My 1st image Jupiter 29 07 + questions

[acharris77]

Hi all, below is my first attempt at imaging a planet. Where I was, it was clear but very windy so I had a lot of movement on the scope and the AVI was just bouncing everywhere. When I processed it in registax, it came out as below.

I know it is rough, but I was surprised it processed like that with the way the planet was boucning around on the chip on my laptop. my questions are:

1) what caused the ring in the middle of jupiter??? I think it may be the center of the vane, but probably wrong and anything I can do to remove it in future???

2) When I used my skywatcher 2x barlow I had managed to focus the planet, but when I used my meade 4000 2x barlow I ran out of inward travel. I thought that 2x barlow was roughly the same, but probably wrong as I dont know much about barlows.

Anyway, any advice or criticism is welcomed to learn from, but I am pleased for my 1st attempt. Thanks.

[Kokatha man]

Hi Anthony - the barlow problem is most likely due to a difference in construction; I'm unfamiliar with either types but the Meade may have a longer body than the SW or constructed such that the lens elements are "further up in the barrel".....this would be one explanation as to my you can't get enough in-focus travel.

That image you have obtained is nothing to be sneezed at either - congratulations!!! - you should be chuffed.....but as to the "ring" I do not know!

All I can ask you is "did you choose an alignment box that fitted the planet disk best" - it isn't essential but artefacts can occur with frustratingly obscure causes in Registax during processing.....

Allways go over focussing time after time untill you are absolutely satisfied, even using one of Joop's moons to assist here (even if it is offscreen for your avi capture.)

Wind is a curse but unless the image is actually bouncing around and hitting the edge of the screen when the "Align" phase of Registax is operating there should be no problems there.....

If you can use a capture program for your toucam such as wxAstrocapture (it's free) where a histogram is part of the controls/display it is a very good idea (vlounge certainly doesn't have one.)

A histogram allows you to get an optimum exposure (predominantly the Gain setting for any particular framerate used) which means better data to process and better final image.....

As I said to someone else here recently, try and get the best looking image you can onscreen with the capture program controls before you click "capture" and check that the framerate and exposure settings correlate.....no more than about 50% gamma (max) and not so much gain (or brightness control) that the planet starts to appear "burnt-out".....and focus, focus, focus!!! (it not only assists the final outcome but allows you to see whether you are getting your other capture control settings "on the money" by having this optimum image.

And it may be worth re-processing the avi again in Registax.....if you are using R5 try it in R4 or vice-versa (see my comments to Kieron re "onion rings.")

Having said all this I reiterate that I have not encountered this specific problem which may be something simple that people here are very familiar with.....these little annoyances are the things that challenge us planetary-imaging folk to resolve or improve upon with our next attempts (hopefully!!!)

[acharris77]

Thanks for the advice, here is a 2nd attempt at processing the AVI file now I am more awake, the ring is now less visible as I used a box size of 128 and adjusted the waveletts some more:

Thanks.

[Kokatha man]

Certainly a bit less pronounced now Anthony.....wavelets should be applied with a certain restraint: do you do a "create reference frame" run during registax processing with (say) a quantity of 50 of the images after hitting "Limit" after initial alignment?

This optimises the best 50 frames (using the one you originally hand-picked by viewing the framelist) to assist.....after this "create reference frame" process you get to apply wavelets also (prior to the one you do after optimising and stacking processes.)

Here you should be quite carefull and with either this or the next (major) wavelet applications after stacking make sure you don't go to the point where the image starts to "granulate".....a very small bit of granulation can be gotten rid of in P/shop with the "despeckle" application but be carefull!

Some recommend only using sliders 2 & 3 of wavelets "fullstop" and advancing them no more than to 10 or 12 for the stage after "create ref frame" and giving them more "reins" in the final wavelet adjustments.....

Also, don't forget that in Registax processing when you do the final wavelet settings you can, along with RGB balance, also adjust the histogram (which is the exposure setting you captured at) by hitting this tab and "stretching" the histogram by bumping up the lesser values on the LHS by 10 to 30 and lowering the higher values on the RHS a similar amount.....also "smoothing" in the same pop-up window.....this can often assist the overall image appearance quite dramatically!!!

Hope all this isn't OTT, cheers, Darryl.

Many of the

[Sparrow]

Nice 1st attempt. I would say the ring in the original was almost definately something introduced during processing after it had been stacked.

2nd attempt - it looks like it would benefit from RGB align (not RGB balance) - I would guess the red channel needs to move up one or two pixels and the blue channel down one or two pixels.

Regards

John