Jupiter -Advice please

[gonzostar]

The evening of 17th October was a full moon, So had a go at Jupiter for first time this year

The tekkie bit

 

Telescope C8 at F20

Camera ZWO385MC

Gain 414

Exp 2.67ms

Raw8

Approx 5000 frames

Processed using PIPP, AutoStakkert, registax, PS

 

If you can I would be grateful if you could let me know how to improve image please. Is itcollimation issues, to few frames, incorrect settings, poor seeing or processing skills (lack off)

Cheers Dean

 

[bosun21]

I would increase the exposure time a little to say 5ms as it's a little dim. If this is after processing I would say you have poor focus to begin with. Have you done an RGB alignment and colour balance? There's several videos showing the basics of processing planetary images. Keep at it as it will all come together.

[Kon]

The seeing in recent weeks has been awful with the jetstream overhead and focus will be soft and will lack details. Hard to judge collimation from this image. Increase exposure to 10ms and capture 60-120 s videos; capture several of them and then put the best in winjupos to derotate them. Your 5000 frames seem quite low. You should be able to get high fps at reduced ROI (make sure in your settings you have clicked high speed traffic), so more images to stack.

[CraigT82]

I think you might have some miss-collimation there. Looking at the left hand limb there is quite a bit of light that has bled past the limb.

If you look at these images of miss-collimation effects due to coma on a stellar image (from the Lockwood Optics website), you can see that the light is smeared to one side of the star, which I think is what might be happening with your Jupiter image, causing the light bleed past the limb.

Next time you’re out you could capture a video of a star in the same way (lucky imaging) and stack it to see if the collimation is good or not. 

 

[gonzostar]

Thankyou all for your responses very much appreciated

Getting some bob knobs to aid with collimation to work along side the ocal collimator

Cant wait for next clear night will checkout jetstream, also acquire a Bathinov mask for the C8 focusing this scope is temperamental. 

When I did was running the image the histogram was about a 3/4 to the right with this exposure, but will increase  it slightly more. Also increasing more video's. I guess it depends on the night, but how many frames is the aim for Jupiter? Do you add more if you wan to capture the moons

Lets hope clear skies soon

 

Cheers

Dean

[Kon]

36 minutes ago, gonzostar said:

Thankyou all for your responses very much appreciated

Getting some bob knobs to aid with collimation to work along side the ocal collimator

Cant wait for next clear night will checkout jetstream, also acquire a Bathinov mask for the C8 focusing this scope is temperamental. 

When I did was running the image the histogram was about a 3/4 to the right with this exposure, but will increase  it slightly more. Also increasing more video's. I guess it depends on the night, but how many frames is the aim for Jupiter? Do you add more if you wan to capture the moons

Lets hope clear skies soon

 

Cheers

Dean

I wouldn't use the mask. It's better to focus on features on the planet as it will be more accurate. In terms of histogram I aim for 60-70%.  For Jupiter and Saturn I capture at 10ms at 100fps so roughly 12000 frames in 80-120s capture.

 

These days I collimate on the moons of the planets, even better than star collimation. I make sure there is no flaring.

[gonzostar]

Wow, collimating on the moons of the planets is taking  it up another  level, but will give it a go.  Lets hope clear skies arrive soon. Thanks for suggestions

[gonzostar]

Had another go. Hope a slight improvement?

[woldsman]

Thanks for posting. My comment is mainly about processing. I wouldn’t use PIPP and Autostakkert - the latter is sufficient. How long are your captures? You can go up to 3 minutes with Jupiter. If using Sharpcap, steadily increase magnification to 50% and reduce field  of view. You want a frame rate of at least 30-40 fps. What percent of the 5,000 frames captured are you stacking? Maybe go back and try reducing or increasing the proportion. Finally, how are you using Registax? I just autobalance rgb and then start by only adjusting the top slider. Move it to 70% and adjust up to 1.6 or 1.7 with denoise 0.05. I feel you should be getting sharper and better colour balanced images with your data. Looking ahead, check you are saving the captures in ser format and also Winjupos compatible file names. Once your images are a bit sharper, you’ll want to investigate the (free) Winjupos software to combine captures.

Edited Tuesday at 21:33 by woldsman

[geoflewis]

Hi Dean,

First let me say that your images are pretty close and I’ve seen worse myself just from very poor seeing. There’s a lot of good advice above, so I’m tempted to avoid adding to any confusion, but here goes anyway.

