Jupiter. AGAIN.

[Baz Pearce]

GRS was centered at 9:30pm last night. I had a play with my barlow and zoom at a few different levels. Conditions were pretty good compared to average, seeing was steady, slightly damp in the air, and an occasional gust which i managed to avoid when capturing.

With barlow at 2.3X and no zoom.

2.3X with 1.5X digital zoom.

Then just 2X with 2X digital zoom added.

Touched up with GIMP as best i can so far (will try to improve 1st 2 later on today):-

All captured at 30fps with SharpCap. Then PIPPed and stacked in Registax5. Using 1500+ frames

Still plenty of room for improvement. Any tips will be welcomed.

Thanks,

Baz.

[bendiddley]

cool!

[BuzzBomb]

Good stuff.

Sent from my GT-I9001 using Tapatalk 2

[MikeMc]

Very nice, I have just posted my very 1st and 2nd attempts at Jupiter - they are no where near yours so this gives me hope.

[Baz Pearce]

Here's the newly processed 2.3X with zoom image

You can just about make out a tiny bump as Ganymede is emerging at the 5 o'clock position.

Baz.

[MikeMc]

Hi Baz - Thanks for the vid link on my embarrassing Jupiter post.

I assume that these pics were with your 70mm refractor? What mount and tracking do you have? Do you have any GoTo as I can't even see Jupiter with my Barlow on (but that may be due to the fact that it sat in the Garage for 5 years!?).

[Baz Pearce]

These were with the Astromaster130 webcam and Baader IR cut filter, with a skywatcher R.A. motor clamped to the mount.

[JamesF]

I wonder if you need to work on the focus a little more. It's awkward to get right at the best of times and even more so if you don't have a motorised focuser. Could perhaps be worth making yourself a Bahtinov or Y mask to experiment with?

James

[Baz Pearce]

I do have a bahtinov mask James. But it may be the wrong focal length, it says long on the label. So it may be for a 900mm FL, not my 650mm. Which does sound right because i seem to do better with focus when i'm just using the 1.5X barlow screw-in lens. Do you know the link to the mask design web page? Had it at 1 time, but i seem to have misplaced it.

Baz.

[JamesF]

I don't, I'm afraid. Someone else surely will though.

James

[DBushell]

It may be worth capturing at 10fps as I've heard this avoids compression of the movie frames.

Interesting to see we're using the same scope and camera, although I have a different IR cut filter.

I got this from 21st Nov which is similar to yours:

[JamesF]

When you do and don't get compression of the frames depends on the camera, resolution and what version of the USB protocols are supported.

With USB v2 it's not such a problem, but with cameras such as the SPC900 that only support USB v1 there's not enough bus bandwidth to do anything more than 5fps without any compression at all, but 10fps is often considered a better choice for planetary imaging despite the small amount of compression.

James

[DBushell]

Ah thanks for the info :-)

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Nice shots, especially for a 130mm scope. I focus without a Bahtinov Mask (I have one, but on an extended object like Jupiter I thought it a pain to use). I just fiddle and fiddle till I get it right (the sharpness of the moons can help in that respect).

[sologuitarist61]

Great images

[Baz Pearce]

Thanks Guys,

Normally use the moons as a guide for focus too. Gonna try a run on all my frame rates tonight if it's still clear. We'll see how they turn out.

Baz.

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Fingers crossed for good weather then (no chance here)

[Ultrapenguin]

Really nice pictures Baz, I especially like the very prominant GRS As regards focusing I love the moon method I set exposure to max then adjust focus so the moon is the smallest/sharpest it can be then set exposure back to normal. Using this method I have been able to capture plenty of detail, having said that I also have many stcked images just like your ones, the problem with them was not focus but seeing which did not allow me to get the detail that I knew was there.

[Baz Pearce]

I'll have to wait for a better night to do some more testing. The seeing was so poor last night, even the Moon was a struggle to get good focus on with only the 1.5X barlow on. When Jupiter came around it was jumping all over the place. Even when i turned off my tracking when it was in open sky, i could barely make out the bands, never mind the GRS. All that i could see there was a gap in the SEB.

Baz.