geoflewis

Here's another look at Jupiter, from 9 September 2021. The 2 images are just a few minutes apart with Oval BA nicely seen and Jupiter's fast rotation clearly apparant. Each image comprises the best 1000 frames from 3x60s runs of RGB and 4x60s runs of IR, the IR being applied at 50% opacity when compiling the LRGB images in WinJupos. Thanks for looking.

Thanks Angie

Thanks Craig, Pete and Simon, yes, it’s good to be able to image the gas giants again, though as Pete points out, by the time Saturn reaches a really good altitude the north polar region with its hexagon will likely be nigh invisible to us.

Thanks Bryan, it's been 2 years since I been able to image either Saturn or Jupiter, as they were too low down, so it was good making their acquaintance again 🙂

As well as the series of four Jupiter images showing the Io transit on Saturday night that I posted on the Jupiter competition thread, I managed to get my first image of Saturn, as it transitted the meridian earlier on. I was using my new ASI290MM camera together with the x2 Powermate, but that gave an effective F24, much more than the guideline F14 for the small 2.9 micron pixels of this camera. Rather than taking the x2 PM out of the optical train, I opted to capture the data at Bin 2x2 in FireCapture, giving me effective F12, so a much better sampling rate. The image comprises 4xRGB and 5xIR runs each of 5000 frames, using Autostakkert to setect and stack the best 2000 of each for a total of 34,000 frames in the final stack. Wavelets were applied using Registax6 and the colour image was built in WinJupos, with the IR stack used as luminance at 100% opacity. A hint of the polax hexigon is seen, which is not bad considering that Saturn was still a low 18 deg altitude when transitting from my 52N location. Thanks for looking

I've spent much of the past 2 days working through the huge amount of data that I capture of Io's transit of Jupiter on Saurday night into Sunday morning. I've reprocessed the previously posted image showing Io soon after it completed the transit, plus 3 other sets when Io was in mid transit and just prior to the end of it's transit. The separate images below are dispayed north up, with the annotated, composite image showing the progress of Io, with Jupiter presented south up as is preferred by the BAA. Thanks for looking.

Here's my first halfway decent image of Jupiter this year. It comprises the best 1000 frames from last 3 60s runs with the ASI290MM and Astronomiv RGB filters, through my C14. I have a lot more data from earlier in the session when Io was in transit, so there may be more to follow. I probably should annotate the image, so may swap it out later when I've done that. Regards,

Very nicely captured Peter. I was also out at the scope last night, it being the 1st really decent night's seeing I've had for planetary imaging this year. I'm still working through the data, but I'll put up an end of transit image shortly. Cheers,

Good luck with adding more Ha Peter, but I would say don't overdo it. Of the 3 versions I have seen, i.e. Rogelio's, Daniel's APOD and yours, I think yours has the most natual look, not that there's anything natural about images like this. What I mean is that to me the balance between the galaxy and the Ha sirus in your image is just right, with neither one overwhelming the other. It really highlights your exellent processing skills. Cheers,

It's a superb image Peter. I first saw this Ha detail in an image by Rogelio Bernal Andreo (of Deep Sky Colours fame) posted on Astrobin back in 2014 https://www.astrobin.com/134660/B/. Rogelio suggested that it may have been the first time anyone captured this detail, but who knows..... Regardless, your's is a stunning confirmation that it is real.

Jupiter's disc is far brighter than the moons, so very difficut to capture the moons and detail on jupiter with the same exposures. If you want a final image with surface detail on Jupiter and the moons well displayed, then you'll probably have to cheat and add the moons in from a different capture.

That's fabulous

They're both excellent Mark

Super video, excellent final images of Saturn and Jupiter and a lovely dawn chorus to round of the observing

Very nice @MarkRadice

Thanks for posting this Carole, it is very sad news indeed. @wookie1965 I believe that you have one of these vintage scopes, so if possible please could you let Carole @carastrohave an idea of their 2nd hand value. Many thanks

Nicely done Andy

Looks pretty good to me, but maybe a bit low in contrast, so maybe you could get something more punchy with further processing. FYI I also took some test luminance images with my C14 on Saturday night (actually early Sunday morning) and this is what I've extracted from 2hours data (12x10m subs). I captured at Bin 2x2 then as an experiment, I further binned 2x2 in software, before post processing....

