Jupiter, really bad results, is it the seeing?

[Laurieast]

Hi All,

I could see much better live on the screen than the results, but there was very bad seeing, bubbling. I had previously had much better on this camera's one previous outing,  collimation is good. Maybe I was pushing it too much for the conditions with the 3x barlow. 

Explorer 150p, 3x barlow, asi 224 mc. @ 2,250mm. Stacked in ASI3, Wavelets/Gausian in Registax.

This is 640x480, RAW 8, 5ms, gain about 250, over 3 minutes, and had the ROI on in the screen, I had to move it several times it as I had some drift going on. I think the quality graph in ASI3 is trying to tell me something, just a spike in the middle, but would appreciate comments. 

Thanks!

 

 

[lainev]

At f/5 and 3.75 pixels a 3x barlow should be in the right range. Of course seeing, scope cooling, and collimation all rule.

[Laurieast]

Checked collimation outside with it on the mount, put it outside for over an hour, so I will know not to bother if I see it boiling like that again 👍

[NenoVento]

3 minutes without derotating with winjupos seems too long to me... If not willing to use this program, try shooting shorter videos, 2 minutes tops

[Pete Presland]

Have you tried changing the noise robust settings?

[Laurieast]

2 hours ago, Pete Presland said:

Have you tried changing the noise robust settings?

No, where do I find those?  I was using ASICAP.

[inFINNity Deck]

From your result it seems that you are not using an ADC, is that correct? With the current low altitude of the planets an ADC is a must to get less dispersed images.

For the rest it could well be that the seeing was not good enough or that the scope was still too warm.

Noise Robust setting is in AutoStakkert (left hand side of main window in the Quality Estimator section).

Nicolàs

PS: I agree that 3 minutes recordings are too long

Edited October 26, 2021 by inFINNity Deck

[Laurieast]

9 minutes ago, inFINNity Deck said:

From your result it seems that you are not using an ADC, is that correct?

No ADC, will look into getting that, thank you!

[Pete Presland]

An ADC will certainly help things, as the dispersion is clearly visible in your finished image. I don't think 3 minutes is too long, as A/S3 can cope with some rotation. 

The one thing it can not help is poor seeing conditions.  How frames did you capture?

[Laurieast]

36 minutes ago, Pete Presland said:

How frames did you capture?

I can't tell now, it went in the recycle bin, probably nowhere near enough as I was using an old (ancient) Dell Inspiron with only 2.0 USB's , it was 2.64GB if that means anything. It might have been 11k frames. 

New laptop with 3.0 USB's etc arriving tomorrow! 

So it will no doubt be cloudy for month's now. 😕

Edited October 26, 2021 by Laurieast

[inFINNity Deck]

The screen-dump says 9180 frames (lower left of main window), so approximately 51fps. 😉

Nicolàs

[inFINNity Deck]

Did you also check the collimation of your scope prior to imaging? I usually do that on a nearby bright star, so that the scope is collimated in approximately the same position as the images are taken. In that way any flexure or mirror-shift/mirror-flop will not have a significant effect on the result (my C11 suffers from mirror-flop, which has a significant effect on the collimation).

It has been a while since I attempted Jupiter and Saturn and to be honest those attempts were mediocre. Last year I improved my skills a lot using Mars as subject. With the ASI174 I can get frame-rates of over 150fps (200fps is the limit what my NUC can handle). I captured 120s SER-movies in LRGB using an ADC and the Celestron C11 EdgeHD. Each movie was processed in AS!, stacking 10% of the best frames. These four resulting stacks were then first sharpened using an unsharp mask, then RGB combined using the L as an luminance layer, enlarged by 200% with bicubic interpolation, and finally sharpened using high pass sharpen. The result is here.

It has to be said that a lot depends on the seeing...

Nicolàs

 

[Laurieast]

Very nice Mars!

[Pete Presland]

I asked about the frame quantity, because you were stacking 12000 frames and also 96% of your frames. I would say both are way to many, although with your quality graph looking so odd it might not have made any difference here.

 

[Laurieast]

1 hour ago, Pete Presland said:

I asked about the frame quantity, because you were stacking 12000 frames and also 96% of your frames.

I had tried earlier with stacking 5% and 10%, and as you say it made no difference. 

Thanks for all your help!

I remember now, I tried 96% because that was what Wido Oerlemans was suggesting on his Astroforum on YouTube. That's my excuse anyway 🤫

Edited October 26, 2021 by Laurieast