Jupiter and Mars 14th August

[neil phillips]

Pretty bad seeing. With the out of focus problem continuing. Some of it ( not all ) is also falling temperatures i am sure. I kept running the fan before captures. which helped a little. But not a lot.  Still managed a fair bit of detail. I think Jupiters reasonable elevation helping more this year. Mars was at 42 degrees elevation

1.5x drizzle jupiter downsized to 75% 

Mars  1.5x drizzle. resampled up 25% Which i personally think works because of its tiny size

 

Edited August 14, 2022 by neil phillips

[U Cyg]

Really good Mars Neil, a lot of detail showing for a disc of just over 8 arc seconds.

Angie

[neil phillips]

1 minute ago, U Cyg said:

Really good Mars Neil, a lot of detail showing for a disc of just over 8 arc seconds.

Angie

Thanks Angie. I think the 42 degrees elevation is helping

[JeremyS]

Impressive, Neil 👍🏻

[neil phillips]

26 minutes ago, JeremyS said:

Impressive, Neil 👍🏻

Thanks Jeremy. After all this heat its very cooling out there in the morning. Very enjoyable

[si@nite]

Great detail on mars & a very nice Jupiter shot too, good work Neil!

[neil phillips]

1 hour ago, si@nite said:

Great detail on mars & a very nice Jupiter shot too, good work Neil!

Will be good when Mars is at opposition. 

Thanks Simon

[Kon]

Very nice especially your Mars .

[neil phillips]

Its great to be imaging the red planet again. Thanks 

[powerlord]

Hi Neil, great as always. I shot mars, saturn and jupiter at weekend, but feel I'm not getting the best out the data. Can you just summarize your process ?

mine has been:

I've shoot each planet with IR pass, and OR block. And each I shoot 'high gain' and 'low gain'

PIPP to stabilise and sort quality

autostakkert, auto AP, and then stack based on what results looks like trying to aim for best 25%, but if all much of a much sometimes best 80%. stack at 1.5x and 3x.

I then put em through Registax, dydadic, guassian, pushing each as high as makes an improvement.

then look at all the results and choose the best.

but feels like I'm over egging it, and tbh, not really sure what I'm doing. My saturn came out well a month ago, but the saturn I shot this time seems nothing like as good.

[neil phillips]

15 hours ago, powerlord said:

Hi Neil, great as always. I shot mars, saturn and jupiter at weekend, but feel I'm not getting the best out the data. Can you just summarize your process ?

mine has been:

I've shoot each planet with IR pass, and OR block. And each I shoot 'high gain' and 'low gain'

PIPP to stabilise and sort quality

autostakkert, auto AP, and then stack based on what results looks like trying to aim for best 25%, but if all much of a much sometimes best 80%. stack at 1.5x and 3x.

I then put em through Registax, dydadic, guassian, pushing each as high as makes an improvement.

then look at all the results and choose the best.

but feels like I'm over egging it, and tbh, not really sure what I'm doing. My saturn came out well a month ago, but the saturn I shot this time seems nothing like as good.

Your processing regime looks ok from what I can see. As such not sure the problem is after the fact. What i have found is the quality of any planetary image is around 80 % at capture. Meaning if you don't get the quality at capture no amount of post processing is going to save it. It can help for sure but it will always be quality at capture limited. The best data will look great straight out of Registax. no post processing for example.

So from that perspective looking at your Jupiter image on the other page. First thing i notice is a bit of a fuzzy edge. So if seeing is pants then that will prevent something nice. As long as your sure your collimation is good.

Then its just a case of looking on the jet stream maps. Making sure there is no jet stream over suffolk. Make sure your Scope is fully cooled at least a hour. 2 is better.

Make sure your correctly sampled. A little over is ok. I prefer to be a little over than under. In fact I have a lot of trouble getting sampling good with my various bits of equipment. The ADC is often the culprit. Complicating amplification. Over amplifying. But even oversampled good results can still be got. But the SNR will be worse. 

Just try to get it as good as you can. with the equipment you own. Or can buy. I would Set exposure ( under reasonable seeing ) at around 4 or 5 ms. I was at around 8 ms. with the 462c For sometime.  But seeing will often respond better with a slightly shorter exposure. I have been finding recently on Jupiter. Though 8ms will be a slightly smoother softer rendition. That can look rather nice. especially under good seeing. where Shorter exposures. Are less influential 

I prefer to set my levels so that I am just shy of clipping. 70 75% histo. I know some prefer not to worry about this. But I definitely prefer to be in control of that. Perhaps old habits perhaps other things. Its also i think good advice for beginners who could set captures into clipping without realizing. And ending up with burnout.

Gain is often around the 250 mark depending on what size scope transparency ect.

Make sure you nail focus. If unsure refocus a few times during the nights session. You should get some close. If using a colour cam shoot for 2.30 to 3 mins. And there will be a small amount of contrast loss. Due to rotation. But is less a evil than not capturing enough frames. 5 min captures can be de rotated. 

Now i use AS/3 straight sometimes.

