Jupiter - 5 Nov 2023

[geoflewis]

Not only did I get some excellent images of the aurora from home early in the evening, but when I went to the observatory I was delighted with some excellent seeing and not too bad transparency for a change.

These were all captured with the ASI462MC through my C14 with ADC in train operating at around F12, so slightly undersampled. I ran 4 sets of 9x1m which is about 6000 frames, of which I stacked 1000 frames per SER (~17%). Processing steps for the colour images were:

1. Best 1000 frames in AS3!L
2. Light wavelets in Registax
3. Derotation in WinJupos
4. Wavelets, RGB align, colour balance and mild saturation in Astrosurface
5. Fequency domain (NR) and colour noise reduction in Image Analyser
6. Light levels adj in Affinity Photo, just to enhance limb shading

The detail coming through on the last 2 images was so strong that they looked over processed, so I dialed back the wavelets in Astrosurface and still it has me wondering 🤔. I think these are possibly the most detailed images of Jupiter that I have captured. Now I wish I'd kept going, as the GRS was about to reappear.

I have a set of IR an a couple of CH4 runs to process, but they'll have to wait as I have other chores to do now added.

Thanks for looking.

Edited November 7, 2023 by geoflewis
Added IR and CH4 (Methane band) images

[Space Cowboy]

They look fabulous Geof! Well done! Your persistence has paid off!

[geoflewis]

4 minutes ago, Space Cowboy said:

They look fabulous Geof! Well done! Your persistence has paid off!

Thanks Stuart,

My mentor told me many years ago that you have to be at the business end of the telescope every possible opportunity, as it's the only way to know for sure....

[Space Cowboy]

4 minutes ago, geoflewis said:

Thanks Stuart,

My mentor told me many years ago that you have to be at the business end of the telescope every possible opportunity, as it's the only way to know for sure....

Absolutely! I never take any notice of seeing charts. It only takes a couple of mins clear sky to catch a beauty! Unfortunately I tend to sit tight when there's rain hammering against the windows 🥴

[yelsac]

Wow they are wonderful, some of the best images of Jupiter I've seen in a while.

Extremely jealous of the setting to.

[geoflewis]

3 minutes ago, yelsac said:

Wow they are wonderful, some of the best images of Jupiter I've seen in a while.

Extremely jealous of the setting to.

Thanks and yes, I'm very happy with my location most of the time, though being rural can have it's downsides, e.g. when wind, or falling trees bring the power lines down......

[orion25]

Absolutely superb images, Geof! Some of the best I've seen in a while. Would love to see some GRS images (no rush, lol)!

Regards, Reggie

Edited November 6, 2023 by orion25

[Kon]

Excellent images Geof. I can't believe you got these while on my side it was pouring with rain. All looking great but I agree the last two look a bit harder on the wavelets. But I do not think it is the case. They are a bit more noisy than the first two. I took the liberty to try it, and I think it looks better (denoise 5 in AS). You can potentially go a bit harder on the wavelets and control the noise in AS. I have found denoising in imageanalyzer to soften the images too much but it does excellent colour noise reduction that AS doesn't.  But amazing images under this weather!

Looking forward to the CH4 one.

[geoflewis]

2 hours ago, orion25 said:

Absolutely superb images, Geof! Some of the best I've seen in a while. Would love to see some GRS images (no rush, lol)!

Regards, Reggie

Thanks Reggie, I'm affraid I let that (GRS) opportunity go. I didn't realise how good these were until today when I processed them and I'd moved on to taking some IR and CH4 images.

[geoflewis]

13 minutes ago, Kon said:

Excellent images Geof. I can't believe you got these while on my side it was pouring with rain. All looking great but I agree the last two look a bit harder on the wavelets. But I do not think it is the case. They are a bit more noisy than the first two. I took the liberty to try it, and I think it looks better (denoise 5 in AS). You can potentially go a bit harder on the wavelets and control the noise in AS. I have found denoising in imageanalyzer to soften the images too much but it does excellent colour noise reduction that AS doesn't.  But amazing images under this weather!

Looking forward to the CH4 one.

Thanks Kostas and also thanks for having a play with my JPEGs. They definitely look softer, but I wonder if what you think is noise is actually very fine detail (I really am wondering about that). It's interesting, because the data for the last 2 images is definitely superior to the previos two, which is not surprising since they were taken with Jupiter at a higher elevation, the 4th one very close to it's transit. If you want to have a play with the derotated TIFFs out of WinJupos rather than the JPEGs, here they are...

2023-11-05-2253_8-GDL-WJ-RGB-LD65.tif2023-11-05-2328_0-GDL-WJ-RGB-LD65.tif

I'm about to post the IR image alongside the RGBs in the original post on this thread, so if you want to take have a play with that too, here is the derotated TIFF.....

2023-11-05-2346_7-GDL-WJ-IR-LD65.tif

 

[Kon]

4 minutes ago, geoflewis said:

They definitely look softer, but I wonder if what you think is noise is actually very fine detail (I really am wondering about that).

I will message you later what I think might be the noise. It's marginal and maybe you can control it better in Affinity. The denoise 5, it may be too much because it does make it softer.

Thanks for sharing the Tiff's I will take a look.

[AstroNebulee]

Fabulous detail and clarity. Brilliant images and a good interesting write up to. Thank you for sharing. 

Clear skies for more 

 

Lee 

[neiil phillips]

Lovely fine detail Geoff. The Finer points in processing. Reading the comments. But you have certainly got the fine detail. Excellent Geoff. Good to see you getting some nice data. The big C14 really pulls out the detail

[geoflewis]

5 hours ago, AstroNebulee said:

Fabulous detail and clarity. Brilliant images and a good interesting write up to. Thank you for sharing. 

Clear skies for more 

 

Lee 

Thanks Lee, I'm glad the narrative and discussion is interesting for you. There are some excellent contributions from other planetary imagers, which help me to fine tune both my capture settings and processing techniques.

[geoflewis]

3 hours ago, neiil phillips said:

Lovely fine detail Geoff. The Finer points in processing. Reading the comments. But you have certainly got the fine detail. Excellent Geoff. Good to see you getting some nice data. The big C14 really pulls out the detail

Thanks Neil, it's great to hear from you. Yes, the C14 continues to work really well, especially now that Jupiter has gained a decent elevation again after so many years down in the UK murk.

[geoflewis]

For anyone interested, I added a CH4 (methane band) image alongside the other images in the original post, to complete the set from the session. I'm really not too sure about either the settings for capturing CH4, or how to process the data. I tried both 5m and 2m SERs at 100ms (10fps), then took best 80% of each and threw them through Registax, WinJupos (derotation), Astrosurface (wavelets & NR), Image Analyser (Frequenct Domain Filter) and Affinity Photo. The images were very noisy despite the 80% stack and slow capture speeds, so there was a lot of different NR tools applied. I also suspect that 5m SERs are too long with Jupiter's fast rotation, leaving the features somewhat blurred, so in future will experiment again with 2m and 3m SERs and perhaps derotate stack half a dozen of those, to see what that gives.

[Pete Presland]

A cracking set of images, plenty of detail visible.

[geoflewis]

58 minutes ago, Pete Presland said:

A cracking set of images, plenty of detail visible.

Thanks Pete