geoflewis

1 hour ago, Kon said:

As I said offline, this is a superb image and balance between smoothness and details. The best I have seen from UK this winter.

Thanks Kostas, I'm not sure about it being the best, but I agree that it turned out quite nice. Thanks again to your input over how hard to push the processing.

On 30/11/2023 at 22:50, nitram100 said:

Happy with this one

You should be, it's a cracking image.

Superb Andy, I love the way Io just floats in front of the GRS and Jupiter's limb in the animation 👏

7 minutes ago, JeremyS said:

Cracking image Geof 👍🏻

Thanks Jeremy, I'd pretty much given up on Saturn a couple of months ago, so it was nice to look at it again, even if I didn't get what I was really after.

After missing out on Neptune due to cloud, the skies cleared later on allowing me to take another run at Jupiter as a preamble to trying again for Uranus 5th Moon Miranda, and hoping to capture Uranus ring system. I'm still working through the Uranus data, but have now completed processing of the two 9x1m SER runs on Jupiter in colour and IR.

The seeing was mostly good, so a lot of fine detail has been revealed. My processing continues to develop, with me trying to hold back on the HF wavelets, which I've concluded have given too sharp an image. Hence, for these 2 images I traded some HF wavelets in Astrosurface for LF wavelets, just to bring some of the larger features to the fore, hopefully without over sharpening or creating edges to features. I've also adjusted the colour temperature in Image Analyser to give a slightly warmer look to the colour image.

Thanks to Kostas @Kon for critiquing several versions of the colour image, before I posted it here. As always, I'm interested on any feedback from anyone about what they like / don't like other suggestions, etc., on these images.

I headed out around 6pm on 1 Dec with my intended target being Neptune, which transits around 7pm. It's the 2nd time I've attempted that this week. With Saturn transiting at around 5:30pm, so not far past the meridian I used that as my focus target, before heading over to Nepune. The first night seeing was awful so I never got focus, before clouds shut me down, but the seeing this time was good, so I thought I try a late season Saturn, whilst Neptune gained a bit more elevation. Here's what I got...

By the time I'd completed 9x1m SERs on Saturn the clouds rolled in, so not only did I not get any IR Saturn data, which I'd like to have used as luminance to sharpen the image a bit, but my attempt for Neptune was again thwarted.... 🙄

The sky did clear later for me to have go at Jupiter and Uranus, so I'll post those on other threads once I've finished processing them.

Thanks for looking at my NOT Naptune image.

Kostas, as discussed that's a really lovely image, smooth, but with lots of detail and excellent colour, well done..

Both images are very nice.

A lovely collection

You're really flying now Nigella. Another cracking image.

1 minute ago, Nigella Bryant said:

I've a 2x barlow but it's for my birthday pressie next week so don't think I'd get away with saying I wanted to test it

Happy birthday next week and I think Jupiter will wait for that 😉

5 minutes ago, Nigella Bryant said:

Thanks Geoff, much appreciated and encouraging. Perhaps I'm to hard on myself, lol. It will be interesting to see imaging at f10 instead of f25. Supposed to be clear tonight and tomorrow. I'll try at both focal lengths as an experiment. 

I suspect that you may be a tad undersampled at f10, but as you say, it will be interesting to see. Do you have anything less than the x2.5 PM that you could try? I think the sweet spot with that camera might be nearer F12/F15 (2.9μm x5 =14.5), but definitely worth trying both with and without the PM. Do you use an ADC, as that would probably give a little amplification by setting the camera further back.

When you loaded the images into WinJupos for derotation measurement, did you note what arcsec/px they were measured at? See bottom right corner in below screenshot for where to get that info...

This will allow you to calculate the actual FL and FR of the capture, as it's unlikely to be the nominal F10 of your OTA. (That is if you want to of course 🙂)

Use the below formula to calculate actual FL in mm (C11 nominal is 2800mm).

[Focal Length in mm] = (206.2648 x [Pixel Size in μm]) / [Arcseconds Per Pixel]

(NB ASI462MC has 2.9μm pixels)

....then divide the result by the dia of your OTA (280mm) to get the actual operating focal ratio of the capture.

Hope this helps.

12 hours ago, Nigella Bryant said:

Still some way to go, lol.

Wow Nigella, what a superb image and a big improvement over your first attempts; the colours in these version are just right. Hence, I have to disagree, you don't 'still have some way to go' - I think you've pretty much already arrived 👏. Now it's just waiting for the best conditions and I'd say small tweaks to your processing, as conditions and data will vary session to session.

I will be interested to see how you get on without the x2.5PM.