Sometimes i go through pipp. Good data it wont matter a lot. I use box size 104 place AP grid min bright 15. Just make sure there's no gaps on the edge. And the points are not too close to the planets edge. As it will track better. As you said between 25% all the way up to 80% ( under good seeing  ) is possible, so just choose your best estimation. looking at the quality of the frames. If the planet is really noisy I use noise robust 8 a little smoother 6. But this is something others may want to experiment with. 

Registax i use mostly dyadic. gaussian second wavelet 70%. third wavelet 30 to 50%  But this varies a lot. you have to use your eyes here.

The third wavelet dyadic. will bloat fast. so go easy, more 30% than 50.

Out of there i go to image analyzer do some edge cleaning up. increase in saturation. Mild colour noise reduction. And circular blur deconvolution is quite nice. Again you have to use your eyes to determine amounts. With my CC its been 2. Then i use colour mapper ( a simple levels adjust )  I use blacks to darken the surround.  gamma, contrast. and whites ( exposure ) in varying amounts,  depends on the image. Sometimes I wont use all three. Again its a eye thing. 

Often i will then down size 75% ( a 25% reduction ) with my 245mm Newtonian after doing a 1.5x drizzle.  90% ( 10% Reduction with my 7" CC ) As i haven't been doing drizzle with that. I am more oversampled than I want to be and drizzle makes it even worse. That's a crash course of my procedure. Nothing fancy. in fact there is better deconvolutions out there. Some may prefer un sharp mask. Or lucy Richardson ect. Think i might buy Astra image soon actually as its likely better. But as you can see its the data that is the key. processing is only really a tweaking of the data

Sometimes i think it looks better untouched in registax. And i am not joking. 

Edited August 30, 2022 by neil phillips

[powerlord]

thanks for the comprehensive reply Neil. I assume you are using a barlow with your newt ?

This time I used my 2" SW ED barlow with a 16.5mm spacer before the camera. When I got the best saturn, I used a 1.25" 2.2x baader barlow right up at camera. So will do that next time.

For sampling, all I've got the adjust that is the distance to the barlow ?

Jet streams wise - yeh I use meteoblue and it said it was all green for that night, but visually looking at the video in firecapture it didn't look as good as when I shot saturn best if I'm honest. I hoped it was just me imagining it.

Focus wise, I just try to be in the middle of the 'definately not focused' bit - if looking at the video I see occasional detail popping into being I'm assuming that's good enough ?

I reckon I'm doing same as you raw processing wise by the sounds of things.

For the jupiter in the other post, I found the IR I took was sharper than the colour, so used that for luminance on the colour data - but I had to shift it to the left because of rotation.

Maybe I'd be better trying the 300PDS and a more powerful barlow, rather than my C9.25 with the 2.2x ?

stu

[neil phillips]

38 minutes ago, powerlord said:

thanks for the comprehensive reply Neil. I assume you are using a barlow with your newt ?

This time I used my 2" SW ED barlow with a 16.5mm spacer before the camera. When I got the best saturn, I used a 1.25" 2.2x baader barlow right up at camera. So will do that next time.

For sampling, all I've got the adjust that is the distance to the barlow ?

Jet streams wise - yeh I use meteoblue and it said it was all green for that night, but visually looking at the video in firecapture it didn't look as good as when I shot saturn best if I'm honest. I hoped it was just me imagining it.

Focus wise, I just try to be in the middle of the 'definately not focused' bit - if looking at the video I see occasional detail popping into being I'm assuming that's good enough ?

I reckon I'm doing same as you raw processing wise by the sounds of things.

For the jupiter in the other post, I found the IR I took was sharper than the colour, so used that for luminance on the colour data - but I had to shift it to the left because of rotation.

Maybe I'd be better trying the 300PDS and a more powerful barlow, rather than my C9.25 with the 2.2x ?

stu

Its a difficult one to nail as to why some get great looking planetary images and some do not Stu. Your processing skills are fine. Yet if i am honest at the moment your other page. looks a long way from perfected. I am not sure if its a experience thing. Or something else ? Of course you could try a bigger scope. But if i had the Celestron Stu it would look very similar to what ive been posting. Meaning the scope is not the problem. I don't think ?

'Craig thought my 7.3 CC was my 10" Newt on first sight. That's not to say you might not do better with the 300p. But also you might actually do worse, it kind of depends on a lot of things. Your seeing on Saturn looked truly awful Stu. Mars seemed to be your best image. Jupiter again seeing looked iffy.  I will keep a watch on your images if you nail something. you wont need me to say it. you will know it yourself. If there becomes a persistent appearance ( problem ) Over time i will likely get more clues whats going on. But i do know your seeing on saturn was terrible. Jupiter not great. Mars more promising  Yes you can get more detail adding reds and IRs into the mix. But if you cant get a decent RGB there's a problem somewhere. That the lums are often hiding. Others may see this different and thats fine. With my newt and ADC i am screwing a Baader q  2.25 x straight into the ADC ( a sampling thing ) same with the CC but in that case a celestron 2x for even less amplification screwed straight in Btw shifting to the left. Might explain that fuzzy edge I can see on my 4 k monitor. I have it set so it sees every little blemish in the blacks. Hence wondering about collimation. But likely that shifting you did ?

