My very first Jupiter (23 October)

[Ringrocket]

Hello,

Finally I got to have my first look at Jupiter through my telescope a few day's ago. Even at low power I was surprised at how much bigger it was compared to Saturn. Next day I did my first imaging of Jupiter after having read a lot and viewed many pics of others. So 23rd I finally set up the rig at the roof of my kitchen in the center of the light polluted Dutch Utrecht city and could get jupiter in view over and between the roof tops of neighbors. Not yet ideal.....

I used a SW-Mak-150 and a DBK camera, with processing using mostly defaults in R5.1 to get a quick view of what I got. I was pleasantly surprised by what came out of the B/W undebayerd pic

The focussing (using a Bahtinov mask) is now much better than what I got on Saturn this year. I did not yet use a Barlow.

What a fantastic hobby

Can't wait to image more of Jupiter !

[bigal1]

Thats an excellent image especially for your first of Jupiter well done was it the 150 mak or the 127 you used ? ( was looking at your sig )

[si@nite]

very nice first image, start to push up the power and you should get some good detail , but beware it comes at a price.

[cosmicdonkey]

For your first attempt on Jupiter that is amazing. great details

[astroman001]

Well done, great start.

[Space Cowboy]

Very impressive!

[Ringrocket]

Thanks everybody ! That's motivating....

@Bigal: I used the 150-Mak on ADM with DK3 motors.

The 127 Mak with EQ3-2 is my travel scope. The 150 and ADM is too heavy for me (I don't have a car). I found the 150 very cheap at a sales.

[Clayton]

Very nice. Please take some more

Good advice above.

Hope you don't mind me having a play with your image

[neild]

That's a great image for a starter!

[Ringrocket]

Hope you don't mind me having a play with your image

Hi Clayton, thanks, that's an improvement

With what program did you do that ?

To be very critical: It's not 101 % perfectly pinpoint sharp ? Does it mean the camera and scope were not focused enough, or is it solely because of the increase in size starting from a small image ?

Cheers,

Jeffrey

[couleurblue]

Hi...I had a go at it too...I hope that you do not mind.See the moon also.

Cheers Gordon.

[saturn4me]

Very nice image! Well done:icon_salut:

[Clayton]

Hi Clayton, thanks, that's an improvement

With what program did you do that ?

To be very critical: It's not 101 % perfectly pinpoint sharp ? Does it mean the camera and scope were not focused enough, or is it solely because of the increase in size starting from a small image ?

Cheers,

Jeffrey

Hi Jeffrey

Firstly scaling images up will always make them look less sharp. I did go a bit berserk at 150% in CS3 :o

There are many other factors that can influence the sharpness of an image, the most influential IMHO is seeing. It is a rare moment when 9-10/10 seeing occurs and being prepared for it is a great advantage (even then a visit from Murphy is likely ) You have to live with the seeing, but there are a list of other things that you don't have to live with, including collimation, focus, and poor optical components.

I believe (don't really know) that the Mak's are pretty good in respect of coming from the factory and holding collimation, focusing is a bit of an art, and I think you are very close in this respect, I would still have a bit of a play without the mask, after capturing a few if you are not confident. I may be wrong, but I don't think any of the best imagers use a mask. Even if you just give it a tiny tweak either side of what you think is good, after a while you will become very good at judging focus by eye.

As for optical components, there are good ones and poor ones. If you suspect for eg. that you have a dud Barlow then try to borrow one that is a proven performer to compare. Whilst on the subject of Barlow's you should consider using something like a 2X (if your system is f12), and some extension tubes for times of better seeing. The larger scale will help you to focus, and will mean that you don't need to upscale (resample) the final image so much, if at all. At f12 you will be losing data as the resolvable detail will only be covering single (or slightly more) Pixels, whereas the ideal is about 2-3 pixels.

All that said you have produced a very very good image :icon_salut:

[Kokatha man]

Very good first effort..!

[Ringrocket]

Hi, thanks everybody !

Thanks for your advice too Clayton ! I did record some with a 2.5x Powermate and a 2x Shorty Barlow. I didn't have time yet to process them. So I guess the 2.5 Powermate might be a bit too much (at f30) ? Although I read that the Antares shorty Barlow in reality might also give a 2.5x instead of 2x ? I will see later........

Meanwhile I also find it hard to keep track of all the different settings I experimented with and to which image-file they belonged

I was hoping to record the GRS yesterday but the air was too moisty and I got home too late to also cool the scope before recording so I missed the GRS and a shadow transit..... But that's good because I now I still have some firsts to look forward to