• Collimation - I always use the bright star concentric circles method for collimation, using the camera rather than eyepiece and displaying the image on screen. I’m aware that others use the planet’s moons or even the whole planet, looking for any flaring, but I’ve not tried these methods, so can’t advise on them.
• Focusing - don’t rely on Bahtinov or similar masks as they are not suitable for planetary imaging. They will get you in the right ball park, but you will still need to refine focus on the target itself. I usually rely on contrast features on the planet, e.g. Cassini Division on Saturn; GRS or spots, barges, festoons on Jupiter; features on Mars. I also sometimes use Jupiter’s moons, but usually I can tell from planetary features. Take time to move through focus from each side then settle on what appears best. I use FireCapture which has some useful tools to add focusing, which are sometimes helpful, particularly in poor seeing.
• Capture settings - there is a balance between speed (freezing the frame) and signal, I usually don’t go any faster than 10ms for Jupiter, sometimes slower, e.g. 13ms. I usually shoot a series of 60s (1 min) SERs for Jupiter and 2 min SERs for Saturn. Set an ROI small enough to eliminate capturing unnecessary black sky, but large enough to include any nearby moons that you want to include. Using ROI will allow faster frame rates. NB It is useful to have moons in the image as they can aid accurate image measurement in WinJupos in subsequent processing; I know some imagers always capture a short wide-field SER to include the moons specifically for this purpose, before setting the final ROI around the planet. I look to have the histogram at around 80%-85%. It doesn’t matter if the gain is high as any noise is controlled by subsequently stacking a high number of frames
• Processing - I always use Autostakkert for initial grading/stacking and look for a minimum of 1000 frames per SER, which is ~10% of a 1 min Jupiter SER, but if seeing is very good, then I will use many more frames per SER. I use Registax default sliders for initial wavelet sharpening (NB this is very light sharpening, just sufficient for WinJupos to have reliable features for image measurement) and colour balance adjustment, before taking several of the lightly sharpened Tiffs into WinJupos for de-rotation. I’m looking for 10k or more frames in the final image. I now usually use Astrosurface, a fairly new tool for me which I increasingly like, for final wavelet sharpening, though a 2nd pass through Registax (which is what I used to do) will work very well too.

Good luck.

[gonzostar]

Thankyou all, yes alot of very helpful information to take in. reassuring Geof is that i'm on the right road. The step by step guide is useful. Especially the numbers . Also will work on ROI,  Although this can vary from night to night? Also from what I'm understand SER rather then AVI files. Quality over quantity, and to get my head round WinJupos

Is PIPP still used? I used the feature where you can order quality of frames before going to AutoStakkart

 

Cheers

Dean 

[geoflewis]

35 minutes ago, gonzostar said:

Thankyou all, yes alot of very helpful information to take in. reassuring Geof is that i'm on the right road. The step by step guide is useful. Especially the numbers . Also will work on ROI,  Although this can vary from night to night? Also from what I'm understand SER rather then AVI files. Quality over quantity, and to get my head round WinJupos

Is PIPP still used? I used the feature where you can order quality of frames before going to AutoStakkart

 

Cheers

Dean 

Glad that the feedback from everyone is helpful.

Yes, PIPP is still a useful tool, but it’s not needed for straightforward planetary image processing.  There is no need to sort the frames before using Autostakkert, as it will do that as part of it’s grading process.

ROI is not dependent on seeing. It’s a very useful way to reduce downloaded file sizes and increase frame rates. Just be sure to set the ROI to include everything you want and not so close to the edge of the planet that it easily drifts outside the ROI.

SER is recommended in preference to AVI, but to be honest I used to always use AVI and really didn’t see much if any difference in the final outcome.

Edited Wednesday at 18:07 by geoflewis

[gonzostar]

12 hours ago, geoflewis said:

Glad that the feedback from everyone is helpful.

Yes, PIPP is still a useful tool, but it’s not needed for straightforward planetary image processing.  There is no need to sort the frames before using Autostakkert, as it will do that as part of it’s grading process.

ROI is not dependent on seeing. It’s a very useful way to reduce downloaded file sizes and increase frame rates. Just be sure to set the ROI to include everything you want and not so close to the edge of the planet that it easily drifts outside the ROI.

SER is recommended in preference to AVI, but to be honest I used to always use AVI and really didn’t see much if any difference in the final outcome.

Thanks Geof, Followed guidelines last night. Took a long time playing with the bob's knobs getting collimation. Hope it will be a improvement. Don't understand why Celestron don't fit these as standard, much easier then screwdriver (and safer). Anyway will follow up when i get chance to process last night image. Jupiter is much easier to focus then Saturn. 

[gonzostar]

A quick process from last night and your idea's. Collimation did help I think so did 12000 frames

 

[PeterStudz]

IMHO colour balance is also better on your last image too!

[geoflewis]

12 hours ago, gonzostar said:

A quick process from last night and your idea's. Collimation did help I think so did 12000 frames

I agree with @PeterStudz that the colour balance is better. The image looks quite blurred though, so I'm not sure if this is partly the SGL compression issues we've been discussing or other issues. Were the 12k frames from a single SER, or did you use WinJupos to de-rotate several SERs?

[gonzostar]

5 hours ago, PeterStudz said:

IMHO colour balance is also better on your last image too!

Cheers, Slowly getting there

[gonzostar]

5 hours ago, geoflewis said:

I agree with @PeterStudz that the colour balance is better. The image looks quite blurred though, so I'm not sure if this is partly the SGL compression issues we've been discussing or other issues. Were the 12k frames from a single SER, or did you use WinJupos to de-rotate several SERs?

I think SGL gets away with it this time 😁 I did  batch settins in PIPP, then Autostakkert. Will look into and download WinJupos shortly.  Again thanks for help and tips