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Stacking App on iPhone - Saturn/Jupiter/Mars


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Recently I noticed a couple of apps for iPhone that are supposed to do and/or help with video stacking. They are “VideoStack for Planetary” and “WaveletCam”. WaveletCam is supposed to do real time wavelet processing. Theres also another app for stacking DSO by the same developer, but I haven’t tried that.

I’ve never done any stacking. I don’t even own a PC/Laptop/Mac and unless it’s going to be very simple and quick I’m not interested. I haven’t got much of a clue what I’m doing or nothing to compare with.

And after saying I don’t like playing around with software what do I end up doing… fiddling around with apps! But at a cost of 89p for each I could not resist. Here are a few initial results with everything done on the phone. All taken though a SkyWatcher 200p Dob using a StarGuider 5mm. 

I’ve only got one video of Saturn and that was from September 2021. It was taken with my old iPhone 12 using the stock iPhone camera app. No tracking and it was zoomed being only 5 seconds long. Seeing was good but the original video rather fuzzy and wobbly which is normal. Mind, the results from the app aren’t bad. All I did was stick the video in VideoStack, press a button then save the result. The second Saturn image is with some simple post processing in WaveletCam. Maybe sharper and a bit more clarity but in this case doesn’t add much. All together it took just a few mins with no real knowledge of what I was doing. My kind of stuff!

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I took the Jupiter video only last Saturday - 21 January 2023 - with my new iPhone 14 Pro as I wanted to practice using the camera. I just used the stock iPhone video app. No fancy camera app. Of course Jupiter is hardly in the best position for imaging but the result was a pleasant surprise. Although a video longer than10 seconds crashed the app and it did require a bit more work in WaveletCam plus finishing off in Lightroom. I probably spent about 25 mins on it. 

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I have one video of Mars that was taken on 26th December 2022 with an iPhone 14 Pro. It was an interesting session - visually I could see the North Polar Hood, clouds over Syrtus Major and various subtle albedo features. The Helios Basin was also very prominent. However, this was much harder and the short video pushed what the apps could do. I had to try several times as at first the result looked more like some lumpy asteroid. But got something in the end. At least you can see the features (plus a tad more) which I could see visually which is what I’m after. Eg It’s captured the rough shape of Sinus Sabaeus, Syrtus Major along the planet limb plus the Helios Basin. Although for some reason my “processing” has reduced the extent of clouds over the North Polar Hood and those near the limb over part of Syrtus Major.

 92BCC1B4-E44C-406D-A491-2B1005691291.jpeg.157d4fb4b8ac2c48c09e36f5cadcadce.jpeg

It can work in a simple kind of way. Some general conclusions….

Cons: Videos need to be short. The VideoStack app is flaky and will sometimes crash, especially if video is any longer than 10 seconds. It will sometimes crash if the planet in the video is smaller than about 1/3 the screen size. Easy to fix by zooming in. It works better with some videos more than others and I don’t know why. 

Pros: A planet drifting across the view is no problem. It’s very simple to use. The companion app WaveletCam is interesting and can be used for processing other images. It’s certainly worth having but if it doesn’t initially produce results I wouldn’t spend too much time fiddling! 

Edited by PeterStudz
Wrong Saturn
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  • 4 weeks later...

Hi PeterStudz

Thank you very much for this post. I am very happy to see how you use these apps and produce wonderful images. Could you send the video or provide a link so that I can make it better? 
 

yongchong

App Developer

ustransit74@gmail.com

 

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  • 3 weeks later...

I’ve been meaning to update/reply for ages but been a bit busy. And after a little break I had another go at going through some of the videos. It’s all a bit of a learning curve for me. I’m a visual observer but occasionally try and use smartphone snaps to record what I’ve seen and use them along with an observation report. Now that I have a better idea what I’m doing it’s getting quicker and easier. Sometimes I think that I’ve tried too hard and got too much noise, things that aren’t actually there, in some of the shots. It’s also “interesting” trying to process and edit on a small smartphone screen - however good these things are it’s not the same as using a decent size display.

The first two of Jupiter and Mars are from the same videos, just taken a slightly different path, rotated etc. And what colour is Mars? Visually it’s more yellow-orange than most of the astrophotography that I see.

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I also did this of Mars on the 6th February (also mentioned in another thread). By now Mars was getting rather small but seeing was very good and I was able to get the magnification up to x375. At the limit of what my 200p Dob can do. However, I could not get anything decent out of the stacking app VideoStack - that might just be me. This was produced by going through the video manually and selecting a single “lucky” frame. But I did use the WaveletCam to bring out some details plus Lightroom to finish off. Given how small Mars was I’m pleased/surprised to have got anything. 