Edited August 30, 2022 by neil phillips

[powerlord]

I will give it another collimation check, but it was spot on a few months back, and I've found it holds it well.

Maybe seeing then as you say - saturn was/is very low - about 20 degrees - so not gonna be great. Jupiter was nice and high though and shot at same time as mars.

here's the straight out of registax jupiter RGB (high and low gain versions) and IR mono.

jup.ir.highgain.d15.tifjup.colour.lowgain.15.tifjup.colour.highgain.15.tif

[neil phillips]

5 hours ago, powerlord said:

I will give it another collimation check, but it was spot on a few months back, and I've found it holds it well.

Maybe seeing then as you say - saturn was/is very low - about 20 degrees - so not gonna be great. Jupiter was nice and high though and shot at same time as mars.

here's the straight out of registax jupiter RGB (high and low gain versions) and IR mono.

jup.ir.highgain.d15.tif 1.13 MB · 3 downloads jup.colour.lowgain.15.tif 1.67 MB · 3 downloads jup.colour.highgain.15.tif 1.67 MB · 4 downloads

Don't underestimate what's possible at 20 degrees. I got this around 20 degrees

[powerlord]

very nice. the one I got last month was at least a bit closer to that:

[neil phillips]

5 hours ago, powerlord said:

very nice. the one I got last month was at least a bit closer to that:

Better but under good seeing even for 20 degrees the Cassin will be clean all the way around. That kind of seeing at 20 degrees is somewhat difficult. Wish i could have carried on the council decided to do this. It goes off at 1 oclock. But early planets now under a football stadium

[Ags]

The Mars is fabulous, beautiful resolution with a strong gibbous phase, not an easy combination!

[CraigT82]

Some really fine detail on Mars there considering the small disk, this the 10”?  Did you have to deal with edge rind on that? I had a lot of fun with Mars in 2020 I’m really looking forward to opposition this year. 

[neil phillips]

2 hours ago, CraigT82 said:

Some really fine detail on Mars there considering the small disk, this the 10”?  Did you have to deal with edge rind on that? I had a lot of fun with Mars in 2020 I’m really looking forward to opposition this year. 

Its good your asking the question Craig. My very simple blur on the edge not too obvious then. The rind will be a given for the most part. I wonder sometimes if to just leave it. But either approach is fine. And yes Craig the 245mm Newtonian. Do you still have the 300p ?

[CraigT82]

3 hours ago, neil phillips said:

Its good your asking the question Craig. My very simple blur on the edge not too obvious then. The rind will be a given for the most part. I wonder sometimes if to just leave it. But either approach is fine. And yes Craig the 245mm Newtonian. Do you still have the 300p ?

Yeah I wasn’t sure, it just looks like Martian clouds to be honest you’ve done a good job on that. Yeah I still have the 300p it was stripped down last year but it’s been put back together now and just waiting for Jup to be in a decent position around 11-12pm to get going with it as early mornings are a no go with the kids at the minute

[neil phillips]

25 minutes ago, CraigT82 said:

Yeah I wasn’t sure, it just looks like Martian clouds to be honest you’ve done a good job on that. Yeah I still have the 300p it was stripped down last year but it’s been put back together now and just waiting for Jup to be in a decent position around 11-12pm to get going with it as early mornings are a no go with the kids at the minute

Sweet. Your going to have a blast Craig. Its high enough especially under good seeing to start to get a fair bit of detail. Of course next year 52 degrees will be the real deal. But certainly workable this year. Good luck i just know your going to knock it out of the ball park. I am going to try and get a 12" again at some point. i want to have it ready by next year. But possibly before. 12 is the transition point I think to what i would call a big scope. And with work it shows in the images doesn't it. 

[si@nite]

Great images Neil especially the Mars shot some lovely detail showing there!

[powerlord]

So, with a 300... (i've got a 300PDS too).. with a 2x barlow it's only 3000mm vs my C9.25 with 2x barlow at 4600mm odd. Are you suggestion stronger barlow with a 300 ? Or shooting at just 3000mm, but still getting more detail in the 50% less pixels with the same camera? Or using a camera with even smaller pixels than the asi224 ? Sorry if dumb question.

[neil phillips]

7 minutes ago, powerlord said:

So, with a 300... (i've got a 300PDS too).. with a 2x barlow it's only 3000mm vs my C9.25 with 2x barlow at 4600mm odd. Are you suggestion stronger barlow with a 300 ? Or shooting at just 3000mm, but still getting more detail in the 50% less pixels with the same camera? Or using a camera with even smaller pixels than the asi224 ? Sorry if dumb question.

Craig is currently using a 300p. He may know more. But i reckon if the pixel spacing is 3x greater than the scopes resolution then a 3x barlow should be used with the 224. And 300p Which is a great colour camera btw.. If it was me i probably would use the 224. At least F15  maybe even slightly more.