IDM

The weather forecast didn't seem very promising, with cloud followed by rain during the night. However, it was quite clear all afternoon and the Jet stream forecast was pretty good, so fortune favours the brave I set up in the C11 in the hope of learning something and captured a series of 60 and 90 second videos between 17.11 and 20.30, after which the clouds and rain rolled in. Exposure was set at 10ms and by setting a reasonable ROI I was getting a frame rate fluctuating between 95-107 FPS. By the time I packed up I had pretty much filled my laptops hard disk so I do need to think about how to manage the data. Given that I have ended up with some 90 videos to process I have only checked at regular time points during the session. Unfortunately the GRS was just rotating off at the start and all the seeing was not that great. However, as the session progressed there was a period of really good clarity and at 19.51. I captured the image below. This was done using an explore scientific 2x extender into mt Zwo ASI 224MC camera (with UV/IR block filter). The videos was processed through PIPP, Autostakkert, Registax and Astro Surface. I am really pleased with the detail I have finally managed to resolve. I did try winjupos on 9 x 60 second captures but haven't got that processing right yet. If I can get it better I may post that. I am of course grateful for any feedback and recommendations on improvements that I can make. Thanks for looking Ian

Thank you for the kind words. I have been trying to be more gentle with the sharpening. I noticed a comment you made about increasing colour saturation in Astrosurface. To my eye this really helps in 'lifting' the colours particulalry some of the blues. Ian

Thank you Kostas. i am hoping that we get a weather window soon. Ian

Weather here hasn’t been good recently however, there was a brief window with a forecast of only moderate jet stream on the 5th for me to try out some of the suggestions made by Geof and Kostas. These being: 1. Use of a barlow to move from F10 to F20, for better sampling (Camera has 3.75um Pixels so 18.75, probably optimal). 2. Increase my exposure from 5ms (typically 195 FPS) to 10ms. 3. Increase my histogram up to around 80-90% I would like to say everything worked out however, I made the mistake of switching from Sharpcap to Firecapture. Now that shouldn’t be a problem other than I didn’t know there was a tick box in a camera sub menu for high speed capture! This meant that far from reaching 100FPS I only managed 50FPS on average. So far too slow to freeze the seeing! However, I carried on by taking 9 x 60 second videos between clouds. These I processed through PIPP, Autostakkert, Registax, Winjupos and finally Astrosurface to produce the image below. Now I know it’s not great but given the conditions and frame rate I feel it tells me that I am going in the right direction. Unfortunately we have had nothing but rain and snow since so have been unable to check out the higher frame rate capture to see if I can finally pull out more fine detail. Thanks for looking Ian

That looks lovely to me. I keep wandering about Pixinsight and avoid it only due to the steep learning curve and when I have looked it hasn't seemed very intuitive, but you are making me think again. Ian

I set up early and had a first session around 19.00 and Jupiter was boiling so I left it till about 21.30. At that time I could see the GRS but again none of the captures were at all good after processing. I then packed it in as it was very cold. i am using a Zwo ASI 224MC so I have 3.75uM pixels so 5x = 18.75 so a 2x Barlow on a C12 is 20 so I guess that’s what I should use. It’s interesting that you are going as slow as 100fps, I have always tried to go as fast as possible, that is clearly not required as judged by your image quality!! The scope is on a forked alt-az mount and am able to keep planets within a pretty small ROI. thanks for your feedback I think I have a lot to learn. Ian

Hi Kostas, what time did you get good seeing? I looked at the jest stream map and it looked like it should have been good on the 30th but when I went out whilst I could see the GRS, Jupiter was boiling and none of the videos I took could be processed into anything worth sharing. I know I am considerably further North than you but still wondered about timing. Also I tried with an without 2X barlow so F10 and F20 on my C11 and seeing as I am using a ASI224MC thought F20 would be a better ratio, but whenever I try I get worse results. I assume this is down to having to use a larger ROI which drops my frame rate from 195 to about 113. Do you (or anybody else) have any thoughts on this kind of issue? Thanks Ian

That is a lovely image. Seeing for me on the 27th was not that good. I have a C11 but am yet to have success adding a 2x Barlow. Ian

Thank you so much for the guidance. I will investigate tomorrow. Ian

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 do have an ADC, but, rather embarrassingly, I didn't use it, as I currently feel quite rushed to get the captures done before Saturn disappears into the trees. I really should fit it and us it if only to get the practice. Cheers Ian

Deep Space Astro has an automated Siril script for Hubble pallet if you want to try something easily. If you are using Siril then his other tutorials are also superb. Cheers Ian

