First Attempt

[Mattscar]

After managing to finish the mod to my xbox camera I was eager to get it out and give it a go last night.

Saturn has just moved into a visible position from our back garden so that was going to be my target.

Finding the planet within the webcam view and keeping it there proved to be quite a challenge. Once I had managed to find it I set SharpCap to do a 60 second avi and just use the one, being as it was my first time.

Fast forward to this morning when I had chance to stack it and see what I had produced. I followed Astronomy Shed's tutorials on youtube as I had tried playing with registrax before but had gotten no-where with it.

After following what was said and tweaking a couple of things I managed to come out with this for the final image -

Saturn (for some reason I can't seem to embed photos today)

There are a whole host of things I need to keep in mind next time, number 1 being 'don't nudge the scope while filming'. I need alot more practice with all the software aswell, but atleast Iv made a start now. Bring on the next clear night!

[Mattscar]

Re-processed this afternoon by cutting some horrible frames out of the original video.

Saturn_Edit_2

[todd8137]

Great first go looks great my first go was nothing like this well done

pat

[WaveSoarer]

That's a great first image.

[Mattscar]

Cheers guys I thought it was abit naff myself. I did edit the avi file and cut out the bit where I nudged the scope for the second one which I think may have improved it a little.

Glad I did do it last night as it looks like its going to be another week before I get another shot at it.

[Astrosurf]

Nice first image. I don't know if it would work, and maybe it would enlarge the planet too much, but have you tried Castrator? (Don't scream!) It crops the image to get rid of most of the black so you're processing more data and less darkness. Have a go. It's free.

http://www.astrokraai.nl/castrator.php

Let me know how you get on with it.

Did you use a Barlow? I suppose it might have been too difficult to keep the planet in view. I'm not familiar with your scope!

Alexxx

[Mattscar]

Despite the name I will give it a go later on, thanks!

I have to use a barlow with my scope it seems as just the webcam on its own won't reach focus, however adding a barlow moves the focus point somewhere I can play with it. A shiny new barlow is my next purchase I think.

[Mattscar]

Infact now Iv read the page I must give you more thanks astrobaby, I was looking for something that would crop avi files and couldn't find anything that was free, but Castrator (makes me wince everytime I think of the word) seems to tick all the boxes

[cgarry]

Infact now Iv read the page I must give you more thanks astrobaby, I was looking for something that would crop avi files and couldn't find anything that was free, but Castrator (makes me wince everytime I think of the word) seems to tick all the boxes

PIPP does that and so much more. It also discards frames where the planet is only partly in the frame, something Castrator does not.

Cheers,

Chris

[Mattscar]

Cheers cgarry, I'll give them both a test and see if it improves the result.

[Astrosurf]

Oooh, PIPP. I keep forgetting to try that!

[JamesF]

I think that's an excellent first image. Saturn is a far from easy target now and just getting something that even looks like it should is a reasonable achievement on a first attempt. Well done.

James

[bogdog]

better than my first attempt..by miles

its when you get the hang of the processing you get the results

mine was 130 skywatcher and dslr barlowed

now thats what you call NAFF,been cloudy/raining/fogged over here for ages now :{

but lookin ok for tonight maybe fingers/toes/legs/eyes all crossed in hope

[Mattscar]

I wouldn't call that naff, especially if you go with

just getting something that even looks like it should is a reasonable achievement on a first attempt

[JamesF]

This is my first ever Saturn, from early 2011:

James

[cgarry]

Cheers cgarry, I'll give them both a test and see if it improves the result.

For PIPP's settings you will probably want to add you AVI file to the Source Files List and change these options:

# Source Files->Optimise Options For->Planetary = Ticked

# Processing Options->Minimum Object Size (Pixels) = 4 (Minimum value)

I would also enable histogram stretching to equalise all the frames:

# Processing Options->Histogram Stretch->Enable Histogram Stretch = Ticked

You can press the 'Test Options' button to check the results of the selected options.

Then just hit the 'Start Processing' Button on the 'Do Processing' tab.

