help need for saturn

[cal1985]

hi all.. i have never done processing using ps5 on planets before and gave it a go last night. however im really not happy with the results and wondered if it is my basic skills or if it is because my equipment is just not good enough to get a good image. i have attached the jpeg's but have all the tiffs avalible if someone would like to play.. they were all taken with a HEQ5 pro synscan mount, guided with a celestrion 80 skywatcher synguider philips SPC880 flashed, through a skywatcher 130/900

program used was sharpcap and avi was taken of 5mins for pic1 6mins for pic 2 and 3

stacked with registax 6

as much help is needed and any critism is more than welcome.

many thanks cal

[Space Cowboy]

My guess would be gamma too high and gain too low on capture. Can you post up the camera settings they should be saved in the sharpcap avi folder.

[cal1985]

pic 1 = [Philips SPC 900NC PC Camera]

Frame Divisor=1

Resolution=640x480

Frame Rate (fps)=5.00

Colour Space / Compression=YUY2

Exposure=-4

Brightness=73

Contrast=39

Saturation=50

Gamma=0

ColorEnable=255

BacklightCompensation=0

Gain=37

pic 2 = [Philips SPC 900NC PC Camera]

Frame Divisor=1

Resolution=640x480

Frame Rate (fps)=5.00

Colour Space / Compression=YUY2

Exposure=-4

Brightness=88

Contrast=43

Saturation=13

Gamma=0

ColorEnable=255

BacklightCompensation=0

Gain=12

pic 3 = [Philips SPC 900NC PC Camera]

Frame Divisor=1

Resolution=640x480

Frame Rate (fps)=5.00

Colour Space / Compression=YUY2

Exposure=-4

Brightness=75

Contrast=43

Saturation=13

Gamma=0

ColorEnable=255

BacklightCompensation=0

Gain=12

many thanks

[Space Cowboy]

Ok, gamma is fine being zero but you need very high gain for Saturn 80-100%. i see you've raised brightness on one but that only affects live view it does not change the captured level.

I will have a play with one of your tiffs if you like (from the 1st image).

[cal1985]

that would be amazing thankyou. one thng have noticed is that by turning up the gain, this becomes extremey noisy... how do u get around that ? can you do a dark avi as such??

saturn 1.tif

[cal1985]

do u think that the sw 130/900 is capable of getting a good saturn image?

[Space Cowboy]

I would use 10fps for 6mins should give you 3600 frames so if you stack 500-1000 you wont have a problem with noise in the stacked image even at such a high gain level.

Did you use a barlow? If not then a 3x barlow would work ok with your scope....the extra scale gives the webcam a better chance of capturing more detail.

Saturn is very tough this year being low and dim so your little scope will struggle.

Here is your tiff image after using wavelets in registax 6. I selected the default wavelet filter option rather than gaussian and moved the 3rd slider to 100.

To be honest I think you've got a pretty decent image for your scope though the colour is off. Did you use auto whitebalance on capture? Because Saturn is so dim you will often get odd colours unless you manually adjust whitebalance.

What alt was Saturn when you took these shots? Make sure you try and capture the Planet at it's highest alt which admittadly is only 29 degrees but every bit makes a big difference.

[Cloudwatcher]

I Don't have the Tif version but just to give an idea of what you could do within PhotoShop working with the jpeg.......see below.

Applying Auto Levels to the original will give you a better view of what is in the image. Burn of the fuzzy edges and sharpen......after that it's a question of playing with the hue/saturation,sharpness etc. to suite.

HTH.

[cal1985]

ok going by stellarium it was at 31'! its was taken at 00.35 last night... (this morning) im really impressed with the image you have done there, thank you for that... the image was taken with 1 2x barlow (admitaly its the standard one that came with the sw scope)!! i also have another 2x barlow. yet again quite a cheap one.. i tried stacking both barlow's together but found that the avi was not bright enough.. i had the auto white balance was off but didn't play around with the colours.. another question i had was what is the blue halo's i get when i take the avi?

yet again many thanks for taking the time to help me with my questions and taking the effort to clean up the image, im very grateful thankyou

[WayBig]

I Don't have the Tif version but just to give an idea of what you could do within PhotoShop working with the jpeg.......see below.

Applying Auto Levels to the original will give you a better view of what is in the image. Burn of the fuzzy edges and sharpen......after that it's a question of playing with the hue/saturation,sharpness etc. to suite.

HTH.

That's quite some improvement. I learned about dodge/burn last week, albeit with gimp rather than PS. But, what are auto-levels and they be done in gimp?

[cal1985]

many thanks cw that reallly has blown me away, thank you for that,, i haven't heard of dodge/burn.. what is that?

[Woolleson]

I Don't have the Tif version but just to give an idea of what you could do within PhotoShop working with the jpeg.......see below.

Applying Auto Levels to the original will give you a better view of what is in the image. Burn of the fuzzy edges and sharpen......after that it's a question of playing with the hue/saturation,sharpness etc. to suite.

HTH.

