xcel 3x Barlows any good? If not what would be a better alternative?

[Gary085]

I have recently started trying to take some images, a few of the moon but mostly Jupiter.

 As I have only been doing it for a couple of weeks I'm sure my images with the equipment I have could be improved a fair bit but I think I will need more magnification to get a whole lot more detail.

I have been looking at getting a 3xBarlow possibly a celestron xcel but I can't find many reviews on them and I have a 18mm xcel eyepiece which I'm not overly pleased with.

Has anyone here used one before for imaging? I'm using a skywatcher 120mm/1000mm Neximage5 and a 2xBarlow at the moment.

[ghostdance]

For first images, I think you've done well! Is that a transit shadow on the third?

Not sure about the Barlow for imaging (I dont do AP) but if you're in the market for a 3×, I'm voting the Tele Vue. Superb piece of kit.

[Pete Presland]

 A very nice start some good detail showing. I think a x3 barlow might be a little powerfull on a lot of nights at F25, i would be more inclined to get a x2 to be honest which gives around F16. Televue are excellent quality and i use them myself, but also a 2nd hand TAL would more good as well.

[Gary085]

For first images, I think you've done well! Is that a transit shadow on the third?

Not sure about the Barlow for imaging (I dont do AP) but if you're in the market for a 3×, I'm voting the Tele Vue. Superb piece of kit.

Yes Io transit and europa just above 17.01.15 03:26 , couldn't quite pick out Io due to relative brightness to Jupiter as well as wind and light cloud at the time. 

Thanks I'll take a look at that one.

[Gary085]

 A very nice start some good detail showing. I think a x3 barlow might be a little powerfull on a lot of nights at F25, i would be more inclined to get a x2 to be honest which gives around F16. Televue are excellent quality and i use them myself, but also a 2nd hand TAL would more good as well.

I thought it might possibly be too much as I can't get Jupiter in focus on live image even with my 2x barlow but luckily I can still just manage to salvage a image from most AVI'S.  I might try get a decent one second hand and just give it a go anyway. Thank you for quick replies

[Pete Presland]

How many frames have you been taking on your image runs?

[jimbo747]

Are those single images or stacked?

[Gary085]

How many frames have you been taking on your image runs?

90 seconds at 19.01 FPS or 10 FPS seems to be best so far, I have just been told to use 60 seconds instead by a friend so I will try that next time.

[Gary085]

Are those single images or stacked?

Stacked quite a lot of frames. Not that great I know but I'm new to the photography side of things and only using  120mm aperture.

[Aeseir]

Make sure the barlow you get is not going to go over the theoritcal zoom of your scope, otherwise all you get is blur blur and more....yes thats right....blur.

I would recommend investing in a decent barlow or even powermate.

personally i use Televues powermate, absolutely brilliant stuff.

[Gary085]

Make sure the barlow you get is not going to go over the theoritcal zoom of your scope, otherwise all you get is blur blur and more....yes thats right....blur.

I would recommend investing in a decent barlow or even powermate.

personally i use Televues powermate, absolutely brilliant stuff.

My 2x barlow with camera is already over my telescope's practical power slightly,  I think it works out around 285x magnification with the barlow and my scope is apparently capable of 240x.

The brand televue seems to be coming up quite a lot so I might eventually just get a better quality 2x televue rather than my 2x skywatcher barlow.

 Personally I think a 3x might be okay on a good night but I might see if I can borrow one for a night from someone at my club  before buying one.....if any of them have one.

[Dave In Vermont]

I rarely plug the TeleVue line due to their expense. But with a Barlow, they are the best I've seen/used. A good Barlow is one that vanishes. In other words - it doesn't make it's presence known to the observer. Many others do so by way of adding distortions and dimming to the field-of-view. TeleVue come closest to vanishing. And their PowerMates even more so.

Clear Slies,

Dave

[Clockwork_Orange]

Hi Gary

Some nice detail coming through there buddy, I think the main issue is the seeing, the jet stream has not been ideally placed of late. Hopefully things will improve shortly. One thing you can try with the neximage is adjusting the colours in the icap if your using it, the colour balance at the default values on the neximage are off slightly giving a green cast. Once the camera is connected click on the device tab in icap and bring up the camera properties box. You'll see that the RGB values are all set to 100 by default. I've found adjusting the red to around 110, the green to around 87 and the blue to around 120 gives a better balance, it may vary slightly from these values on yours but it'll give you a start point. I tend to run it at about 35 to 40 fps and capture 2000 frames then you'll have a reasonable sized stack to work with. But as said earlier the seeing has been against you,

I managed this image last February with the settings above on a night off very good seeing, I was using a 2 xcel barlow at the time on my se8 taking my F to 20.

Regards

John

[Gary085]

Thanks john and that is a amazing image! I found information on this yesterday actually, i saw something else afterwards that said if in y800 mode the avi will be green regardless of changes and if you change to rgb24 the files are huge, is that not true about the avi's still remaining green?

I have found how to adjust it afterwards in registax but with mixed results.

[Clockwork_Orange]

Hi Gary

Can't really answer your question regarding y800 setting as I've never used it.

Yes you can soon start filling your hard drive to overflow after 30 or 40 runs at it. I bought a couple of terabyte usb drives and copy the data over to them at the end of the session. When I first started using the terabyte drives I saved direct to them until I realised it slowed the frame rate on the camera to a crawl. So now I keep at least 100 mb free on the computer and save to that first, then copy over to the drives at the end or when full, which ever comes first.

I'd be mindful about going any higher with the barlow rating, It works for some people but hasn't for me. I have a 2.5 powermate but find it just to much on the SE8 with the neximage. I'd rather capture it with the 2 xcel and then increase the image scale by a fraction at the end of processing in registax. I'm even looking to drop it down from a 2 x barlow to a 1.5 on the asi120mm I use as 2x seems to much for that on the 8Se but I am at F10 to start with. Guess your going to have to experiment on that aspect for yourself as your starting from a different F ratio.

Just keep having a go at it and make notes of the date and different settings you try, other wise you'll forget what works, as said you're initial images have plenty of detail there, but the seeing has been poor, it'll just click right for you one of the coming nights and you'll be blown away at the difference in capture quality. You've obviously cracked the tracking and focus so no issues there to worry about.

Good luck with it

John

[Gary085]

Thanks John. I'm not sure what settings I have been on y800 or the other. I've only used it once since and i was in a rush and half asleep trying to image the triple transit with no luck due to wind and poor seeing. I'll have to give both settings a try like you say and see what is best for me.

I re-processed the first image posted above and brought more detail out but the colour was even worse.

[Gary085]

[Gary085]

Seems in resolution setings I have been using the rgb32 but in the video codec i have had 'dv video encoder' selected. I've made adjustments and hoping it works but I don't know yet. What codec do you have selected on icap John?

[Gary085]

Short windows of okay seeing conditions and a little change to rgb white balance 02/02/2015....

[Gary085]

Thanks guys

[Pete Presland]

Some excellent detail on those images, very nicely done!