good so you haven't over sharpened.

9 minutes ago, bosun21 said:

Just tried Winjupos for the first time. I don't know whether i have overdone the processing though. Thoughts?

 

Well done, it doesn't look over processed, but what is causing that blue background, as it rather detracts from the image. Jupiter looks a bit yellow, but that may be the background playing with my eyes.

23 minutes ago, Ouroboros said:

Wow! Nice image. Who knew not Neptune had rings? 

Thanks, well Neptune does have rings, but Saturn wins that contest hands down.