Registax and Deep sky stacker suitabilty

[StargeezerTim]

Hi folks,

I took 8 or so pics of Jupiter and have been experimenting with registax and DSS to see if it adds anything. And I am not sure it does for these type of images. The image of jupiter is very small in the frame. I have done some work in elements and the attached photo is the best I can get. 

The pics were taken on a 750mm reflector, with 2xbarlow, prime.

When I used Registax, it only puts one alignpoint on and only stacks two images. I have messed about with the wavelets but it doesnt really add anything. When I tried DSS, it only identifies one star and only stacks one image (thats with raw, with jpg it identifies a few more).

So neither seems suitable for this type of image, i.e. trying to tease out sharpness and contrast from a very small image. Am I correct in this assumption or am I missing something? 

I only have elements 9, not photoshop, so can't stack on that.

Does anyone have any advice or comments that could help? Thanks...

[glowingturnip]

try autostakkkert, also free - use a single align point and draw a box round the planet, usually does a good job

[DrRobin]

Auttostakkert or Registax for the planets.  There are quite a few tutorials on here for both. 

Deep Sky Stacker is only for images with lots of stars.

Robin

[Zakalwe]

DSS won't stack them as it needs stars to register the subs to one another. The reason why it reports more stars in JPEG is because it is erroneously identifying noise in the image as stars.

Get a webcam and use it to take a movie of Jupiter. Then feed that to Autostakkert for stacking.

[Russe]

Registax should be able to open all single images. The small image is overexposed - won't work unless you work on it beforehand. The lower one looks better. Wavelets might probably not do an awful lot. With an image processing software you may have more luck IF you know how to use it.

I've put an image comparison up from my brother's first Jupiter and compared to post Photoshop. No wavelets were applied:

[Russe]

A program like castrator can center your planet and crop unnecessary black sky. This may make things easier for registax:

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

[leelee970]

You'll need to capture more than 8 images to see any improvement/detail - 100's and even 1000's of frames are usually stacked in either Registax or AS!2.

So a webcam or dedicated planetary camera is used.

Some people have also imaged with a DSLR in movie mode.

 

Also on a small image it will be usual to only have one or maybe two alignment points.

 

Lee

[ChrisLX200]

At that image scale there's not a lot of point in stacking, Registax won't be able to differentiate between good frames and bad ones (they are all just bright dots to Registax).

ChrisH

[StargeezerTim]

try autostakkkert, also free - use a single align point and draw a box round the planet, usually does a good job

Thanks Stuart

[StargeezerTim]

Thanks everybody, I'll try autostakkert and also try to get some video on my dslr, when we have a clear sky! Tim. 

[PeterCPC]

Hi

Because of the "wobbliness" of the atmosphere it's best to get lots of images to stack in Registax or similar. You could use a web cam or similar or movie mode in a DSLR but a web cam or something like an Image Source camera will get you in closer to the planet so you'll get a bigger image. I usually take at least 600 images to stack. I never use DSS for planets.

Peter

[StargeezerTim]

Just used astrostakkert on the same 8 images and got this. Much improved over the other software, and easy to use! Thanks. 

[glowingturnip]

looking quite good.

might be able to get a little bit further with wavelets now, load that single resultant image into registax and it'll take you straight to the wavelets page.  It's quite a small scale image, so you'll only need the first one or two sliders, try nudging them to the right a little to get a bit more definition on the bands, but stop before you get any noise explosion or weird artifacts round the edge of the planet.

can also try high pass sharpening in photoshop (works in elements) - duplicate layer, filters/other/high-pass, use radius of about 3-5 pixels, then in layers panel change blending mode to overlay, then adjust opacity to suit

as others have said though, a cheap webcam is much better than a dslr for planets, you can take thousands of frames and bin most of them leaving only the good ones.

[Russe]

+1 for high pass sharpening - if you use layers in photoshop you can as well partially sharpen certain aspects of Jupiter - hiding all other bits with a hide all layer mask.

[StargeezerTim]

looking quite good.

might be able to get a little bit further with wavelets now, load that single resultant image into registax and it'll take you straight to the wavelets page.  It's quite a small scale image, so you'll only need the first one or two sliders, try nudging them to the right a little to get a bit more definition on the bands, but stop before you get any noise explosion or weird artifacts round the edge of the planet.

can also try high pass sharpening in photoshop (works in elements) - duplicate layer, filters/other/high-pass, use radius of about 3-5 pixels, then in layers panel change blending mode to overlay, then adjust opacity to suit

as others have said though, a cheap webcam is much better than a dslr for planets, you can take thousands of frames and bin most of them leaving only the good ones.

+1 for high pass sharpening - if you use layers in photoshop you can as well partially sharpen certain aspects of Jupiter - hiding all other bits with a hide all layer mask.

Thanks...

Wavelets made it worse, I need much more practice! I managed to use high pass... it sharpens slightly but I don't think there is any more detail to bring out now, ha ha. 

I'll try and get some more pics next time we have a clear night (2015 probably!).

I did find my dslr overexposed a bit, despite the live view display looking good. I'll work on getting better source images. This is some learning curve.

Tim.

[eatabean]

I just found this video about stacking, very informative! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0JSTF8SGi4&list=UUx_N3KiUvb4M2-NyKRugXmw

He explains the basic problem of noise control with digital imaging. In your case with Jupiter, the image is so small there is not much information to begin with. The above named video demonstrates astrophotography WITHOUT any tracking whatsoever, only using DSS and then P-shop. Interesting take. If you watch it, you might learn enough to take much better images. Lots of other good vids there on astrophotos by a pro. Enjoy!

Jim in Sweden