Registax Jupiter pocessing woes

[ubertank]

Evening everyone,

Registax is giving me fits trying to bring out any detail in the final wavelet processing and I'm wondering if anyone can provide any advice please?

I have followed this guide but when getting to the wavelet stage, I am unable to bring out any detail at all.  The only change I seem to get is concentric circles appearing from the outside running in.  An image is below:

I'm wondering if my data is just terrible or I'm doing something wrong.  I ran 1800 frames at the best focus I could manage, with an spc900 through a skywatcher 2 x barlow on a c9.25.

Does anyone have any suggestions or ideas at all?  I've spent the last couple of hours googling to no avail and would love some help please.

[Steve Ward]

The 'onion rings' usually result from too low a Gain setting in Sharpcap , try adjusting the Gain up to 40 or so , Gamma to 0 and adjust the Exposure up or down to suit.

[oldpink]

no some things up with your wavelets settings by the look of it
run it again but before you do the wavelets save as a tiff or png file and post it up so we can see the raw picture
what settings did you use on the wavelets ?? did you link them, them use debayer, increase sharpmess despecle etc

[JamesF]

Agree with Steve.  Usually this happens because there's not enough dynamic range in the image due to insufficient gain or exposure.  Pop up the histogram.  Ideally you want the gain and exposure set high enough that you get around 65% to 75% of the way across the graph.

James

[Steve Ward]

no some things up with your wavelets settings by the look of it

run it again but before you do the wavelets save as a tiff or png file and post it up so we can see the raw picture

what settings did you use on the wavelets ?? did you link them, them use debayer, increase sharpmess despecle etc

The trouble is in the collected data I'm afraid , no amount of jiggery-pokery in stacking or Wavelets can repair it ... 

[ubertank]

Thanks a lot for the advice.  WIll have to wait for a clear gap in the weather and try again with some higher gain settings.  if I remember rightly my gain was right around 0 so that will certainly be it.  It's hard to know what you want Jupiter should look like in sharocap before you start your capture.  Does anyone happen to have a picture Jupiter in their .avi before stacking?

I had thought perhaps it was just my focus which through a 2 x SW barlow obviously looks horrible.  it's hard to know when you have the best focus you can get.  Does anyone have any advice in this regard?

[AstroAdam]

Its worth experimenting.  I have it reasonably bright on the capture, but not so bright that the background starts to get washed out, or so bright that it washes out the planetary detail.  Try a few different gain levels and see what stacks best...

[Pete Presland]

good advice from James and Steve, get the histogram on screen when capturing. about 65% to 75% of the way across the graph, will be perfect. dont worry to much if the image looks a little washed out either, i would also recommend trying to process at least one of your AVI imaging runs on the night, at least you will know the quality of what you are capturing before its too late!

[tekkydave]

Thanks a lot for the advice.  WIll have to wait for a clear gap in the weather and try again with some higher gain settings.  if I remember rightly my gain was right around 0 so that will certainly be it.  It's hard to know what you want Jupiter should look like in sharocap before you start your capture.  Does anyone happen to have a picture Jupiter in their .avi before stacking?

I had thought perhaps it was just my focus which through a 2 x SW barlow obviously looks horrible.  it's hard to know when you have the best focus you can get.  Does anyone have any advice in this regard?

Here's one of my recent stacks prior to wavelet processing. This was stacked in AS2.

Capture 03_03_2014 20_07_20_g3_b3_ap18.tif

[Steve Ward]

Focusing can be a nightmare , especially when the seeing is poor , and with a Barlow it's nigh on impossible to judge using the planet.

I always use a nearby bright star ( not Sirius though , it's too low and wobbly ) and a Bahtinov mask to nail focus first , lock the focuser , recheck the spikes and if happy slew back to the planet.

This way you know the focus is spot on even if the view on screen seems to contradict this .

If using the planet's disc by eye you will spend all the session "chasing the seeing" and wasting the evening.

[JamesF]

I take a different approach to Steve in that I do focus based on the planetary disc, but it probably makes far more sense to follow his method.  I also use Jupiter's moons as a guide in that focus has to be pretty close to see them at all and getting them reasonably sharply focus can be easier than working on the planet itself.  People have said that it's possible to use a Bahtinov mask to focus on Jupiter itself though I've never tried that.  Bahtinov masks are only supposed to work with point sources as far as I'm aware, but perhaps that's not entirely the case.

All these things you could try, but I'd go with Steve's method first.

James

[leelee970]

I too use a Bahtinov mask on a nearby bright star to focus, makes life a little easier for me.

I just have to remember to take it off before I start to view/image Jupiter.

Lee

[ubertank]

Thanks so, so much for all of your help and advice everyone.  Set up again on another beautiful evening last night and had another go.  Huge improvements with an increase in gain.

Still lots and lots of room for improvement.  Limiting factors here were no bhatinov mask so "chasing seeing" when it came to focus.  Also using a Skywatcher 2 x barlow which isn't the best piece of kit in the world.  I would imagine a televue 2.5x and a Bhatinov mask to make a pretty vast difference when I get my hands on them.  My processing in this area still also leaves a lot to be desired to I'm hopeful I can get a lot better than this, but I'm very happy so far.

I've waited to get a good planetary image for a really long time so thanks everyone who helped me with this so much.  Very much appreciated.

[Steve Ward]

That's a great image .... 

[Pete Presland]

back of the net! very nice image well done!

[GuillermoBarrancos]

That´s quite a huge difference! Much better!

[tekkydave]

Great image

[AstroAdam]

This thread is promoting me to have a mess around with gain myself. Going to experiment when the next gap in the cloud presents itself.

[mcinek82]

That's a superb image. Well done!

[toxic]

i know its not a patch on your new image but the problem wasnt your capure .i ran it through registax and it came out ok but you may want to try before you stack use maximized and stretch histogram after stacking then at the top try  resampling or drizle to increase size