Jump to content

Banner.jpg.b83b14cd4142fe10848741bb2a14c66b.jpg

Hello, I'm a complete n00b, be gentle :)

jerfish

By jerfish
in Welcome

Recommended Posts

jerfish

jerfish

Posted
Posted

Hello, I'm Jeremy or Jerfish. I live in Upstate, NY, USA. I bought my first Telescope on April 30th (Celestron Nexstar 6SE), and saw Saturn's rings for the first time (mind blown. Then blew the minds of my friends and wife. Quite messy...). Who knew I could see the rings from my front lawn??? (likely, many people here lol). It was pretty awesome. I have no experience with regards to this. Of course, this led immediately to rying to photo saturn with my iphone held over the eyepiece. Ya, that's not the best. I immediately began getting other items to connect my D90 Nikon to the telescope - then saw Jupiter for the first time, with two moons on each side of it (four moons and jupiter from my first telescope! wow!). That led to more photo attempts and learning about stacking.

And so I go on. Last night used my Celestron Neximage 5 for the first time. Hoping tonight to get some lunar shots or Jupiter shots with it (I got home at 2:30am from work, jupiter was loooong gone).

I'm full of questions, and hope this is the place to find some answers!

Just a few

1. what is binning with regards to video capture?

2. Should I dial back framerates for planetary capture? It keeps defaulting to 30+ when I change resolutions in icap

3. Less exposure and more gain or vice versa to have better stacking quality?

4. What codec should I use, or uncompressed? Registax keeps choking on my uncompressed onces...and some codecs are causing errors

5. Resolution? Does a lower resolution use more pixels per object as it's filling more of the screen/using entire detector for the planet or better higher resolution/finer pixel depth? My mind says use the 640x480, but I am unsure.

Ya, there are a ton more. That's a start though :)

here's what I have so far:

Jupiter, Nikon D90 2x barlow, on a bad night, Stacked and not tracked well, low image numbers, Day 2 of Telescope

Jupiter, First Try

Saturn, night 2, Nikon D90 2x barlow, Stacked, still not tracked right, End of first week of having telescope

Saturn, 2nd try

Saturn last night at 3am, Neximage 5, no barlow, tracking now working and more images, but B and W capture

Saturn, Neximage 5

Link to comment
Share on other sites
  • Replies 31
  • Created
  • Last Reply
Bizibilder

Bizibilder

Posted
Posted

Hello Jeremy and welcome to SGL!! If you put your questions in the "beginners Help And Advice" section of the forum more folk will see them and you will get quicker answers. Those are really good first images - It looks like you are hooked!!

Link to comment
Share on other sites
jerfish

jerfish

Posted
  • Author
Posted

Thanks for the welcomes all.

Pete from Bedfordshire - you nailed it. the fever is pretty bad lol.

High and thick altocumulus clouds tonight, looks like my chances at getting some more Jupiter shots in here are quickly diminishing - pretty much off horizon by the time the light is properly dark.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
bigbox

bigbox

Posted
Posted

Hi Jerfish & Welcome to SGL... As already pointed out, if you put your questions in beginners help & advice, you'll get lots more people looking who can give advice...

They are not bad for your first attempts, welll done...

Regards Ady

Link to comment
Share on other sites
glowjet

glowjet

Posted
Posted

Hi Jeremy and welcome to SGL, well done with your images and I applaud your enthusiasm, however, your questions are really involved with imaging and I recommend that you repost your inquiries into the various sections where I am sure you will receive the help you want, enjoy :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites
jerfish

jerfish

Posted
  • Author
Posted

I have a 6 inch scope and the Neximage 5. When I get a second I will help you out with some info on settings.

Great, thanks! I did move my questions over to the appropriately designated areas, as requested by others, thanks!

Link to comment
Share on other sites
DannyHarvey

DannyHarvey

Posted
Posted

1. what is binning with regards to video capture?

you can combine pixels into "super pixels". The resulting pixel will be brighter (need less gain) but you will lose the resolution

you have two options to get to the sweet spot of your scope, use the Neximage 5 without binning and no Barlow or use it at 2 x binning with a 2 x Barlow. You will get the same image size in pixels using either method. I prefer the no binning no Barlow, as you are putting less glass in the light path.

2. Should I dial back framerates for planetary capture? It keeps defaulting to 30+ when I change resolutions in icap

find your planet using the large resolution. centre planet then switch to 640 x 480. use 10-15 FPS set exposure to match frame rate 1/10 sec 1/15 sec

switch on live histogram in Icap - use this as a light meter. set gain so each colour is just below clipping (leave a bit of headroom.) the Histogram needs to be set to log mode and show zeros to do this.

The colour will be a bit wrong using this method but you will capture less noise and more dynamic range but you can fix later in Registax or Photoshop

3. Less exposure and more gain or vice versa to have better stacking quality?

Use the guide settings above. Its basically a balancing act, you need reasonable frame rate to get some sharp frames, but you want less gain to keep noise down - these two things work against each other

4. What codec should I use, or uncompressed? Registax keeps choking on my uncompressed onces...and some codecs are causing errors

had the same problem at first! Use uncompressed files. Run the AVI's through a program called PIPP set to Planetary mode (search on google). This will strip much of the Black pixels around the planet, centre it and create a smaller AVI that will work fine.

5. Resolution? Does a lower resolution use more pixels per object as it's filling more of the screen/using entire detector for the planet or better higher resolution/finer pixel depth? My mind says use the 640x480, but I am unsure.

the resolution just chooses areas of pixels. At 640 x 480 you will be using just a tiny portion of it in the centre of the chip.

hope this helps

Danny

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

Go to topic listing

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue. By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use.