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First ever astroimaging

pixueto

By pixueto
in Imaging - Planetary

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pixueto

pixueto

Posted
Posted

This is my first post in the forum so please be gentle. Just wanted to know what you make of this. This is my first ever photo using Skywatcher 200P EQ5, Philips SPC 880 webcam, Sharpcap and Registax.

Thank you very much for your comments.

post-30999-133877701272_thumb.jpg

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pixueto

pixueto

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Thank you very much for your comments, I'm pretty chuffed!

256 frames taken and 203 stacked bu I don't understand yet the stacking process. I made a breahrough with the wavelets though and the quality of the picture improved a great deal.

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FrankieValley

FrankieValley

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Great image! Take as many frames as you can. I usually aim to take as many as my exposure and gain setting will allow in <90secs otherwise the fast rotation of Jupiter will blur things a bit. Try and keep the gain setting down to keep the 'noise' away and this will provide a smoother and sharper result with wavelets. I find 15fps gives best results, but you may find more fps works just as good. A good rule of thumb for me is 50% gain and then whatever exposure setting looks best on screen and press record. Play with wavelets. I don't understand them but the lowest one far right, the next one up a little less, etc is what I seem to use for best results. Looks like your aligning and stacking is good though, or you wouldn't have such a good result.

The biggest factor that has affected my efforts has been the 'seeing' and I have little idea how to influence that.... save to say subject nice and high (as Jupiter is currently) and just keep going out - sometimes conditions will be better than others and Jupiter won't be 'boiling' as much :-)

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pixueto

pixueto

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Great image! Take as many frames as you can. I usually aim to take as many as my exposure and gain setting will allow in <90secs otherwise the fast rotation of Jupiter will blur things a bit. Try and keep the gain setting down to keep the 'noise' away and this will provide a smoother and sharper result with wavelets. I find 15fps gives best results, but you may find more fps works just as good. A good rule of thumb for me is 50% gain and then whatever exposure setting looks best on screen and press record. Play with wavelets. I don't understand them but the lowest one far right, the next one up a little less, etc is what I seem to use for best results. Looks like your aligning and stacking is good though, or you wouldn't have such a good result.

The biggest factor that has affected my efforts has been the 'seeing' and I have little idea how to influence that.... save to say subject nice and high (as Jupiter is currently) and just keep going out - sometimes conditions will be better than others and Jupiter won't be 'boiling' as much :-)

Thank you for your tips. Can't wait to get some clear skyes and try!

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Clayton

Clayton

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Lovely shot!

At that scale don't be afraid to capture for 3min or more. This will help with 2 things.

The total number of frames that you can stack at a certain quality, which will reduce noise and allow you to be a little more agressive with the wavelets.

And the second thing is you will likely have more sharp frames/avi for registax to play with.

These two really amount to the same thing ie. a bit more flexibility in your processing ;)

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ikorodu

ikorodu

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Cracking first picture. You've got the GRS and a couple of barges in. I'm extremely jealous of you efforts. Can you tell me how you tracked Jupiter? Did you just allow it to drift across your FOV or keep adjusting the scope manually?

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pixueto

pixueto

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Thank you very much for your comments, I can't wait to get clear skies and try some of your suggestions but the weather isn't helping at the moment!

To track Jupiter I kept adjusting the scope manually. I must say that my polar alignment was rubbish as I recently sold my dobsonian to upgrade to an equatorial mount and I am still learning the basics. Jupiter was in the field of view but jumping all over the place. Registax did a brilliant job with the alignment so I gess I could have achieved a similar result with my old 8'' dobsonian.

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FrankieValley

FrankieValley

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Thank you very much for your comments, I can't wait to get clear skies and try some of your suggestions but the weather isn't helping at the moment!

To track Jupiter I kept adjusting the scope manually. I must say that my polar alignment was rubbish as I recently sold my dobsonian to upgrade to an equatorial mount and I am still learning the basics. Jupiter was in the field of view but jumping all over the place. Registax did a brilliant job with the alignment so I gess I could have achieved a similar result with my old 8'' dobsonian.

Your polar alignment doesn't need to be great, but obviously will decrease the amount of times you have to move the mount and vibrate everything. If you have your latitude dialed into the mount elevation (there should be an altitude/elevation degree scale on the side for that) then the majority of adjustments will be in RA only or possibly none at all if you have a motorised mount and you polar alignment in azimuth is good. A solid platform for the mount will reduce vibration and also level ground will help your polar alignment greatly.

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pixueto

pixueto

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Beats me hands down. I took 10,000 image avi file using an Phillips spc9000 and after processing got a very blurred melon. Well done.

Couldn't that be because of Jupiter's fast rotation period? It's only ten hours. Maybe 10000 frames are too many. I'am just a novice maybe someone more experienced can shed some light

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TerryW

TerryW

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It was only 2.7 minutes (1.62 degrees of spin) taken at 60 FPS. I also did some 500 frame runs as well. You guessed it: fuzzy melon rules ok.

It is just the 'seeing' at the moment. When I looked at the moon last night there was about 2 degrees of halo around it (all down to dampness in the atmosphere). It is more noticeable with the moon but is the same with Jupiter.

When you slowly run the avi frame by frame you can see the planet fading and emerging and varying between bad seeing and awful. This is pretty much what I see through the eyepiece.

I wish I could drag myself out of my bed at 3 in the morning but it ain't going to happen.

I'll be watching for that one clear night though. . . .

Terry

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