Thanks Kostas,

It's very interesting isn't it. I too prefer my original processing, apart maybe from preferring the warmer colours of today's version. I was chasing the smooth look and feel that I see in Damian Peach's images, but feel that I threw away some details in chasing that goal..... 🙄

17 minutes ago, yelsac said:

Thats a tough one Geof I love both images

I can see what you mean its softer than your original, I like the slightly warmer colour in the second but if I'm honest I prefer your original (probably says more about my sharpening methods 😉) I just find it more pleasing on the eye

Thanks, this is precisely why I asked for feedback. Different eyes often helps....

Alex,

That's both gorgeous and inspirational. I keep intending to try a colour image of the Moon with my ASI462, but still haven't attempted it. The FOV with the C14 is crazy small, rquiring about 100 images in a mosaic, but I should pair it with the 4" APO and see what that give's me. Maybe once I've done with Jupiter and Uranus (and maybe Neptune), I'll give it a try.

Nicely done Roy

25 minutes ago, Nigella Bryant said:

I'm working at f25 so acquiring data is although the same, collimation, tracking, etc has to be spot on

This is a recuring theme, but I do wonder if you're too oversampled at F25. I used to always include a x2PM or barlow in my imaging train, but this year I've left it out and frankly I don't think I'm losing anything in the detail, but gaining in potentially faster capture speeds and smaller download file sizes. I had a long discussion with Nicolàs @inFINNity Deck about it a few weeks ago and he's of the opinion that I'm still a tad oversampled at F13 with my C14 and ASI462MC. The science gets lost on me a bit and I also had a very helpful discussion with Kostas @Kon about the application of FFT (Fast Fourier Transform) in analysing my images, but the net is that I'm continuing to operate without any addional amplification, other than what the ADC gives by setting the camera a bit further back. You might want to experiment without the additional amplification and see what you find....🤔

These are excellent Nigella. Your processing is very good, with good colour balance and lots of detail coming through.

Really excellent detail in these Nigella and once the colour balance is fixed the images are superb. Trust me, I still struggle with colour balance and just posted a revision to mine from 25 Nov.....🤔

18 hours ago, geoflewis said:

Many thanks and yes, I am very pleased with it, but I keep wanting to play with it as I feel that it's come out a bit blue (cold). I also just saw Damian Peach's image from a similar timestamp and as always his is a smooth as silk, so I'm wondering whether I could hold back the processing on mine even more....🤔

Ok, so after posting my reply to @yelsac above, then seeing Damian Peach's UK image from a very similar timestamp, I've had several discussions with Kostas @Kon about detail vs smoothness in Jupiter images. I've been going for detail, but have been concerned that maybe I've overdone it, so I've reprocessed my data about a dozen times over the last couple of days. I also felt that my original was too 'cold' (blue). I reduced the use of HF wavelets, swapping for some LF wavelets and also played with the colour K settings in Image Analyser reducing from the default 6550k to 6200k, to warm up the image a tad. Here is is my latest version set alongside my original.

As well as the warmer colour balance, I was trying to get a smoother transition in the cloud structures without losing too much detail, so what do you all think please?

1 hour ago, yelsac said:

That is a truly stunning colour image Geof, I can only dream of getting such an image. You must be very pleased 👍

The ir is very good to, love the fine detail

Many thanks and yes, I am very pleased with it, but I keep wanting to play with it as I feel that it's come out a bit blue (cold). I also just saw Damian Peach's image from a similar timestamp and as always his is a smooth as silk, so I'm wondering whether I could hold back the processing on mine even more....🤔

2 hours ago, Kon said:

Thanks Stu. When the data are nice, they make processing a lot easier and can hold back on the sharpening as the detaisl are already there.

I think this can be the hardest part. We see good details already there before we start processing, so want to squeeze out every drop and end up overdoing it - it happens to me a lot. As already said, you processed this very well.

Kostas, as you already know, I think these are excellent images, thanks for sharing them with me off line. The colour image is superb, your colour balance and processing are spot on 👏👏 I think that we were both fortunate to grab the best of what was available that night.

1 hour ago, IDM said:

I was thinking of trying to re-process the image using Astrosurface as it appears to have a very comprehensive set of sharpening and denoise tools, but before just 'having a go' I wondered if there were any good tutorials that could be recommended? I saw some on You tube but I wasn't sure which was likely to be the most informative.

Thanks,

Ian

I didn't find any very good tutorials, so it's been trial and error for me. Mostly I just use the HF wavelets, pre-noise filter and a little NR. Here are some typical settings for me.

I experimented with Wiener Decon, but currently am not using it. The Wavelets LF settings were from my methane band processing, but I did not use those for my colour or IR images. My Wavelets HF settings range between a size of 8-12 and strength 15-25, with lower numbers in excellent seeing. Sometimes I don't use any NR, just the Noise prefilter.

After wavelets, I do run RGB align as Astrosurface makes sub pixel adjustments which I like and I will apply a little colour saturation maybe 10-20 on the sliding scale...

Of course every image is different and YMMV.

Good luck.