Jupiter and mars from 2 nights with difficult seeing

[ONIKKINEN]

All taken with 8'' f/4.4 newtonian + paracorr + 2.5x barlow and the 678MC. Jupiters resized to 70%, Mars at capture resolution as it is already a thumbnail and dont want to reduce it even if its oversampled.

11.10 - Seeing was like soup. Focus was mostly a guess and looks like i guessed wrong.

Not much to see but thought i would post it anyway. I was shocked at how difficult it was to tell if the image is in focus or not with this one. Jupiter was stable, not boiling or shimmering, just detailless at any level of focus. 4ms exposure and 3 minute recording for a total of 39k frames of which the best 10% went into the stack:

And mars, similar story but this time 110k frames (!) with best 5% stacked:

Of these 2 i like the Mars one a lot more even if it is very small.

 

12.10 - Seeing was much better, but still not very good. On the worse side of average i would guess, with occasional pockets of clarit coming through that allowed to have better focus.

Jupiter has some detail, not a complete waste. Kind of happy how it turned out despite the difficulties in capture.

 

And mars, this time 90k frames and best 5% stacked:

Mars is exciting to image, it can only get better as it gets bigger and higher in the sky. Looking forward to opposition!

I just noticed that I took the Mars images 26 hours apart, so there is very little difference as Mars has completed just a little over one rotation.

Edited October 13, 2022 by ONIKKINEN

[neil phillips]

last two shots showing some good detail. Captured Syrtis major there

[Pete Presland]

Very nicely captured 

[CraigT82]

Nice work, not wasted night by any stretch. Have you tried without the paracorr? 

[Kon]

Nice set of images. I like your first Mars and second Jupiter has a lot of details.

[geoflewis]

Nice images and an excellent comparison of the effects of variable seeing.

[ONIKKINEN]

7 hours ago, neil phillips said:

last two shots showing some good detail. Captured Syrtis major there

5 hours ago, Pete Presland said:

Very nicely captured 

2 hours ago, geoflewis said:

Nice images and an excellent comparison of the effects of variable seeing.

Thanks all!

3 hours ago, CraigT82 said:

Nice work, not wasted night by any stretch. Have you tried without the paracorr?

Thanks, regarding paracorr yes i have tried but at the moment i have no focus without it. I have an awkward combination of kit with the paracorr that kicks up the focus by 46mm and a stubby TS 2.5x APO barlow that doesnt lift up the focal point nearly as much as one would expect from a 2.5x barlow. My primary to secondary distance is set so that the drawtube does not obstruct the mirror and cause aberrations when doing DSO work, so as a downside i have no focus without the paracorr with the weird barlow. Should probably look for a good quality "normal" barlow that can be screwed into nosepieces.