Hope you don't mind me jumping on board,

I'm having a similar problem (see my below par attempt on my 150p and spc900), what I have trouble with is horrible ghost blue fringing, get this on mars too (but not Jupiter).

Is this a problem with the cam or Barlow? Recently bought a 3x Meade ED one to help, but no joy!

BTW, play away ;0)

[WayBig]

Woolleson - have you tried an rgb align, that may alter the colour fringing, that or ticking the create luminance box in registaxx?

[Woolleson]

Waybig, no I havent but will try.

Been playing with this for hours and cant get it right, looked at what others "above" have done with my similiar image but cant get it anyway near

So want it to look like I saw through the EP !!!

Will try that though, thanks xx

Wonder if Cloudwatcher could post a workthrough on how he tranformed the image above, pretty awsome in my eyes !!!!

Thanks for any help. I/we need it !

[cal1985]

agreed a walkthrough would be something else.. im gonna have a little play to see if i can recreate the images

[Woolleson]

agreed a walkthrough would be something else.. im gonna have a little play to see if i can recreate the images

I'm playing as we speak, just dont get it !!! I thought I was good on PS (I'm a wedding photographer) but feel like a noob/*** compared to the others..............

Eh - em !!!

BTW, your image looks fabtastic now

[cal1985]

yeah it is really impressive, but cant get anywhere near what cloudwatcher did! i feel exactly the same.. thought i was ok on PS just always thought it was the scope that wasn't good enough lol! just to think what the others could do with the subs i chuck away!!

[Woolleson]

Well took on board all the advice and here's my best attempt !!!!

I feel it's a lot better, using the RGB align and luminance seems to of helped a lot !!!!

Let us know what you would do to improve though, liking it more now..............

Big thanks peeps, your so supermarket.com !!!!

J xxx

[cal1985]

that is an amazing improvement well done.. cant seem to make much difference with mine.. just seems to get brighter!!

[Jammy]

Woolleson - have you tried an rgb align, that may alter the colour fringing, that or ticking the create luminance box in registaxx?

I agree, the rgb does look like it needs aligning

[Jammy]

Cal1985 I had a look at your settings and they're not to different from the settings I used last week to take the attached photo in Sharpcap and then stack in Registax6. I took 1000 1/10th second shots through a x2 Celestron Barlow and allowed Registax to align and stack the best 50%.

Then 'Estimate' RGB alignment, and 'Auto Balance' the RGB balance, then sharpen with the wavelets and adjust the brightness using the gamma feature.

[Philips SPC 900NC PC Camera]

Frame Divisor=1

Resolution=640x480

Frame Rate (fps)=10.00

Colour Space / Compression=YUY2

Exposure=-4

Brightness=64

Contrast=32

Saturation=0

Gamma=0

ColorEnable=255

BacklightCompensation=0

Gain=45

I was wondering if you had the focus correct? With Saturn being so low in the sky it took me a good 20 mins to find a focus I was happy with - and to be honest I still wasn't happy!

I suppose the difference could be our scopes?? Mine is advertised as being especially good for planetary viewing. For what its worth, I've added one of my photos.

[cal1985]

hi jammy, thats a pretty cool image, can make out the cassini division as well.. it could well be a focus issue,.. i spent alot of time on this, but my focusser on the 130 is.... well not the greatest ! im m gonna see what happens next time.. but it was a little windy last night so could be the low frame rate..

[Space Cowboy]

ok going by stellarium it was at 31'! its was taken at 00.35 last night... (this morning) im really impressed with the image you have done there, thank you for that... the image was taken with 1 2x barlow (admitaly its the standard one that came with the sw scope)!! i also have another 2x barlow. yet again quite a cheap one.. i tried stacking both barlow's together but found that the avi was not bright enough.. i had the auto white balance was off but didn't play around with the colours.. another question i had was what is the blue halo's i get when i take the avi?

yet again many thanks for taking the time to help me with my questions and taking the effort to clean up the image, im very grateful thankyou

Glad to be of help!

Blue halo maybe just atmospherics which can be fixed with rgb align in registax or it could be caused by your whitebalance being off or even the cheap barlow. Hard to tell until you've balanced the colours.

I'd try stacking those barlows again if conditions are good and for sure you would need gain on max. You could also unscrew the lens off one barlow and use that as an extension tube which would give less focal length than 2x 2. Thats putting the extension in the other barlow then cam in extension.

Jammy's image is better purely because its a larger scope.

[Woolleson]

hi jammy, thats a pretty cool image, can make out the cassini division as well.. it could well be a focus issue,.. i spent alot of time on this, but my focusser on the 130 is.... well not the greatest ! im m gonna see what happens next time.. but it was a little windy last night so could be the low frame rate..

I found using a bahtinov mask helped me focus, just pointed it at spica focussed and slew around to Saturn. The hardest part for me was getting the little ****** on the screen, with a 3x barlow it don't half move quick !!!

God remember what it was like before I had drives, I'd lose the object before had time to pop in my cam............ Though still manage to press one button before the others and shoot it off the screen

[Woolleson]

I agree, the rgb does look like it needs aligning

Yep spot on Jammy, can't believe they don't tell you that in the manuals