Wish my first attempt had looked like that! Very nice. Ian

I only get a 30 minute window where Saturn appears from behind my neighbours house before going into the trees! So I keep trying to get a half decent image. However, this is proving difficult. I hoped the jet stream might have moved out the way for things to be better. Anyway this was the best I could using 3 min videos captured at about 190FPS, prior to processing through PIPP, best 10% of frames stacked with Autostakkert and sharpened with Registax. I find Saturn hard to process due to lack of surface detail so appreciate any comments and feedback. Ian

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

Yes, I see what you mean I will go back and reprocess to get it better balanced. Thanks for the feedback. Ian

I noticed the jet stream prediction indicating better seeing on Saturday night. Weather certainly wasn't perfect with a lot of cloud so I struggled to get 2 minute videos. I used my (new to me) C11, with an Zwo ASI-224MC camera. I reduced to region of interest to get a frame rate of about 190FPS. The video was processed through PIPP prior stacking in Autostakkert and finished in Registax. Despite the less than perfect conditions, I was very pleased to achieve the image below. Thanks for looking Ian

This is exactly what I do and it works perfectly. I am out at the beginning of the session with my laptop which I remote desktop to the mini PC, during that time I check polar alignment focus, slew plate solve. Once everything is working fine I can retreat into the warmth and just keep an eye on PHD2 and meridan flips. Cheers Ian

I have had a pretty lean time with my planetary imaging and feel I have made little progress over the last couple of years. Despite this I really wanted to improve and in an attempt to improve things I bought a secondhand C11 scope on a fork mount. The first night out with the new scope it was clear that it was totally out of collimation and the Celestron mount was also not setup properly. So after a day of panic that I had bought something that was broken I managed to sort the mount out (PSU not powerful enough and GPS module turned off for some reason). I also watched a video on SCT collimation and 30 minute later things were looking up somewhat! All the fiddling around left me very little time before Saturn drifted behind trees. So I managed to grab a couple of 2 minute videos with frame rate at 190 FPS. The best 10% of frames were stacked and sharpened with Registax. Whilst it’s not a great image it is vastly better than my previous attempts and hopefully I will be able to refine my methods over the coming weeks. Unfortunately by the time I had taken the Saturn videos, the clouds rolled in and Jupiter was not possible!! Hopefully the weather will improve soon! Thanks for looking Ian

The image take on the nights of the 6th and 7th of November when I was staying at my mums house in Surrey. This is one of the few times that I have actually had clear nights when travelling with my scope mount and camera. The image consists of 400 120 second exposures, so 13 hours and 20 minute exposure. Equipment was an Altair 70 EDQ-R quad scope with Optolong ultimate filter and Altair 26C camera. The mount was an Ioptron IEQ30 pro. Processing was done with Siril with an automated stacking script that uses background extraction. Thanks for looking. Ian

The scope is and Altair 70EDQ-R F5: Altair 70 EDQ-R F5 Quad APO Astrograph (altairastro.com) Which with camera, and guidescope weighs in at about 5.5kg (from memory). I don't think its a balance issue as the Ioptron mount has very little resistance to movement so even slight imbalance makes it move when the clutches are released. I generally do a final balance when the scope is on-board with all cabling etc and haven't as yet forgotten the dew shield or to remove the lens cap.

I answered my own question by reading the Sharpcap insruction: "A negative Local Hour Angle means that your mount is heading towards the meridian and (for equatorial mounts) may need to flip orientation to continue imaging past the meridian. For instance a Local Hour Angle of -00:25:00 means that your mount will reach the meridian in 25 minutes"

Last night was clear so I thought I would just play with the guiding and eventually got half decent RMS, luckily the mount quickly did a meridian flip and as expected the guiding was chaotic. So I stopped guiding, did a plate solve (without going to park). I then deleted my calibration data in PHD2 and restarted PHD2 and let it recalibrate, followed by guiding assistant. The results were however, awful, I went from 0.8RMS to 2 RMS post flip. Maybe parking would have been a better idea? I am unsure if I have software or mount problem, or possibly both. I felt very frustrated and to cap it all its the last clear night I will see for a week. Feeling rather despondent this morning. Also is there an easy way to know approximately what time the mount will do the flip?

I need to get an understanding of the sequencer in Sharpcap. As a relatively new imager I haven't tried to do overnight runs until this year. I must find a good guide to the Sharpcap sequence planner.

I am using PHD2 with Sharpcap. I suddenly feel like I have hit the wall in terms of my understanding and I probably need to read deeper into the software manuals!