 

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This is something new (but also mentioned in another thread) and was totally unplanned. On the 13th February and after viewing the sun in white light, I decided to have a go at finding Venus. With some care it was surprisingly simple to locate and see in the finder. At the eyepiece I could could clearly make out the phase. Then thought I’d try taking a video. The time was around 13:45 so still very light. The video was then cropped, stacked with VideoStack, edited with WaveletCam plus Lightroom while I was still sitting outside at the telescope and only took around 5 minutes to get something decent. Although I could only get VideoStack to work if I made the background dark/darker. Then I played around with it in the evening. Here are a couple of results. It’s captured the phase of Venus very well - something that was previously impossible for me to do by just using a smartphone.

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On 22/02/2023 at 14:53, yong54321 said:

Hi PeterStudz

Thank you very much for this post. I am very happy to see how you use these apps and produce wonderful images. Could you send the video or provide a link so that I can make it better? 
 

yongchong

App Developer

ustransit74@gmail.com

 

Hi Yongchong, 

Thanks for that and good to hear from you! Maybe I’ll see if I can email you a video(s). Got to go off and do a little work now.

Peter

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Those are superb results @PeterStudz, really impressive.

I had another play with a Jupiter video after reading your post. The hardest bit seems to be getting a piece of video short enough not to crash the app, but with good content in it.

This was the best I could get…

E5EE9860-4D22-4EC4-979E-500A087ED406.jpeg

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14 hours ago, Stu said:

Those are superb results @PeterStudz, really impressive.

I had another play with a Jupiter video after reading your post. The hardest bit seems to be getting a piece of video short enough not to crash the app, but with good content in it.

This was the best I could get…

E5EE9860-4D22-4EC4-979E-500A087ED406.jpeg

Hi Stu

if you can send me your video, I could find out why it crashes and provide an update to videoStack. There are all kind of unpredictable reason why a video crash eg. One is a frame in the video happens to have no planet. 
 

Please email the video to ustransit74@gmail.com

Thank you. 
 

Best regards

yongchong

Developer

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21 minutes ago, yong54321 said:

Hi Stu

if you can send me your video, I could find out why it crashes and provide an update to videoStack. There are all kind of unpredictable reason why a video crash eg. One is a frame in the video happens to have no planet. 
 

Please email the video to ustransit74@gmail.com

Thank you. 
 

Best regards

yongchong

Developer

Thank you Yongchong. Will do 👍

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Hi @Stu, as you say it can be a bit difficult to get a good short video with good content and that doesn’t crash VideoStack. I find that I can’t get over 10 seconds and it helps if the planet is a decent size. Fixed by zooming in a bit. Maybe there’s a way to use something longer?

But what iPhone were you using? And what were you recording at? I’ve set mine to 4K at 60fps as it did seem to import things somewhat. There are some other options to play with which I haven’t tried. And I always us the stock camera app (no 3rd party app) to shoot the video. I do need to play around with some of the video settings but there aren’t many!

My iPhone 14 Pro does take better videos than my old iPhone 12 (non Pro). I also found that by zooming in while shooting the video using the 2x on the iPhone 14 Pro and something around 1.8x on the iPhone 12 gives better results. I haven’t a clue why.

This is from one of my first Jupiter videos taken back on 17th September 2021 using an iPhone 12. Shot using 4K at 60fps, zoomed to 1.8x. Edited using the stock camera app, stacked with VideoStack, WaveletCam and Lightroom on the phone. Difficult to keep the moons when trying to bring out detail on Jupiter. The iPhone 14 Pro does a better job but then the sensor is much bigger.9D2763F5-8657-4C28-AF4D-615D817893C8.jpeg.4eb80ec06291ea2b059ae0290ce00680.jpeg

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19 hours ago, IB20 said:

Had a play around with this tonight, it’s pretty cool! 
This was the 3” Tak and pretty bad seeing with all the melting snow about. Won’t win any awards but managed to get the phase. 

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That’s great! Just getting the phase of Venus (visually there’s not much else anyway) is tricky given that at the moment it’s so close to the horizon. And it’s rather small too. I did find that looking at it during daylight gave me a steadier view and capture. Probably because at that time it was higher in the sky. And with obvious care taken really fun too.

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And Jupiter with Ganymede. From the same video as above taken on 17th September 2021. As it’s a rainy day I had another go. Will it ever be clear again. It seems like ages since I’ve been at the eyepiece 🙁

 

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Edited by PeterStudz
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