whats your typical way of capturing the planets

[iwols]

hi just wondered what your typical routine was for capturing the planets ie software /video or  stills?

[Pete Presland]

I think you will find most imagers capture videos and then stack them, often referred to as "lucky imaging". A term I rather dislike to be honest, as there is nothing lucky about it. It refers to the  process of capturing 1000s of video frames and stacking the ones that are lucky enough avoid the atmospheric disturbance.

I usually use either a Asi224mc for one shot colour images, or  a Asi290mm for monochrome and RGB Images. 

Software is Firecapture for the capturing and Autostakkert for stacking. 

 

[orion25]

I image planets much the same as @Pete Presland. I use the ASI224mc and Firecapture to capture several seconds of color video through my 180 Mak. I then process the video (stack the video images) in Registax 6 to get the image which I touch up in Photoshop.

[Sunshine]

I image planets with the cheapest camera ever (Neximage 5) can be had for under a hundred dollars on the used market, it captures video.  As for software again nothing fancy, Icap for capture and Registax for stacking, it is just about the most bare bones method you can do but, it does produce some decent planetary images. Sometimes I have to remind myself not to use the word "imager" when referring to myself as the DSO imagers here on SGL will surely have me drawn and quartered lol.

Edited July 20, 2021 by Sunshine

[iwols]

would sharpcap do the same as firecapture please ,as i purchased this a while ago just for the polar mount app cheers

[vlaiv]

Yes, SharpCap is very good for planetary imaging. Here are a few more tips to get you going:

1. Use SER video file format and don't debayer captured frames

2. Use very short exposure and don't pay attention to histogram or if image in capture looks dark. Use 5-6ms exposures

3. Use very high gain setting for your camera (one that minimizes read noise - lookup read noise vs gain for your particular model)

4. Use PIPP to calibrate your video (shoot dark video and flat / flat dark). Preserve bayer matrix in this step (PIPP has that option)

5. Use AutoStakkert!3 to stack your video.

6. Use Registax wavelets for sharpening.

 

[iwols]

thanks vlaiv great tips as always there,the only one im not sure of is 

4. Use PIPP to calibrate your video (shoot dark video and flat / flat dark). Preserve bayer matrix in this step (PIPP has that option) 

thanks iwols

[vlaiv]

3 hours ago, iwols said:

thanks vlaiv great tips as always there,the only one im not sure of is 

4. Use PIPP to calibrate your video (shoot dark video and flat / flat dark). Preserve bayer matrix in this step (PIPP has that option) 

thanks iwols

PIPP is Planetary Image Pre Processor (If I'm not mistaken) - a free / open source tool that preprocesses video before stacking.

https://sites.google.com/site/astropipp/

It has a bunch of functions - but I tend not to use most of them as they are not needed - except maybe frame stabilization / crop if you want to keep or have smaller video files. It is also useful for combining videos or maybe for format conversion.

Main feature is calibration.

There are three different set of files that you need for calibration. You can do dark calibration or dark + flat calibration of your video.

In order to do dark calibration (which is subtraction of bias and dark signal) - you shoot video with same settings as your planet video - except you cover the scope.

For flat calibration - you need flat panel or some other means of creating flat field (like T-shirt in evening / dawn or maybe laptop screen) - lookup flats for regular astrophotography - principle is the same - except you shoot again video of say ~100-200 frames for both flats and flat darks (same settings as flats but scope covered).

You can load all of these files into PIPP and tell it to output 16bit calibrated video with all preprocessing done (you can say normalize histogram, preserve bayer matrix or debayer - depending on what you prefer and so on).

[iwols]

are these the right settings ive finished up with a colour ser file?

[vlaiv]

1 minute ago, iwols said:

are these the right settings ive finished up with a colour ser file?

I'd probably change following for planetary work:

1. Use ROI instead of full resolution (you might be using full res for testing purposes?) - so instead of 3096x2080 use something like 640x480 to get high enough FPS.

2. Use 5ms exposure instead of 504ms (again - maybe you need longer exposure for testing purposes?)

3. Turn on high speed mode - option in lower section above temperature reading

As far as colour ser - yes, you'll capture colour video as your camera is colour camera, but what format is it in, can you tell? It can be in raw format not debayered and in that case your preview application is debayering for preview, or it might be debayered and 8bit per channel (so RGB format).

You can tell the difference by the size of the ser file. Say you capture 1000 frames in your ser format. If you shoot RAW8 mode, file size should be 1000 x 3096 x 2080 = ~6GB of data, but same file in RGB8 mode will produce 18GB file (three times as large).

[iwols]

thanks i dont track jupiter do i , do i just let it go across my screen?

[vlaiv]

8 minutes ago, iwols said:

thanks i dont track jupiter do i , do i just let it go across my screen?

Why wouldn't you track? You should track and ideally hold Jupiter in center of the FOV - on optical axis.

Although you have EdgeHD scope - most scopes have best sharpness on optical axis - as soon as you move away from optical axis - you start getting aberrations - like coma or field curvature or whatever. Even EdgeHD, although it is corrected across the field for imaging is not diffraction limited away from optical axis.

 

[vlaiv]

Just to add - tracking needs not be ideal and planet can and even should have slight drift across the FOV in movie - that will naturally dither recording.

[iwols]

how do i track it? properly

[iwols]

jupiter flew across screen approx 20 secs

 

[vlaiv]

34 minutes ago, iwols said:

jupiter flew across screen approx 20 secs

 

Do you have your scope on EQ mount?

Your signature says that you have Heq5 pro mount. Make sure your mount is properly polar aligned and setup and it should track your target without much issues.

[iwols]

thanks its a heq5,so i just have to drive to jupiter change to solar and that should track,last night i just turned the mount via the clutch brakes as i was desperate

[vlaiv]

4 hours ago, iwols said:

thanks its a heq5,so i just have to drive to jupiter change to solar and that should track,last night i just turned the mount via the clutch brakes as i was desperate

Use sidereal tracking rate for planets.

[iwols]

thanks is that the solar icon?

[vlaiv]

13 minutes ago, iwols said:

thanks is that the solar icon?

If you mean EQ mod, then this one:

Planets and stars / DSOs are tracked with "star" icon.

The Moon is tracked with second one (lunar rate)

Third one is solar rate for Sun.

 

[iwols]

thanks as always Vlaiv