My latest attempt at jupiter

[lensman57]

Hi,

I did this last night from my back garden , this is my 4th attempt at imaging Jupiter so the jury is still out as I am still new.

This time I used my Skywatcher 100 ED pro , a 2x ED barlow and an Opticstar C75 Planetary camera on an EQ5 synscan pro mount. I have not yet mastered all the features of the driver for the camera so perhaps in time it will improve, the AVI files ( 1000 frames @40 FPS ) were processed in PPPi, AS!2 and RG6 then a minimal adjustment in CS2. Any advice is really appreciated.

Many thanks and regards,

A.G

[Bizibilder]

Thats a good attempt at a tricky subject.

Just to help: The image is very red - maybe a tweak in CS2 to get the red down will get nearer the "light brown" needed? Try taking more frames - at 40 fps 4000 should work OK. That will take 100 seconds roughly and wont be affected by the planets rotation. If you stack about 800-1000 of them you should get a high quality stack. AS2 is good for stacking as is R6 for the wavelets - so you are on the right lines there. Getting the larger stack will also help reducing the noise in the image. I'm not familiar with your particular camera but, if you can, get the gain setting as low as you can (if you have one) and use an exposure of around 20-40 ms if possible. Spend a lot of time getting your focussing as good as you can get it (it does seem quite good as it is) - the one thing you can't do is "process out" an out of focus image. Keep on experimenting and you will get there soon enough. Hope I've helped a bit!

[lensman57]

Thats a good attempt at a tricky subject.

Just to help: The image is very red - maybe a tweak in CS2 to get the red down will get nearer the "light brown" needed? Try taking more frames - at 40 fps 4000 should work OK. That will take 100 seconds roughly and wont be affected by the planets rotation. If you stack about 800-1000 of them you should get a high quality stack. AS2 is good for stacking as is R6 for the wavelets - so you are on the right lines there. Getting the larger stack will also help reducing the noise in the image. I'm not familiar with your particular camera but, if you can, get the gain setting as low as you can (if you have one) and use an exposure of around 20-40 ms if possible. Spend a lot of time getting your focussing as good as you can get it (it does seem quite good as it is) - the one thing you can't do is "process out" an out of focus image. Keep on experimenting and you will get there soon enough. Hope I've helped a bit!

Hi Roger,

Many thanks for your detailed advice, Jupiter being so red is something that I noticed too, It is more pronounced with the 100 ed than with my 127 MaK, the camera's driver has a lot of controls on it and I think that I had the exposure at 30 milisec and the gain was about 2/3 of the way, I didn't bother adjusting the color sliders and some other bits such as gamma. perhaps I should do it for the next session. Did my best with the focus but the driver works from etamcap and I wonder why there is no focus aid in any of the software that I have seen so far. I will probably reprocess again, in fact I did it tonight and it looks a tad better but there is no point in posting the same frame again and again.

Regards,

A.G

[sologuitarist61]

Nothing wrong with that AG !

[JamesF]

I think perhaps Roger picked up on this but didn't say so in as many words. To my eye whilst the image is good it looks over-sharpened and that's started to show up the noise more. Capturing (lots more frames will allow the stacking program, to be more selective in picking the better ones and also to stack far more, giving a better quality stacked image and good reduction in noise which in turn allows you to be more aggressive with wavelets if you want to.

James

[lensman57]

I think perhaps Roger picked up on this but didn't say so in as many words. To my eye whilst the image is good it looks over-sharpened and that's started to show up the noise more. Capturing (lots more frames will allow the stacking program, to be more selective in picking the better ones and also to stack far more, giving a better quality stacked image and good reduction in noise which in turn allows you to be more aggressive with wavelets if you want to.

James

Hi,

Thanks to all of you for your constructive comments, indeed I too think that I have over sharpened this a little too much, I also need to tone down the saturation a bit more. I also noticed that the camera has no IR/ cut so perhaps next time I will use one.

Best Regards,

A.G

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

It does look a little over-sharpened, but still a good result for just 4" of aperture