geoflewis

You did well Ian, given your short capture window, northerly location and challenging weather conditions. Saturn is still too low from our northerly location to extract much detail and at an elevaton where it will suffer from significant atmoshperic dispersion, unless you use an ADC. The good news is that Saturn is slowly climing north, so the next few years will become easier, though the rings will be closed to us in a couple of years, which will be interesting to see, but of course it's the rings that make Saturn such a special object to see and/or image.

Very nice first attemp Roy. The main features are showing and colour balance is good, but detail is a little soft. Did you apply RGB alignment, as the moons in particular are showing some prism like dispersion?

8 minutes ago, bosun21 said:

Great captures once again Geoff. The colour image is specially appealing. Just bought an IR pass filter so looking forward trying it out. Do I need to change the exposure setting for it? Thanks.

Thanks. I use the same capture setting for my IR742 pass, as I do for straight colour with the ASI462MC, so I'd start there. Good luck, I look forward to seeing what you get.

1 hour ago, Kon said:

I agree this is really nicely processed and agree with Stuart's comment.

The methane is still very interesting and I would like to see what more you can get. Christopher definitely has his settings right for methane although I haven't seen any numbers regarding acquisition. I have found with my limited experience and sub par results that Anu haze kills the methane signal and you need excellent transparency. I don't think you are far off of the weather plays ball.

Thanks Kostas, I'll keep trying. I think the 1m SERs reduced the smearing, but at those capture speeds I'm getting less than 1000 frames per SER, so probably I need to shoot many more SERs to increase total signal in the final stack.

1 hour ago, Space Cowboy said:

That colour shot is as sweet as a nut! Geof you have nailed it! Thats the best Jupiter shot we've seen on here this year! Gorgeous colour balance and fine understated detail.

Oh wow, thanks Stuart, that is high praise indeed, I'm truly humbled 😊. As I said to Kostas, I really held back on the processing this time, so that the image didn't get too sharp. I'm now wondering what some of my earlier data would look like if I reprocessed it....🤔

1 minute ago, IDM said:

I have had a go at re-processing. Unfortunately I didn't save my wavelet settings in Registax so may have slightly over-sharpened. However, the colour balance is far better and I think the image looks better. I also did a slight crop round the edge as I think there must be some kind of stacking artefact.

I would be grateful for any feedback

The colour blance is much better in this version Ian. I also tend to agree that you may have pushed the wavelets a bit too hard, but overall it's a very nice result.

14 minutes ago, Kon said:

Excellent details on the colour image; as I said in our messaging, one of your best this apparition despite the less clear sky. The IR is outstanding, so much more going on. Your methane is getting better and better. I feel you might be able to push it a bit more.

 

Thanks Kostas,

Yes, I agree, these are some of my better images this year. I think I may have had better captures, but possibly over processed them. I've dialled back on the wavelets in Astrosurface quite a bit for the colour and IR here. The methane band was through cloud and a mixture of trial settings from 75ms, 66ms, 50ms all 1m SERs. Also much less data as fewer SERs, even though I used 60% of each SER. The images were very noisy, so there's lots of NR applied. Hopefully one of these nights I'll get a decent run with the CH4 filter.

After capturing the aurora earier in the evening, later last night I headed out for another try at Jupiter and Uranus (that one got away due to cloud), unsure what the seeing would be like as East Anglia was still under the remnants of the Jetstream. Seeing was definitey a bit in and out, but lucky imaging did it's job grabbing the good frames. I ran 9x1m SERs for RGB and IR, but was already losing the sky to cloud as I started the CH4 captures, so that was cut short. Here are what I got from the session.

I was hoping to experiment with different capture settings for methane band (CH4), but clouds stopped me completing those tests, so that rather noisy image, is a mix of different capture settings.

That's showing excellent detail Ian. The overall colour looks a bit blue to me (even the background and border), but it's still a very nice image.

Two excellent captures Reggie. I haven't imaged Neptune in nearly 10 years - I need to try that next year, maybe.

That's fantastic Kostas, well done. You keep raising the bar.....!!

11 minutes ago, happy-kat said:

Is this Steve? 6:43pm

Images realized for web

Meant to add the mauve was visible naked eye

Sorry, I don't know. What direction was that seen in?

Well done @happy-kat, you definitely got it. I sent mine to Sandra-B at BAA and she's issued an email alert including my report of sighting from Norfolk. She says..

A CME struck the Earth at 0745UT 2023 Nov 25th. The levels are indicating a G1 class storm with speeds of over 500 kps. I have thick cloud cover, but sightings have already been made from as far south as Norfolk. The field is unstable, but mostly neg, so this could run all night. Please keep an eye out for STEVE appearing south of the main display.

I got an altert on my phone so headed out and was able to capture these as the clouds were rolling in from the north.

5 minutes later we had total cloud cover.

Nicely done Kostas. Thanks for the heads up last night, but there was nothing happening here.

Well done @carastro. I am also now able to access the site.

27 minutes ago, Barv said:

If you know anyone that wants a C14, I have an Edge HD that I am considering selling

Tempting, but..... 🙄

7 minutes ago, Nigella Bryant said:

Thanks Geoff, think I've got one and the Zwo 462mc is good for IR. 

Yes, the 462MC is what I'm using and is very sensitive in IR. I've been using the IR742 Pro Planet, but I think anything from the 600nm through the 742nm range should work fine with the C11. Set your capture at around 30ms (fps) and capture for a few minutes (say, 2 or 3). You should also be able to tease out some moons as well I think. Good luck.

That's a superb image Harvey, you nailed the processing 👏

That's a nice first image of Jupiter, well done. The main features are well seen and despite the small image size, it looks like you've got some detail coming through too. I'm not familiar with AstroDMx, so does it allow you to set an ROI around the planet, to increase capture frame rates? 30fps should give you good results, but 8fps is definitely going to be more challenging.

Two lovely images.

That's really lovely Nigella. Try it with an IR Pass Filter if you have one, to get the polar hood, which should be pretty easy to reveal with your C11.

That's excellent Reggie, the reprocessed version after Kostas feedback is much cleaner and a very nice result.

Very nicely dome Kostas. Unfortunately my skies last night were 90% cloud. It looked like someone had stuck cotton wool balls together, over the entire firmanent, with just the tiniest of gaps between them, but not enough to tempt me to open the observatory....

I also use this excellent site and likewise see that I cannot access any of the links currently.