Starting Out

[Stub Mandrel]

This was my third evening's attempt at planet imaging. My impression was the seeing wasn't very good. Venus was a shape-shifting blob and I couldn't see the GRS through the eyepiece, although it showed up in a few unprocessed video frames. I'm really struggling to get the best settings in SharpCap.

Stacking 15 minutes of jupiter gave the clearest result, the GRS was immediately obvious as soon as they were stacked, without any tweaks. I had hoped that just using 5 minutes worth would be better as there would be less rotation, but it seems to make the red spot vaguer. There's less texture in this than my pics from two days ago, this is challenging...

I can think of so may things I might be getting wrong, so any and all advice welcome. It would help if someone could point me at some really good images of Jupiter done with a 150mm reflector as that would give me a definite point to aim for.

[Atreta]

Hi,

very nice jupiter picture, you can clearly see the GRS.

what software did you use to stack? did you use wavelets in registax 6?

if not give it a try, open your stacked picture with it, go to the wavelet tab and move the sliders a bit and press the do all button to see how is it going.

you may get much more detail this way.

Frank

[Stub Mandrel]

Hi Frank,

Yes I spent a good while on it in registax. I think I have to keep playing, it's quite hard working out how teh different controls interact, especially the histogram and the gamma seem tyo wipe eachother out.

I put venus though my ancient version of Corel photo paint, resample, HSB, then unsharp mask followed by RGB align back in registax. It looks much better but I feel a bit of a cheat!

Neil

[Stub Mandrel]

It is worth persevering - I restacked in Astrostakkert and I'm beginning to get the hang of how the wavelets work, now I understand the compare window.

[Astrosurf]

Nice shots! Never feel like a cheat with processing. We're fighting our atmosphere! Seeing is vitally important in planetary imaging. It can result in a brilliant or mediocre image.

Alexxx

[PeterCPC]

Keep at it - it's coming together. I have never stacked more than about 5 mins of Jupiter because of the rotation and I can't get my head around Winjupos. I usually run the AVI through PIPP first using the quality settings. I like the Venus image.

Peter

[Stub Mandrel]

Thanks, I have lot to learn!

[PeterCPC]

Don't we all 

Peter