Saturn & Jupiter - 24 Oct 2023 (and my new great grandson :-) )

[geoflewis]

I can't believe that it's been 5 weeks since I was last able to do any imaging, what is going on with our weather....!! Of course I should add that I was at Kelling Heath Star Camp for 1 week, then visiting family to see my new great grandson this past week end, so did miss some clear night skies. Anyway, last night started out very well with calm conditions, but unfortunatrely clouds and fog rolled in around 11pm, so I didn't get Jupiter at culmination when the GRS would have been visible. Anyway here is what I managed to get.

Images captured through the C14 with the ASI462MC camera, with ADC in train, but no additional amplification. Effective FR ~F13, so a tad undersampled, but opted not to drizzle.

Saturn is IR+RGB with the IR applied as luminance at 60% opacity. It comprised best 1000 frames from each of 11x1m RGB SERs and best 1000 frames from each of 8x1m IR SERs.

The Jupiter images are pure RGB with the colour camera. The earlier image comprises best 1500 frames from each of 13x1m SERs (total 19,500 frames), the later image is from only 4x1m SERs (6000 frames) as cloud and fog shut me down.

Processing was a mix of AS3!, Registax6, WinJupos, AstroSurface, Image Analyser and Affinity Photo.

Oh and here's my wife and I, with our new, 1 week old, great grandson and his big brother....😊

Thanks for looking.

 

 

 

[Space Cowboy]

Looks like you've been busy Geof! Congratulations on your new great grandson! 

Very good images of Saturn and Jupiter even if conditions were not great you've produced some nicely balanced images.

Hopefully the weather will improve before too long.🥴

[geoflewis]

Just now, Space Cowboy said:

Looks like you've been busy Geof! Congratulations on your new great grandson! 

Very good images of Saturn and Jupiter even if conditions were not great you've produced some nicely balanced images.

Hopefully the weather will improve before too long.🥴

Thanks Stuart,

It's been a rubbish year for imaging; I sometimes wonder why we bother......

[Space Cowboy]

1 hour ago, geoflewis said:

Thanks Stuart,

It's been a rubbish year for imaging; I sometimes wonder why we bother......

As JFK once said " we choose to image the planets not because it's easy but because it's hard" 😉

[dweller25]

Nice images, but more importantly - congratulations on the new addition to the family 👍

[MartianHill]

Those are lively images.

The new little one looks really cute 🙂

[Kon]

Congratulations on the new arrival! Handsome little man (I am still referring to the baby) 🤣 and his brother. I am sure they will keep you busy and less and less imaging time. How was the star camp? Did you manage to have some clear skies at all?

Nice images. I see you are making a good use of all the software. How are you finding Astrosurface? Is it growing to you?

3 hours ago, geoflewis said:

1500 frames from each of 13x1m SERs

I have seen others doing these really short captures. I want to try it but the weather is not playing ball. Regarding stacking 1500 frames per capture, the 462mc will give you close to 250-300fps at a tight ROI or more at even tighter; why 'throw' away a big proportion? Or was it that the seeing was really bad to keep more?

[geoflewis]

43 minutes ago, dweller25 said:

Nice images, but more importantly - congratulations on the new addition to the family 👍

Thanks David,

Yes, it's a growing family and make me feel my age, yet at the same time, feel very young at heart.

[geoflewis]

40 minutes ago, MartianHill said:

Those are lively images.

The new little one looks really cute 🙂

Thanks, yes, very cute and his big brother is very 'lively'...

[geoflewis]

21 minutes ago, Kon said:

Congratulations on the new arrival! Handsome little man (I am still referring to the baby) 🤣 and his brother. I am sure they will keep you busy and less and less imaging time. How was the star camp? Did you manage to have some clear skies at all?

Nice images. I see you are making a good use of all the software. How are you finding Astrosurface? Is it growing to you?

I have seen others doing these really short captures. I want to try it but the weather is not playing ball. Regarding stacking 1500 frames per capture, the 462mc will give you close to 250-300fps at a tight ROI or more at even tighter; why 'throw' away a big proportion? Or was it that the seeing was really bad to keep more?

Thanks Kostas,

Unfortunately we don't get to see our grandaughter and her family and indeed most of our other family members very often, as they live 150 or more miles away.

The star camp was good. We own a holiday home at Kelling Heath, so get there often throughout the year, not just for the star camps. A fellow Norwich Astro Society member persuaded me to take my little C5 with me on the EQ5 mount that I purchased from Neil earlier this year. After tweaking collimation the C5 worked really well, buzzing around the sky doing some visual observing. Initially I was just going for easy Messier / NGC lolipops, but my friend was working though some double stars, so I joined him doing that. I enjoyed it so much, that I'm planning on buying a double star atlas to continue with that from time to time.

I really like Astrosurface and find it much easier to control than Registax, despite my many years using Registax. I took your (Tom's) advice to apply an initial Registax wavelets to the TIFFs from AS3!, before derotation in WinJupos, then from there straight into Astrosurface, then Image Analyser, with a final levels tweak in Affinity Photo. I'm sure my workflow will continue to develop, but I'm confident that Astrosurface will continue to be a mainstay.

Regarding the 1500 frames per SER; I oscillate between using high frame rates that is possible with the camera and lower frame rates with better signal. I think we discussed this when we chatted over Zoom a few weeks ago. The seeing was quite stable last night, so I went for 8ms (125fps), which gives me nearly 7500 frames in per 1 minute SER, it also means the file sizes are smaller, so I don't run out of space on the imaging laptop so quickly. I ran AS3! at different stacks between 1000 and 5000 frames and concluded that somewhere between 1000 and 2000 frames gave me the best outcome (detail vs noise), hence I settled for 1500 frames, which is about 20%. By the time I've derotated a bunch of TIFFs, there's enough data there for good resolution.

