Jupiter 19th Aug DFK 618 reprocess

[Space Cowboy]

5000 stack 30fps resize. Auto Dob 250 with DFK 21AU618.AS.

5x powermate giving f30.

Taken 5.51am 19/08/2011.

[neil phillips]

Way to go, The best image i think ive seen from you since, ive been watching your progression. Colour looks good, processing looks rather nice actually.

your learning fast. i would say try to keep to this colour balance. as it looks pretty close to the mark to me.

slight variation is ok. i often go off myself a bit.

But thats the kind of colour balance i think is close to true. Nice detail.

Would you like to share the processing you did. Things will get even better as jupiter gets brighter and bigger. only your first try, dont forget. Hope you figured out the colour histogram, it will help keep to correct colour balance when capturing so less tweaking is needed later. I reckon this is a turning point for you, it cant be easy DOB tracking. but your making it work. and getting better along the way. Im very impressed. Hope my nagging has helped. and not just annoying

[Space Cowboy]

Cheers Neil!

Seems the best 3 images I got that morning were all in the last 10 mins. Although the extra frames stacked have not produced any more detail they have reduced the noise level. I'm not convinced by the accuracy of registax selection process. Even the "best" 1000 frames contained lots of chaff so thought what the hell and stacked 5000 from 5500 on this one.

Nothing too fancy on the processing just what I've been doing with Saturn. Used 4 alignment points in Reg 6 then after stacking used a wavelet setting from an online tutorial (can't find link). Basically top 3 wavelets 100% and select linked wavelets. Used auto rgb align then luminance from RGB and auto RGB balance. (luminance from RGB seems to bring out more detail and kinda gives it a shiny coat.)

Rotated image and resized roughly 125% before finally smoothing slightly in image analyser.

Tried defragmentation but it produces too much noise. The noise level seems much higher than with webcam which surprises me.

That first DFK image was just a rushed process while I was packing up the scope hence the colour being off.

Very pleased with how the replacement Dob mount tracked during these captures, certainly makes focussing easier when not having to fight to keep the image on screen. Did some short lunar captures too after sunrise but auto track control struggles with the moon so will try again with GOTO handset set to lunar tracking.

Your shared knowledge is invaluable Neil. The only nagging I get is from my Lady wanting me to wash the dishes rather than process these images

[neil phillips]

your right not to be convinced about quality estimation, i always find good frames and bad frames side by side. which is one of the reasons people like Anthony wessley use ninox to crop centre and quality estimate the frames before feeding them into reg. i think the process he and others use is BMP no doubt ill be corrected if im wrong about that. But a similar approach can be done either by creating a registered avi on registax quality estimated and optimized

( it will now be centred dead still and some offending frames already removed )

before putting back onto reg 6 for a kind of double weeding of the frames. reg works faster with the avi croped and centred quality estmated. as there is less frames ( some bad ones binned already ) cropping makes reg quicker. and keeping the planet still ( optimizing ) stops drift, helping the align points a little better.

I prefer to do this croping centering quality estimation first on k3ccd tools, i can save either at 100% or a 200% resized avi for smaller focal length shots. just save the avi, as uncompressed RGB as soon as reg gets this new cleaned up avi. it works better, for all the reasons mentioned, but you will still notice good and bad frames next to each other on reg 6 but just not as many.

its quite cheap k3, once you got it, you got it for life i reckon you would like it, free trial could be worth mucking about with, but as mentioned to you before you can crop on virtual dub, and create a new cleaned up avi on registax, using the registerd avi function. i prefer k3 but reg does it for free. Anyway you mentioned bad quality estimation, and slow speed, so im giving you things to maybe think about learn for the future when you get some killer images. like i say im always only a pm away if you need to figure how to do a registerd avi, or k3 registered avi.

But for now you should be pleased, this is better than what you got with the spc, both detail and colour in my opinion. your collimation must be quite good too, using a 5x powermate. you really are fast growing as a planetary imager. i remember last year befor you got your big scope. and how shakey your start with it was. now look at what your doing its great to see. keep going foward and learning its the key

[beamish]

Great image Stuart !

Ninox- all command line functions isn't it? Well, tried and failed to get my head around how to use it -no wonder AW uses it -he developed it didn't he?? Castrator does a great job of cropping and centering then as Neil has suggested, stick it in Reg and saved a new avi to load back in. Processing just takes on a new dimension with Castrator , the first time you watch Reg do it's thing !!!

