Venus, again, 16/04/20, 127mm Mak, ZWO178MC

[Bobby1970]

Thought I would have another crack at this.

127mm Mak, ZWO178MC on my AZGTi mount, 2x barlow. 

The seeing wasn't the best and the whole planet seemed to be shimmering and bubbling but I persisted anyway.

I had a bit of a play with the focussing assistance in Sharpcap to see if it helped.

I also used the ROI feature in sharpcap to get a higher framerate and managed 10000 frames in a couple of minutes. I used PIPP to get this down to around 4000 frames, then AS, Registax , Gimp and Windows photo editor.

Not in the same league as some of the spectacular Venus images in here, but something nonetheless.

 

Thanks for looking 🙂

 

[NenoVento]

Amazing picture with "only" 127mm. These maks are incredible. Were you using the AZGTI in standard or with the eq mod?

NV

[Bobby1970]

7 minutes ago, NenoVento said:

Amazing picture with "only" 127mm. These maks are incredible. Were you using the AZGTI in standard or with the eq mod?

NV

Tbh. I've only used it in alt az mode at the moment. Although I have flashed it with the eq firmware

[NenoVento]

Thats great. I also use an altaz mount and am always concern about taking more than 2 or 3 minute movies of Venus due to field rotation. I hope the weather improves soon so I can try with sharpcap (focus and ROI) as you did (but with my IMX224 colour camera).

Thanks for the info,

NV

[Bobby1970]

11 hours ago, NenoVento said:

Thats great. I also use an altaz mount and am always concern about taking more than 2 or 3 minute movies of Venus due to field rotation. I hope the weather improves soon so I can try with sharpcap (focus and ROI) as you did (but with my IMX224 colour camera).

Thanks for the info,

NV

I don't think its field rotation as such you need to worry about with planetary imaging. Its the rotation of the planet itself as far as I know. I always thought a couple of minutes was generally "optimal" for planetary work but I may be wrong, it was certainly the case when I got my first scope and modified web cam to have a dabble with.

With my camera I tweaked the settings and used the ROI at 800x600 along with using the RAW8 setting it enabled a framerate of around 90fps. So a couple of minutes captured lots of frames. My astro laptop only has usb 2 also so perhaps with a newer laptop I could have achieved an even higher fps, not sure. 

I intend to have a crack at venus with my 90mm mak just for comparison with the 127mm one, hopefully during the next week or so.

[NenoVento]

I'll be looking forward to your results!.

Best regards,

NV

[Pete Presland]

Nice sharp phase visible there