Thanks Vlaiv, that sounds good enough for me, so I will continue to experiment with binned and unbinned processing in software. I will continue to bin 2x2 all my subs in camera when shooting with the C14, so a further bin 2x2 in software might be too much. I know that I've struggled with all of this, but actually feel as if the fog is begining to lift, so thanks for your significant contributions over the last few days on that. BTW I did send an email to the ImagesPlus developer, Mike Unsold, but haven't heard anything back yet; that might be just early days, but I suspect that he doesn't want to take the lid off that particular box again, since he announced over 1 year ago that he's no longer supporting, or developing it and made it a free download, which if your are interested in checking out is at http://www.mlunsold.com/ILOrdering.html Many thanks,

So when it boils down to it, as far as you are conserned I can bin the stacked linear image, regardless of the align methodogy and no one will ever know (see) the difference?

Absolutely, at least I certainly hope so, which is why I am so appreciative of very generous people like @vlaiv who are prepared to indulge folks like me, with their time, to try and share their knowledge.

I just love this statement! I was getting to the point that I thought that I no longer understood English.....

Thanks again Vllaiv, this I think I understand. I have no idea what method ImagesPlus uses for alignment and since the developer no longer supports the product, I am unlikely to be able to find out. The auto image set processing tool starts with me loading all my raw data (lights, darks, flats, flatdarks, bias) and ends by kicking out a calibrated, normalised, graded, aligned and combined image using whatever combination method I specify, e.g. Min/Max exclude, average, one of Sigma clip options, etc. I have been using Median Sigma combination, but saw that you recommend Average instead of Median, so I will change to that in future. I can stop the process after calibration, but then normaisation, grading, aligning and combining the calibrated images becomes a tedious manual process, that I'd prefer not to do. I will email the developer to see if he will answer about the alignment method, e.g. is it bilinear?, but I'm not hopeful about getting a reply. If I don't get a reply, can I just take the risk of binning the stack, i.e. what is the risk of a bad result and how bad could that be? Best regards,

Thanks again Vlaiv, I feel that I've reached the end of the road with my undersranding, or in reality, lack of it. I am going round in circles and getting nowhere. I want to understand why, when and how to use resampling and/or software binning to improve my AP workflow. Up to now I never tried it, as I didn't understand it; I did not know what benefit it would be trying to achieve. I thought I understood in camera (CCD) binning (better sampling rate for oversampled camera scope configuration as with my 5.4 micron camera pixels and F11 C14 scope + x0.63 telecompressor), but now even that is not so clear. I really appreciate your patience with me and you sharing your deep knowledge of this topic, but I just don't get it, sorry....!!

Thanks again Vlaiv, so clearly I still not understand this. I will keep trying, but it is difficult over forum chat. As requested, below is a screen grab of the same region displayed 3 ways. The top left is the original (not resampled) image binned 2x2 (add) and zoomed 400% to show the blocky pixelated stars - can you see it? The bottom left image is the resampled x2 (upsampled) image then binned 2x2, viewed zoomed 200% so that image dispays the same dimmensions as the top left, not resampled image - the stars are not blocky. The image on the right is the same as bottom left image (resampled x2, plus bin 2x2) zoomed 400% for comparison and the stars are still not blocky. Any ideas why it is not as you expect? I could zoom everything in even further to show the blocky stars in the not resampled image better. What does this mean? Should I only bin the raw images before calibration and stacking? Would that mean that I also have to bin all my calibration frames at their Raw off camera status, not the unbinned calibration masters? I am really not understanding how anyone would use binning in software if I can't bin a calibrated, but otherwise unprocessed stack of raw image data. Thanks again