[neil phillips]

Yes Karlo Bird did created it, ive never tried seems more to it than what we are describing agreed.

Castrator is another option ive not tried that, might be worth stuart trying that

[Space Cowboy]

Thanks again Neil!

I will take a look at those programs you mention.

I have used Castrator for the last 12 mths I view it as the most important program I use apart from Registax. The way the Dob tracking has been I would not have been able to produce images without it. My 1st light dfk thread is the first time I'd had tracking working well enough to not use castrator and capture one of the moons.

Cheers Karlo!

[Space Cowboy]

Redone this one in Reg 6 2000 frames stacked instead of 1000. 3 alignment points on the planet and 1 on Io. This is my favourite image from the 19th.

[Kokatha man]

Yes, this second one is very nice Stuart....!

Ninox really is a doddle to use, for those who know nothing about DOS it's still dead simple - you first have to create a folder for your avi and convert said avi to bmps (if you've captured in some other file system like fits you don't need this step.....)

Then it's bring up the command prompt from the "start" bar and put in the command texts - after first telling it where you've got ninox installed (eg, "path c:\ninox")

Where folks can get bamboozled is in the fact that spacing and the actual symbols/codes need to be replicated exactly as they are intended to be written.....eg, a "space" is necessary when indicating a change from any directory/folder to another place for any files, and there is a world of difference between a dash and a negative symbol on the keyboard.....sometimes when copying the command texts Word will transpose a dash and a negative and you sit there wondering why it's not working!

On that score all I do is keep a list of the main variants in the command text to copy and paste.....

.....anyway, nice image again Stuart!

[blackparticle]

The second process looks much better.

You might want to calibrate your monitor if you can. On my screen you can make out a black halo around the planet and the background has a slight blue tinge to it.

Here's the same .PNG file re-calibrated which might help.

[Space Cowboy]

Cheers K' man! I will roll my sleeves up and try that out for sure!

Thanks B' Particle. I have 2 monitors but cannot see any black halo on either. There is a slight blue tinge I agree as this was taken during daylight.

[blackparticle]

An image like this should help for your calibration.

And a full colour calibration

[Space Cowboy]

Thanks for that but I still can't see any black halo. Maybe your monitor is out?

[blackparticle]

I saw on Anna's profile (antimorris) she had a similar calibration image and I couldn't see a difference between solid black and the next grey scale up. After calibrating my screen I then found that all the images I'd done had a noisy background when I thought they were solid black.

Here's an exaggerated contrast segment to show you what I mean. Does that help?

[blackparticle]

And a calibrated segment -

[Space Cowboy]

Ok I still can't see any problem with my monitors but I do see what you are getting at with this image having a noisy background when overexposed. Its puzzling me because my other images don't have this. The problem is exposed when I select auto colour correction (luminance plane) in image analyser.

My question is why is it so noisy and how did you correct the problem as your repro has no noise?

[blackparticle]

I used a magic-wand selection on the background and then feathered the edge by a couple of pixels to join the darker area around the planet. Then it was just a case of darkening that section of the background. I then did a small selection around the moon and re-lightened that.

The noise has probably crept in with the dawn. The halo around Jupiter looks like a result of the wavelet processing. A selective tweak easily gets rid of it.

Another thing you could try as well is to desaturate/darken the blue channel slightly. I find it makes the dawn images look more natural in the shadowed area.

This process is from your auto colour correction one.

[Space Cowboy]

Thanks. I'm guessing you've used photoshop?

[blackparticle]

I did but if you're looking for some image software have you tried Delphinus? It's a freeware photoshop designed for astro use. It also functions as DSLR / AVI capture software if required.

Download Delphinus 3.0.1.0 Free - 16-bit image processing software with many powerful filtering algorithms - Softpedia

[EntropyStar]

Great pic, in time I'll hopefully be as good!

[Space Cowboy]

I did but if you're looking for some image software have you tried Delphinus? It's a freeware photoshop designed for astro use. It also functions as DSLR / AVI capture software if required.

Download Delphinus 3.0.1.0 Free - 16-bit image processing software with many powerful filtering algorithms - Softpedia

Cheers mate I will have a look at that!

[Space Cowboy]

Thanks Entropystar!