I'm quite sure I've worked out my soft focus imaging

[Aussie Dave]

I'm 90% sure I've worked out why I'm getting soft focus imaging results over Winter here in southern Western Australia. Humidity is high (90% tonight for example) with high dew. Living by the coast doesn't help either with mid afternoon sea breezes over the warmer ocean every day with some nights of late night to early morning fog and not forgetting smoke from peoples wood burning fires and perhaps even some light sky mist. All this means wasted hours imaging, processing with very poor results.

This has lead me to think that it's not worth imaging over the colder months here which is very disappointing.

Over the summer months I was getting much better results with an Xbox 360 webcam. I know this is not a fair comparison as I didn't have the PGR Flea 3 mono or the ZWO ASI174MM then but I know I should be getting much better results with my gear now. I can't justify getting any of my gear out atm.

I would like to start LRGB and have looked in to this but I'm holding back for now until the weather warms up, there's just no point. I was expecting to do much better in the colder months compared to the warmer months but it doesn't look like it will ever happen.

I don't know how you lot do it in the much colder northern hemisphere.

[xtreemchaos]

nobody said it was easy Dave, where all at the mercy of the conditions, my grandfather used to say " it all comes to he who waits" it rings true about this hobbie, its all about waiting for the best seeing, charl.

[Aussie Dave]

True Charl.

Getting tired of waiting.

[VilleM]

Yeah, its all about seeing. Doesnt matter wich scope you have, if seeing is bad you just cant do it. Im not sure what gear you have, but one thing you could do is use ADC and / or IR pass filter.

Here is one example of bad seeing. In early 2016 I had a chance to use largest visual astronomy scope in Europe, 32" Astrofox folded newtonian. Obviously I had to give it a try at planetary imaging aswell. Here is result in bad seeing with ASI120MM + IR pass filter. It does have some detail, but for such large scope I would have expected something else since I can do this or even better with 8" Newtonian in good seeing.

Without a doubt that scope in good seeing would be alot better than my 8". But in bad seeing it really didnt make any diffrence.

[Aussie Dave]

Yep VilleM, getting very similar results with a C8 and UV/IR cut off filter on Jupiter. I may have to invest in an IR pass filter, but then again if conditions are not above good, no filter is going to help capture detail.

Have some more scopes to test with the cameras, it'll be at least a 4 week wait.

 

[Aussie Dave]

A little over 3 weeks ago I did a quick test with a DSLR, 9 image stack with little editing that shows conditions here. This was towards the east low in the sky and on the brighter stars this is what was revealed.

[VilleM]

Do you think humidity is causing issues with seeing? Ive had good seeing when there is slight amount of clouds in front of Jupiter. Only visually though, havent tried imaging.

-V

[ChrisLX200]

I don't believe humidity itself causes poor seeing conditions, some superb seeing (planetary imaging results) is to be had in Florida under conditions of very high humidity. The Jet Stream is the real killer around the UK and Northern Europe.

ChrisH