HELP I think i have gone wrong

[vinny]

Im not sure where i am going wrong or if i am missing some crucial point,

I am using a skywatcher 150mm f8 reflector on a CG5GTA mount with a Mintron ccd camera to try to take some pics of Jupiter,

The problem i am having is this if i focus on the moon and capture the images i can get a reasonable picture but if i then try to capture jupiter all i get is a white blob with no detail, I am using craterlet for both running at 10fps with a ir cut filter.i have even tried it at 30fps.

I have tried turning all the camera settings to the lowest gain to try to get some detail out of the planet and even tried adding an ND96 filter to lower the amount of light hitting the ccd.

I have tried with and without a barlow but nothing seems to allow me to make out any detail.

[vinny]

pics to try to explain what i mean both of these are 1200 frames stacked with registax5 and taken on the same night

[Sparrow]

I must admit I never liked Craterlet - I found whenever I tried to adjust settings, as soon as I started to image, it seemed to default to a different setting that had no resemblance to what I had set it at. So I can understand the problem you'r'e having. My solution was toi stick with the Meade Autostar software that came with my Meade LPI - no help to you I know - perhaps other on here might be able to suggest a solution or alternative capture software that behaves better.

[dark knight]

hi Vinny, there are a few other capture programs out there, try K3CCD Tools, or Amcap, or Wx Astro Capture. Can't explain the problem you have though.

[samtheeagle]

Vinny, I'm no expert but I would say that you're over exposing the Jupiter image. It's quite difficult to get right, as the majority of the frame is black, and the camera has great difficulty with a small (relatively speaking) and very bright object like Jupiter... Not sure what camera settings you have, but try to turn off auto exposure, as it's never going to manage the extremes of black space and bright planets, and then fiddle about until you start to see some detail

An extra note: If you're hoping to get jupiters moons, or background stars in there as well you'll be out of luck. The low exposure required for the bright planet will make it nigh on impossible to get the less bright objects picked up by the camera. I think some people get around it by taking two images, one of the planet, and one of the background stuff using a longer exposure, and then merging them together...

Hope that helps

[Ant]

I'd agree it's almost certainly an over exposure issue.

K3CCD is good and gives good control over the camera. I've not used the other two peices of software, but other have and they seem quite good.

If it is a case that the software is defaulting back to settings that are over exposing the image - you're end cap will have a small off centre cap - if you remove that you'll find a 2" hole.

This will reduce the amount of light getting to the camera significantly and may help solve your problem.

HTH

Ant

[vinny]

Thanks for all the help i have just downloaded k3ccd and will give that a try if these clouds ever clear