is it me?

[rwc23q]

Good morning all,

I am using as 127 slt mak, 2 x barlow, star diagonal and neximage 5.

i am really struggling to focus or to capture a decent image of jupiter. I know i am not to expect hubble quality, but really dont know what i am doing wrong. i have tired focusing on a star using a bahitnov mask then moving to jupiter (issues with starsense but that is a whole other thread), but just cannot seem to get the focus right.

I attach an image i managed to grab last night as an example.

i am getting incredibly frustrated, and feel that i am missing something.

Please, any suggestions/ tips/ help will most certainly help my blood pressure ;-)

Rob

jupiter 06082020 1.bmp

[Cornelius Varley]

Firstly, remove the diagonal from the imaging path, it isn't required.

[rwc23q]

1 hour ago, Cornelius Varley said:

Firstly, remove the diagonal from the imaging path, it isn't required.

I am having to use the diagonal as I am always realigning - starsense is just not working too well for me. Think the mount may be playing up as I have never been able to track correctly even before using starsense. 

But will certainly try without the diagonal, tonight hopefully.

[rwc23q]

1 hour ago, KevS said:

Good morning, 

Looks to me like movement blur, and only slight focusing problems any longer than about 2 mins on Jupiter will capture the rotation and smear the results. Not sure of the pixel size of the camera you mention but you could (dependent upon the focal length of the scope) be "over sampling". Try it again without the Barlow. I am not an expert by any means but I am sure there will be a more experienced planetary person along soon.

K

thanks for that. I was wondering if an adc would be of benefit, but would prefer to put my money towards a new mount 😉

Am using 640 x 480 on the camera, and the focal length ratio of the scope is an f/12 

Frustrated with outcome so far, must learn how to curb my enthusiasm 😉😁

[CraigT82]

3 hours ago, rwc23q said:

Good morning all,

I am using as 127 slt mak, 2 x barlow, star diagonal and neximage 5.

i am really struggling to focus or to capture a decent image of jupiter. I know i am not to expect hubble quality, but really dont know what i am doing wrong. i have tired focusing on a star using a bahitnov mask then moving to jupiter (issues with starsense but that is a whole other thread), but just cannot seem to get the focus right.

I attach an image i managed to grab last night as an example.

i am getting incredibly frustrated, and feel that i am missing something.

Please, any suggestions/ tips/ help will most certainly help my blood pressure 😉

Rob

jupiter 06082020 1.bmp 900.05 kB · 15 downloads

That's not too bad at all, it's displaying a bit large and would look better smaller I think.  The blue fringe at top and red fringe at bottom is atmospheric dispersion and an ADC would certainly help with that, but the RGB Align function in registax would alos help to realign the colour channels to a lesser degree so I've givebn that a go, see below:

For focusing I always find that focussing visually on the moons of Jupiter gives best results, rather than a bahtinov mask

What is your processing flow?

[vlaiv]

Image is ok I would say - needs to be better centered and possibly captured with shorter exposures and few other technical things adjusted, but otherwise ok:

[michael8554]

Many years since I did Planetary, but I had a very similar setup to yours Rob.

In my experience the AVI looked awful, the initial Registax result was better, but it all became worthwhile after using the Registax processing tools.

A simple tracking mount was fine at F30.

Michael