1st light ASI462MC - Jupiter 29 Sept 2022

[geoflewis]

I purchased this colour camera back in August just too late for Saturn's opposition, but expecting to get the run up towards and the opposition of Jupiter, but life and poor weather put paid to that. However, I finally got out with it last night when the sky unexpectedly cleared around 10pm. It took me a while to set up the camera, get an image on the sensor with the C14 and start focusing, not least because the seeing was dreadful early on.  It also took a long time for me to dial in the capture and colour balance settings settings in FireCapture, as it's 6+ years since I used a colour camera. I made a bunch of mistakes, but gradually got the hang of it, then fortunatlely after a few hours of thrashing around (me as well as the Jupiter image), the seeing significantly improved for about 30 minutes, around 2am (BST), as the GRS was rotating into view.

This image is a de-rotated stack of 2x3 mins SER videos, each individually processed in AS3! and Registax6, before taking them into WinJupos. A satuartion boost and levels tweaks were applied in Affinity Photo.

Using a colour camera certainly reduces the chore of lots of R,G,B filtered images, but I think I'm only on the start of the learning curve how to get the best from it.

Thanks for looking, feedback and comments welcome.

[neil phillips]

Congrats on first light Geoff. A very promising start Nice capture 

[geoflewis]

3 minutes ago, neil phillips said:

Congrats on first light Geoff. A very promising start Nice capture 

Thanks Neil, I wouldn't have got there without lots of help and guidance from you..... much appreciated 👍👏

[neil phillips]

28 minutes ago, geoflewis said:

Thanks Neil, I wouldn't have got there without lots of help and guidance from you..... much appreciated 👍👏

It's been a pleasure Geoff

[geoflewis]

Had another very helpful chat with @neil phillips this afternoon, so tried a slightly different processing approach for this version, as well as using levels to brighten it and boosted colour saturation and vibrancy. Whilst at it I also took it over to Topaz DN using the Affinity Photo plugin to see if I could tease anything extra. There's so many ways to skin these planetary imaging cats......🤔

Again, comments / feedback very welcome.

[neil phillips]

45 minutes ago, geoflewis said:

Had another very helpful chat with @neil phillips this afternoon, so tried a slightly different processing approach for this version, as well as using levels to brighten it and boosted colour saturation and vibrancy. Whilst at it I also took it over to Topaz DN using the Affinity Photo plugin to see if I could tease anything extra. There's so many ways to skin these planetary imaging cats......🤔

Again, comments / feedback very welcome.

Great Colour easy on the denoise Geoff

[geoflewis]

1 minute ago, neil phillips said:

Great Colour easy on the denoise Geoff

Thanks Neil, good advice 👍

[neil phillips]

Just now, geoflewis said:

Thanks Neil, good advice 👍

The balance of the last shot with the detail of your top shot. Would be spot on i think Geoff

[geoflewis]

27 minutes ago, neil phillips said:

The balance of the last shot with the detail of your top shot. Would be spot on i think Geoff

Probably my last version. I took your advice to recover the polar region detail.

[Buzz Parsec]

Brilliant.  I'd be so pleased if that was first colour effort.  Good job and thanks for sharing.

[geoflewis]

19 minutes ago, Buzz Parsec said:

Brilliant.  I'd be so pleased if that was first colour effort.  Good job and thanks for sharing.

Many thanks, very much appreciated.

[Kon]

Very nice considering the awful conditions recently. Great first light for the camera. I have the same one and it's great. Invest on an IR filter to take advantage of its sensitivity in that wavelength.

[Pete Presland]

Excellent 1st light for the camera, I also finally got out last night as well/ The conditions were not the worst, but still pretty average. 

Not sure how close the Jet stream was, but falling low pressure (1004mb) in my experience is not usually good planetary imaging conditions.

[geoflewis]

1 hour ago, Kon said:

Very nice considering the awful conditions recently. Great first light for the camera. I have the same one and it's great. Invest on an IR filter to take advantage of its sensitivity in that wavelength.

Thanks Kon, I have an IR filter, but it's Astronomic PRO 742 and parfocal with the Astronomic RGB filters that I use with my ASI290MM. I might need to buy a ZWO IR filter parfocal with the UV/IR cut to use with this camera, but that will have to wait.

[geoflewis]

1 hour ago, Pete Presland said:

Excellent 1st light for the camera, I also finally got out last night as well/ The conditions were not the worst, but still pretty average. 

Not sure how close the Jet stream was, but falling low pressure (1004mb) in my experience is not usually good planetary imaging conditions.

Thanks Pete, the jetstream was gradually clearing here yesterday and was pretty much out of the way before 3am this morning, which probably partly explains why things improved a lot around 2am, but the n clouds rolled in..... 🙄

[neil phillips]

3 hours ago, geoflewis said:

Probably my last version. I took your advice to recover the polar region detail.

There is some good polar detail. Worth preserving.

[JeremyS]

Super 👍🏻

[geoflewis]

1 hour ago, JeremyS said:

Super 👍🏻

Thanks Jeremy

[geoflewis]

OK I lied, sorry, here's another version.

I ran the 2x3min SERs through WinJupos (WJ) to derotate all frames before processing in AS3!, then further derotated the 2 best 5% graded stacks in WJ. Next I applied wavelet sharpening in Registax, with final levels and saturation boost in Affinity Photo. I went for more vibrancy & saturation on this version. To me the detail is better preserved by de-rotating the SERs first, but what do you all think?

Edited September 30, 2022 by geoflewis

[neil phillips]

55 minutes ago, geoflewis said:

OK I lied, sorry, here's another version.

I ran the 2x3min SERs through WinJupos (WJ) to derotate all frames before processing in AS3!, then further derotated the 2 best 5% graded stacks in WJ. Next I applied wavelet sharpening in Registax, with final levels and saturation boost in Affinity Photo. I went for more vibrancy & saturation on this version. To me the detail is better preserved by de-rotating the SERs first, but what do you all think?

Yes the detail is better preserved. And your experimenting. Which is always a good thing. Especially when positives come from it. Nice process Geoff

[geoflewis]

35 minutes ago, neil phillips said:

Yes the detail is better preserved. And your experimenting. Which is always a good thing. Especially when positives come from it. Nice process Geoff

Thanks Neil. Always learning from the experts 😉

[chiltonstar]

Nice images - the camera looks good!

I was also out - excellent transparency, average seeing but at least the GRS showed some detail. I struggle with avoiding muddy looking images though.

Chris

[neil phillips]

25 minutes ago, geoflewis said:

Thanks Neil. Always learning from the experts 😉

Dont under cut yourself. Ive seen you produce great images

[geoflewis]

54 minutes ago, chiltonstar said:

Nice images - the camera looks good!

I was also out - excellent transparency, average seeing but at least the GRS showed some detail. I struggle with avoiding muddy looking images though.

Chris

Thanks Chris, yes started out as crap seeing, then got better, only for the clouds to arrive - fun hobby isn't it 🙄. Post processing is also a real challenge, so I'm very grateful for some pointers received from @neil phillips.