Registax Experts!! Anyone want a challenge??

[trickytree]

Hi

I''ve been tyring to get a nice pic of Saturn for a couple of nights, but I'm really struggling.

I have the Skywatcher Heritage 130 flex tube, and the Philips SPC900nc, and to get it anywhere near focussed, you have to bring the tube in about 1cm, which can be hit and miss.

I have plenty of footage, but don't know what the heck I'm doing with Registax, and have a fairly slow PC so it's pretty painful.

Would anyone be prepared to download some footage and play about with it, just to see if they can pull a nice image out of it?? I don't want to spend hours and hours trying different combos of settings if there is nothing there to get out of it!!

Any help would be greatly appreciated!!

Thanks, Gary

[Bizibilder]

There is a very good video tutorial on the "Astronomy Shed" forum. Hope this helps - otherwise post your avi's with a link and I'm sure folk will have a go for you.

[hayju01]

As Bizi says Astro Shed Tutorials are very useful and 'playing' with RegS is the best way to learn BUT I know how you feel so I'm more than happy to take a look at some avi's.

[lw24]

Although I'm fairly new to Registax, I'd be happy to have a little play around and see what I can get out of it.

[trickytree]

http://db.tt/wf4pJda

Hopefully that link will download a zipnfile containing the Avis and settings info.

Thanks!!

[lw24]

You really need some more magnification to get anything worthwhile. Have you tried using the webcam with a 2x Barlow?

Here's what I ended up with. It's not very good:

As I said before, you could do with some more magnification.

Clear Skies

[mchiv80159]

Thought i'd have a go with your avi's as i need the practice.I like a challenge

[junior]

I have the same scope and havent managed to get saturn on the webcam yet but managed the moon the other night and had to use a 2x barlow.

Well i took the lense out of the barlow and screwed it into the IR filter of the webcam.

[chemtom24]

you need to use a couple of barlows on that to get anything reasonable. a 2x just wont do enough. combine a 2x with either another 2x or a 3x.

you wont be able to get a crisp focus on this at all, so dont even try. just get it as best it will go, then get the image steady in the frame, and record as much as you can.

if you get a decent vid up then il gladly have a poke at putting it through registax for you

[trickytree]

Thanks for trying, and thanks for the extra info everyone!! Looks like a x3 is on my birthday list then.

[junior]

I have to say trying to keep saturn on the screen with the telescope we have at that magnification will be mighty difficult.

Or am i doing something wrong?

[chemtom24]

I have to say trying to keep saturn on the screen with the telescope we have at that magnification will be mighty difficult.

Or am i doing something wrong?

mighty difficult indeed.

good polar alignment and RA tracking will be about the only thing you can do to aid this.

if not, get saturn on ur screen at full mag, watch what way it drifts accross the screen - make any adjusments if neccassry to get it drifting accross the biggest part of the screen that you can - then position it on a far side of the screen, click record, and record it as it drifts along. any movement in the RA/dec manual controls on that scope will induce far too much vibration for it to be worth it. so you may only get 10-15 seconds of footage this way, but at least it shoudl be stable footage.

[chemtom24]

here are some comparison pics for you all to get a feel for image size.

taken with astromaster 130 eq, with standard mount and the neximage camera.

the first lot of images i beleive are 2x (tho it could be 1x, ie just the neximage - was ages since i took them)((either way, a 2x doesnt do alot to help..)) , and the second lot are 6x (2x +3x)

first pic in each is just a stacked image from registax, nothing touched, just got a basic pic to show you what it will look like when you get it in view on your webcam. this should help you get a feel for what the barlows will do for you.

second pics are of stacked images which have been processed with registax only.

I certainly felt lik i cheated when i got my result, but turns out this is the way almost everybody gets their planet images.

and the red colour of staurn i have no idea where that came from, it wasnt somehting i added, it jsut happened.

hope this helps

tom

2x 640x480.bmp

[chemtom24]

last saturn pic, 6x barlow, neximage and 130 F/5 newt

*EDIT - all taken with the drift method described above.*

[junior]

Cheers gives a good idea of what we could expect, the down side is trying to do this with a dobsonian mount is quite difficult as i found out the other night.

[Space Cowboy]

Best chance you have with a manual non-tracking mount is to capture about 10 mins of footage (rotational blur wont be an issue at this focal length). After capture which probably contains a lot of footage where the planet goes off screen, run through the editing program virtual dub to remove these frames. Finally run the edited footage through video cropping program "castrator" this will center the planet for aligning and stacking in registax. Both programs are freeware.