First Imaging Session

[hornedreaper33]

Hello everyone!

So after gathering the necessary equipment I finally got a chance to have my first stab at imaging. Having moved to Vancouver I can safely say that the rain here is WAY worse than the UK. During March it rained 28 days and only 70.5 hours of sunshine were recorded. April wasn't much better. However, last night was clear. I took two things away from the short imaging session, where Jupiter was the target:

1: The actual shots come out darker than they looked on Backyard EOS

2: Bad seeing is a cruel, cruel trick

The second point lead me to wonder, is there any point trying to image in the warmer months? Does the probability of getting a good image drop dramatically after say, March? I remember observing Jupiter on a cold clear winters night and being able to see much more detail than I got last night. It was a little frustrating.

I have a few thousand shots to work with so I will have a go at stacking them but could I please have your opinions on the best stacking software?

 

Thanks, clear skies.

[hjw]

You can image in warmer conditions, otherwise we antipodes would have a hard time taking pictures . Only problem might be around mid summer it is not getting dark enough.

Good luck!

HJ

[PeterCPC]

The Histogram tool in BYE is your friend where exposure is concerned. Best planetary image stacker is Autostakkert IMO. you would then use Registax for wavelet adjustments.

Peter

[hornedreaper33]

OK so a clear sky chart showed me that ridiculously high humidity was the problem. However, after reading a few tutorials and taking into account the advice I received on here, I stacked my images in AS2 and processed them in Registax. I was pleasantly surprised with the results. I think a little more tweaking is in order but not a bad start. I will share them on a different thread when I've had a further play with them. At the moment I'm just grabbing sliders and moving them around so I would like to understand what is going on a little better if you guys can suggest any decent tutorials?

 

@PeterCPC, thanks for the reply. While lying awake last night after an ill timed cup of tea, I realised I forgot to look at the histogram.