Planet Camera V DSLR

[James4]

OK, my Jupiter images are just not cutting it.

So is it the camera?, the telescope?, my local conditions?, me? (my processing techniques).

Mmmm? don't know ....

I have The C9.25 - with which others are producing great images.

I have checked the columation - although I have to admit to struggling a little on this.

Its easy to defocus a star and see the doughnut - but I have found it very difficult to fet steady enough seeing to see diffraction rings at high power. whenever I have tried this, the diffraction rings are usually blowing like a flag in a crosswind.

Its stone cold here right now - hovering above and below zero - and the scope is stored just above outside temperature, I don't think cooling is an issue.

I have played around with pocket digital camera's, had the Meade Lunar Planetary Imager as my first astro-camera and done a fair bit of Deep Sky imaging with my two DSLRs - Canon 300D and now Nikon D5000.

I recently picked up the Celestron Neximage5 Planetary Camera - I decided this would sort out any doubts about the DSLR not being up to the task. I have had three outtings with the Planet Camera and tried to shoot DSLR video on the same outtings for comparison.

I stack in Registax and finish in Photoshop CS2 (free right now). But there is one area for doubt and that is the infamous 'Wavelets'.

I have seen and tried all manner of settings here - it realy does seem to be an area of Black Magic.

Here are the results of my new efforts into Planetary Imaging.

[James4]

Yikes, was not finished there ....

I have shot around 60 GB of video - some not usable - even after trying to repair in VirtualDub - but plenty of usable from the lastest session.

With the planet camera the difficulty is with settings, brightness, colour balance, focus, image drift, dust motes and/or light flare (from streetlights and the moon) in the light path. In contrast to this, the DSLR is pretty well plug an play - no cables and if you give it a decent image scale it gets exposure by itself.

Here are the two best images I have come up with. They were resized downwards for sharpness from the original larger raw images.

First the best image from The Neximage5

Now from the Nikon D5000

I have seen superb images taken with this same equipment but for now this is the best I can produce.

I am tempted to ditch the Neximage5 until I can move to a B&W Planet Camera at some time in the future.

One good thing though, is having the video store to rework if my processing skills improve at some point.

Thanks for reading ...

James

[James4]

Just for comparison here is a Neximage5 image before trying to hide the poor detail by resizing.

[budski]

Hi James, welcome to the madhouse. It was interesting to read your account because it's a similar story with just about everyone that's ventured into imaging. The collimation aspect of the 'scope is the first thing to look at because everything else is downstream of that. In my own experience of SCT's ( I have a C11) , the plastic engineering keeping the secondary mirror in alignment is generally ok but could be a problem in the low temperatures you're describing. Nonetheless the C9.25 is a fine instrument when well set-up so you'll need a half-decent night to do the collimating when the atmosphere is steady and your corrector plate doesn't dew up half-way through the process. After that, the focusing is the next most critical element with most people opting for electrically operated systems. Once you've acquired some good video streams it's a case of putting in a considerable number of man-hours getting to grips with the image manipulation software. I wish there was an easier way -but there isn't .... besides which it'll keep you out of mischief for a long time!

The way forward is to nibble away at it and ask specific questions as you go along - the guys on this forum are legendary for giving help.

Regards

Bud

[Ewan]

Hi James, first off i am not as experienced as some of these on here but i have done quite a lot of imaging now & processing quite a bit (too many hours now).

First could you post some more details or screenshots of your settings for collecting the data ? fps , length etc ?

Download AS!2 here http://www.autostakk...om/wp/download/, you will probably have better luck than Regi for stacking.

As for wavelets, it depends what you put in as to what you will have as an end image, bad in bad out.

Here are a couple of screenshots to give you some idea, i understand it will look like a lot until you try it for yourself, they are fairly user friendly though.

Registax 6:-

AS!2 :-

With wavelets (if my capture is pretty good) i TICK Use Linked Wavelets, set wavelet 1 denoise to roughly what you see, then 2 to a little less, drag number 2 slider to the far right, then adjust slider 1 (can normally go far right as well), slider 3 a little less & i go progessivly less with the sliders as i goto 4,5 & 6 (most times i won't use these but experiment).

I run RGB Align but it may / may not do anything, The secret is go easy, a littled at a time & if your not happy then start over, you will reach a point where you just cannot get anymore from the data though.

As for AS!2, i am still trying various things out but i find it does give better results than Reg 6, i have tried 30% stack upto 90% depending on data & if i have run the capture through PIPP as well.

I hope this may help you out in some way James, you have a very nice scope which will see you right for a long time.

There is this as well http://www.astrovox....845f3d3254b6ff9 , instructions to make a 'Collimation Mask' which may help you also, i have made one but weather is a little white at the moment so no chance to try it out.

Good luck James & let us know if things improve or otherwise.

[Ewan]

James just so you know the Align Points in the AS!2 screenshot are JUST an example, i would normally use about SIZE 50 & then try 50-60 align points total, you may have to raise lower the brightness arrows.

[JamesF]

How are you focusing the scope? Focus is fairly critical for good results, too.

James

[Pete Presland]

not much between the images to be honest, both pretty good.my DMK21 would love your scope the 29.25 gets great reviews fromm all concerned.

[James4]

Thanks Everyone! Thats really useful advice and thanks for the screen shots of the Wavelets Settings.

At least I will know I am in the ball park with that - I can experiment from there.

I think I need a bigger Jupiter - and I noticed last time out my widescreen laptop was showing me just a partial image.

A lot of video ended up with Jupiter being partially off-screen. Focusing was a Bit** - a big blurry Jupiter with me standing 3 feet away tyring to decide the best focus position.

Thanks again for the encouragement, I will try again and see if I can iron things out.

It will be easier to make progress once I figure out exactly what is going on with the camera settings.

I will look at collimation again, I have heard before how critical that is - so you are right, I need to put an effort in there.

Clear skies everyone!

[Ultrapenguin]

James, I have been doing this for a while and looking at your images I can see that they are not focused correctly. Playing with wavelets or colimating will not help in that case, as has been said focus is so critical to the end result its amazing that some spend many hours on colimation but only 5 mins on focus. A good bit of advice (if you do not have a mask) is to try and focus on one of the moons of Jupiter get it to the tightest, smallest it can be then move to your main target, do not adjust the focus again even if you think you have it wrong! When you capture use 1500 frames max no more than 3 mins (Jupiter revolves pretty fast and any more gives motion blur). Try to use FPS 10 not many webcams out there are capable of running faster than this.

One final thought the imager you have should produce results way better than your DSLR, the stuff you have produced so far with your DSLR is pretty good! Just think how good your images will be once you nail the issues with the imager...

[James4]

Thanks UltraPenguin!