First Ever Planetary Image - Jupiter

[Roy Foreman]

Been doing DSO imaging all my life.  When the moon dominates the sky I switch to lunar, but until now never tried planetary mainly because the little sods have been so low in the sky for so many years.

So this year, now that Jupiter and Saturn have risen above the treetops, I've had a go. I actually did Saturn first but it turned out rubbish so in the trash it went.  This is Jupiter and I'm quite pleased for a first attempt.

Scope was a 10" F/12 Classical Cassegrain at prime focus - 3045mm

Camera was a ZWO ASI 224 MC

50% of 5000 frames at 64fps.

Stacked in AS3 with 3x drizzle

Processed in Photoshop - just sharpening, clarity and noise reduction.

 

Any comments or pointers on how to do it better will be much appreciated.

Thanks for looking.

[orion25]

Great first attempt, Roy 🤩. I like going for the GRS and moon/shadow transits when they come around; they make for dramatic images.

Edited November 27, 2023 by orion25

[geoflewis]

Very nice first attemp Roy. The main features are showing and colour balance is good, but detail is a little soft. Did you apply RGB alignment, as the moons in particular are showing some prism like dispersion?

[IDM]

Wish my first attempt had looked like that! Very nice.

Ian

[Kon]

Very nice Roy. It has a nice natural look to it. (I feel you might be able to tease a few more details. Worth trying Astrosurface.). I never got drizzle to work well to get more out of my images.

[Roy Foreman]

1 hour ago, geoflewis said:

Very nice first attemp Roy. The main features are showing and colour balance is good, but detail is a little soft. Did you apply RGB alignment, as the moons in particular are showing some prism like dispersion?

Thank you. No I didn't do RGB alignment, but I will try it. I have an ADC which may have helped but not enough inward focus travel with an inline electric focusser attached. Thanks for your advice, much appreciated.

[Roy Foreman]

17 minutes ago, Kon said:

Very nice Roy. It has a nice natural look to it. (I feel you might be able to tease a few more details. Worth trying Astrosurface.). I never got drizzle to work well to get more out of my images.

Thank you and yes I am sure there is more detail to be had. It took about 2 minutes to capture 5000 frames and I did 3 runs in succession. I noticed the features moving  between each run, so I'm wondering if the disc rotation is blurring the details a bit. Maybe a shorter imaging run would help. Thanks for your advice.

[Kon]

6 minutes ago, Roy Foreman said:

Thank you and yes I am sure there is more detail to be had. It took about 2 minutes to capture 5000 frames and I did 3 runs in succession. I noticed the features moving  between each run, so I'm wondering if the disc rotation is blurring the details a bit. Maybe a shorter imaging run would help. Thanks for your advice.

I think 2min is ok and you could combine your 3 captures in Winjupos.

By the way, 64fps seems low for this camera. What settings did you use for your capture? A small ROI will give you a much higher FPS too.

[Roy Foreman]

19 minutes ago, Kon said:

I think 2min is ok and you could combine your 3 captures in Winjupos.

By the way, 64fps seems low for this camera. What settings did you use for your capture? A small ROI will give you a much higher FPS too.

I used gain 100 and 8ms. Frames were quite a bit under exposed, so really a longer IT is required. As this was a first attempt I used the full imaging area, but you are right of course, a smaller ROI will help.

[JonHigh]

Hi Roy. Very nice image. When I shot Jupiter I use a very small ROI and could just about see Jupiter so very underexposed when capturing using my ASI585. Definitely, the smaller the ROI the fast the frame rate. 8bit Raw, 2-3mins at 252 gain. I also use PIPP then AS3 then Registax, RGB align, colour balance and wavelets. I never got Drizzle to work very well in AS3!!

20_09_08_pipp_lapl5_ap28 piipp.tiff

 

Edited December 2, 2023 by JonHigh

[Roy Foreman]

3 hours ago, JonHigh said:

Hi Roy. Very nice image. When I shot Jupiter I use a very small ROI and could just about see Jupiter so very underexposed when capturing using my ASI585. Definitely, the smaller the ROI the fast the frame rate. 8bit Raw, 2-3mins at 252 gain. I also use PIPP then AS3 then Registax, RGB align, colour balance and wavelets. I never got Drizzle to work very well in AS3!!

20_09_08_pipp_lapl5_ap28 piipp.tiff 2.75 MB · 2 downloads

 

Thank you for that info Jon, very useful to know. From my lunar imaging experience, I discovered that high frame rate has less impact on final quality than short integration times and greater number of frames. My lunar camera trundles along at 19fps max !

For Jupiter, I was using gain of 100 to 150, so maybe I could up that a bit.

For my next attempt, I am going to try using a cooled camera with reduced ROI,  as I know I can use a gain of 400 plus if need be. If I can get the integration time down to 5ms, it would go a long way to beating the seeing.

Watch this space ...   

[JonHigh]

Look forward to seeing that!  I have never used my 26c for planetary although taken a couple of the moon.