Cheers,

Chris

[Mattscar]

Iv given PIPP a go and have got similar results to the second attempt, although not quite as good. I think its possibly because I havn't got alot of data to use, the source video wasn't great or very long to begin with. Next time I'll get a better video (hopefully) then see what PIPP and *shudders* Castrator can churn out

[lensman57]

After managing to finish the mod to my xbox camera I was eager to get it out and give it a go last night.

Saturn has just moved into a visible position from our back garden so that was going to be my target.

Finding the planet within the webcam view and keeping it there proved to be quite a challenge. Once I had managed to find it I set SharpCap to do a 60 second avi and just use the one, being as it was my first time.

Fast forward to this morning when I had chance to stack it and see what I had produced. I followed Astronomy Shed's tutorials on youtube as I had tried playing with registrax before but had gotten no-where with it.

After following what was said and tweaking a couple of things I managed to come out with this for the final image -

Saturn (for some reason I can't seem to embed photos today)

There are a whole host of things I need to keep in mind next time, number 1 being 'don't nudge the scope while filming'. I need alot more practice with all the software aswell, but atleast Iv made a start now. Bring on the next clear night!

Hi,

Well done for your first capture, this beautiful planet is always rewarding to image no matter what but if you get it right you really are in for a treat. I am also a realtive newbie so if I may advise you to first run your avi frames through Pipp to discard the rubbish. Pipp has a very steep learning curve but if you set it in planetary mode and with default settings it will still give you good result. Then do the stacking in Auto Stakkert 2 for alignment and stacking and then put the result in Registax for wavelet and RGB alignment, this is a little involved but I found that it gives better results than using Registax on its own. All the above software are free to download and if you wish you could make a small donation to the software engineer. If however you wish to just stay with Registax, I will advise you to follow this procedure and it can give you good result. Set the alignment method to center of gravity, % of good frames to 100, open prefilter tab and tick normalise, then run Registax and let it finish the alignment make a note of the best frame number shown at the bottom of the window, where the slider is. Close Registax, reopen and choose alignment as before but this time enter the number of best frame from the first run in the bottom left tab where it says Go To Frame, set the best frame % to 70 this time, this will tell the software to use the best frame from the first run and use it as reference to align with and it will use only the best 70% of the frames for alignment . The whole procedure is a little more involved but there is enough here to get you started. If you knew all this before thenignore this and excuse me. you really need to get a decent webcam BTW.

Good and happy imaging.

A.G

[Mattscar]

Hi lensman, thanks for that, something else to try out! I certainly will give it a go, like I am with all these suggestions.

I know I need a decent webcam aswell, but at the moment Im sticking with the xbox one while I learn the ropes and make sure I want to invest some money into it. Which I probably will, but want to be sure first

[JamesF]

This may help you out if you've not read it already:

http://stargazerslounge.com/topic/184821-beginners-guide-to-stacking-planetary-images-with-autostakkert2/

James

[JamesF]

Oh, and it's fair to point out that planetary imaging is enormously seeing-dependent. You will find that without changing anything you'll get a full range of images from crisp to mushy over the course of a few hours or even less. It's rare that you can't take the opportunity to learn or practice something though, even if the seeing isn't great. When the good times come that means you're better able to take advantage of it.

So, if you go through a night's captures and decide they're not worth keeping don't be disheartened by it. I think everyone has nights like that sometimes. It's just the way it goes.

James

[Mattscar]

I fully expect nights like that. Iv had several while observing but know that its useful to practice things. Even if I spend a couple of hours practicing keeping saturn in the FOV on the computer screen its better than nothing, as that seems to be half the challenge anyway.

[earth titan]

Another free app you might consider is VirtualDub.

Not astro related and all manual, but it allows you to remove the really horrid frames nice and easily.

[Astrosurf]

I like VirtualDub, but be careful, I got a virus from the Website I downloaded it from. I'm afraid I can't remember which one.

[cgarry]

VirtualDub also mishandles astro videos using the Y800 codec if you are not very careful.

Chris