Planetary Imaging help/tips

[lenestor4545]

Hey!

I'm new here and I'm looking for advice to improve my planetary imaging. I've been using a Sky-Watcher 8" dobsonian telescope with a Celestron Neximage 5 Solar System Imager and RegiStaxs to process the videos I take. So far I've received decent images but they look faint and have little to no detail. Here are recent pictures of Jupiter and Mars I took. Any advice?

 

[PeterCPC]

A few suggestions.

Try a 2.5 Barlow or Powermate in the image train. Check the focus using a Bahtinov mask on a nearby star.

Use AS!3 to process the images before putting the result into Registax.

Peter

[Knighty2112]

Not sure what capture software you use, but I use FireCapture for planetary and lunar images as it seems to do better than Sharpcap so give that a try as well. 

[lenestor4545]

17 hours ago, Knighty2112 said:

Not sure what capture software you use, but I use FireCapture for planetary and lunar images as it seems to do better than Sharpcap so give that a try as well. 

I've been using the icap software that came with the Neximage camera. I'll be sure to try out the other software though.

[lenestor4545]

19 hours ago, PeterCPC said:

A few suggestions.

Try a 2.5 Barlow or Powermate in the image train. Check the focus using a Bahtinov mask on a nearby star.

Use AS!3 to process the images before putting the result into Registax.

Peter

I have a 3 Barlow but not the mask, do you recommend any for my telescope? Where can I get the software? Thanks for the advice!

[PeterCPC]

http://www.astrokraai.nl/software/latest.php

I always recommend/use a Bahtinov mask to get perfect focus. You will need to use a star as it will not work on planets. Also, check the collimation is spot on.

Peter

[RolandKol]

1. Colimate

2. BARLOW (chek which x2 or x3 best fits your cam).

3. If you have no Bahtinov mask, try using SharpCap (free imaging software) multistar focusing aid, which may be very tricky with barlow ... Bahtinov mask is a better solution.

4. Switch to FireCap (also free), target,  crop to 200x300 resolution, adjust exposure and gain to keep histogram at 70% and have a max FPs, shoot! 

Use PiPP to initially preprocess your video, later Autostakert to stack, Registrax to sharpen, later sharpen again with Photoshop or Gimp and use them to finalise the pic with Curve and Saturation adjusments

[RolandKol]

If picture will be too noisy,

after you adjust exposure and gain,

Try to shoot some darks before imiging, Firecap and SharpCap both have dark substracion option.