First atempt at imaging Jupiter

[lensman57]

Hi,

This the result of my first attempt at imaging jupiter from a couple of nights ago, it is reallly not very good so I would be grateful for any advice.

It was taken from my back garden using an SW Skymax 127 on a synscan mount, and an Opticstar 75C planetary camera. The processing was done in RegiStax and it was the 2nd time that I used this software so a lot to learn yet. The seeing was moderate with some atmospheric turbulance and a lot of moisture in the air as the the scope was covered in wet dew and had to be brought in.

Regards,

A.G

[davo]

Good capture with the moons there.

Interesting dark dot at 5 o'clock near the limb.. just wondering what that is?

[JamesF]

I think that's a pretty good attempt. How many frames did you stack and what frame rate were you using?

James

[JamesF]

Interesting dark dot at 5 o'clock near the limb.. just wondering what that is?

I'm fairly sure that's the shadow of a moon passing between Jupiter and the Sun.

James

[lensman57]

I think that's a pretty good attempt. How many frames did you stack and what frame rate were you using?

James

Hi James,

Thanks for the comment, I am sure that I would get better. The camera is still new to me but I think it was at 20 frames per second,I have done another session tonight at 50 frames per second and see if it makes anydifference. I am not sure how many times I stacked it to be honest but there were about 160 frames, I tried to bring out the moons as it was really nice and the there is a moon in transit across hence the shadow, I am interested in the red patch at about 4 o'clock on the right edge of the band. Thre is a lot of detail structure lost in jpeg conversion as the camera records uncompressed raw files.

Regards,

A.G

[JamesF]

I'm not familiar with the camera, but the "usual" way to get the moons is I think to capture them separately from the planet to allow different gain settings to be used and then merge the two final images.

20fps sounds quite a reasonable place to start with Jupiter, although more may be good if your scope and camera can provide good data. I think you could go for two or even three minutes worth of capture data to stack so you have several thousand frames to work with.

James

[lensman57]

I'm not familiar with the camera, but the "usual" way to get the moons is I think to capture them separately from the planet to allow different gain settings to be used and then merge the two final images.

20fps sounds quite a reasonable place to start with Jupiter, although more may be good if your scope and camera can provide good data. I think you could go for two or even three minutes worth of capture data to stack so you have several thousand frames to work with.

James

Thanks james ,

I tried to do another session last night but couldn't get a decent image on the scope and for some reason the Go To decided not track as well as I wanted it to for a long exposure. I have learned how to set the camera to 50 frames now so if I get a clear sky tonight i shall have another crack at it.

Regards,

A.G