[JeremyS]

Absolutely brilliant news, Geof! Congratulations!

[Kon]

3 minutes ago, geoflewis said:

Thanks Kostas,

Unfortunately we don't get to see our grandaughter and her family and indeed most of our other family members very often, as they live 150 or more miles away.

The star camp was good. We own a holiday home at Kelling Heath, so get there often throughout the year, not just for the star camps. A fellow Norwich Astro Society member persuaded me to take my little C5 with me on the EQ5 mount that I purchased from Neil earlier this year. After tweaking collimation the C5 worked really well, buzzing around the sky doing some visual observing. Initially I was just going for easy Messier / NGC lolipops, but my friend was working though some double stars, so I joined him doing that. I enjoyed it so much, that I'm planning on buying a double star atlas to continue with that from time to time.

I really like Astrosurface and find it much easier to control than Registax, despite my many years using Registax. I took your (Tom's) advice to apply an initial Registax wavelets to the TIFFs from AS3!, before derotation in WinJupos, then from there straight into Astrosurface, then Image Analyser, with a final levels tweak in Affinity Photo. I'm sure my workflow will continue to develop, but I'm confident that Astrosurface will continue to be a mainstay.

Regarding the 1500 frames per SER; I oscillate between using high frame rates that is possible with the camera and lower frame rates with better signal. I think we discussed this when we chatted over Zoom a few weeks ago. The seeing was quite stable last night, so I went for 8ms (125fps), which gives me nearly 7500 frames in per 1 minute SER, it also means the file sizes are smaller, so I don't run out of space on the imaging laptop so quickly. I ran AS3! at different stacks between 1000 and 5000 frames and concluded that somewhere between 1000 and 2000 frames gave me the best outcome (detail vs noise), hence I settled for 1500 frames, which is about 20%. By the time I've derotated a bunch of TIFFs, there's enough data there for good resolution.

Still closer than my family in Greece and my wife's in Japan. But I know what you mean.

I found astrosurface a lot better on pulling details even under so and so seeing.

If you remember in our chat, I said Registax was better for my mono filters but the last post I made on Jupiter with the filters, I used astrosurface and pushed the wavelets a bit harder as I opted for higher exposure 75ms than 20ms  (UV and CH4) and less gain (therefore less noise) based on our conversation on what Christopher Go does; I also ignored the histogram for these two filters (over 100%) but my IR is at 95%. I think 90-95 gives a lot less noise and does not need to push too hard to get details. Even with average seeing, colour Jupiter seems to far better at higher exposure but I want to do it more properly (also I tried to be close to 80-90%).  If only we had constant good skies for these tests.

8 minutes ago, geoflewis said:

so I went for 8ms (125fps), which gives me nearly 7500 frames in per 1 minute SER,

It makes sense now. I saw Christopher is down to 30s now with the newer noiseless cameras but he does not seem to suffer with too much bad seeing either despite being in Phillipines.

[geoflewis]

12 minutes ago, JeremyS said:

Absolutely brilliant news, Geof! Congratulations!

Thanks Jeremy,

She started her labour a few weeks ago, which was too early and proved to be a false alarm, so she returned home after 36 hours in hospital. She continue to have contractions for the next couple of weeks at home and eventually they had her back in and broke her waters to get things moving faster. All went well and both baby and mum were fine and back home after a 1 night stay.

[geoflewis]

24 minutes ago, Kon said:

Still closer than my family in Greece and my wife's in Japan. But I know what you mean.

Well that's a completely different proposition....!! Do you get see family at all, especially the last few years?

[Kon]

1 hour ago, geoflewis said:

Well that's a completely different proposition....!! Do you get see family at all, especially the last few years?

We try to go once a year as both grandparents want to see the kids. A bit easier for my family who visits us here. I haven't been to Japan since COVID as foreigners where not allowed in for a while (I skipped this year due to work but my family went). Kids are well travelled already 😉.

[geoflewis]

1 minute ago, Kon said:

We try to go once a year as both grandparents want to see the kids. A bit easier for my family who visits us here. I haven't been to Japan since COVID as foreigners where not allowed in for a while (I skipped this year due to work but my family went). Kids are well travelled already 😉.

That's good to hear...

[Sunshine]

Amazing! a big congratulations on your new grandson! 

[geoflewis]

2 minutes ago, Sunshine said:

Amazing! a big congratulations on your new grandson! 

Thanks, but he is a great grandson - mind you I've had lots of fun telling friends that I'm a great grandad and now a great 'great grandad', if you get my drift 😄

[Pete Presland]

Great set of images Geof, Saturn is still not an easy target even with the slight improvement in altitude.

Congratulations on your new great grandson, you really don't look old enough to be a great grand 🙂 

[geoflewis]

3 minutes ago, Pete Presland said:

Great set of images Geof, Saturn is still not an easy target even with the slight improvement in altitude.

Congratulations on your new great grandson, you really don't look old enough to be a great grand 🙂 

Thanks Pete, I turn 69 tomorrow, so getting up there..... 🎂

[Pete Presland]

11 minutes ago, geoflewis said:

Thanks Pete, I turn 69 tomorrow, so getting up there..... 🎂

Happy birthday for tomorrow Geof 🙂