Jupiter and Moons

[Stub Mandrel]

Composite of Jupiter and three moons - I had to process the 'Europa/Callisto' layer harder, because the seeing diffused them so much they didn't stack as well as Io.

[iwols]

hi neil what equipment did you use for this cheers

Edited July 24, 2019 by iwols

[Stub Mandrel]

Hi, @iwols, a 150PL on EQ5, unguided. ZWO  ASI120MC camera. Between scope and camera are: X3 barlow element, filterwheel set to IR/UV cut filter (probably not doing anything) and, most importantly, a ZWO ADC set almost to 'max'. I focused using a Bahtinov mask on a bright star.

I took lots of runs of 5,000 frames for the planets, but the moon one for the above was only 1000 or so. For both Saturn and Jupiter most results were pretty similar but then there were one or two images noticeably better than the rest.

In SharpCap I found it was necessary to use 100% gain and accept longer exposures and hope for periods of better seeing -  at f24 you really aren't getting a very bright image!

Pre-processed in PIPP without debayer, stretched to 90%. debayered and stacked in AS!3. Post process for  planets was simple - Lucy Richardson deconvolution followed by 100% micro-contrast in Astra Image.

See here for what the worst of the raw video was like. I think the 'secret' is to capture data as if the conditions were perfect and not accept poor focus etc. just because the seeing is poor:

 

[astroman001]

Nice, image. Makes you realise what a great job the software does to pull that image from the wobbly fuzzball on the screen!

Peter

[Stub Mandrel]

2 hours ago, astroman001 said:

Nice, image. Makes you realise what a great job the software does to pull that image from the wobbly fuzzball on the screen!

Peter

It is incredible. I am excited about what might will possible when the planets are higher up in the sky.

[Stu]

Very good Neil. I see you just caught Io's shadow right on the limb! Nicely done!

[U Cyg]

I like this, always nice to see the moons. 😄

Angie

[Pete Presland]

Lovely looking image.