clavius in colour

[neil phillips]

Just a quick stack on k3 ccd tools x2 stack then reduced to about 140 150% only the centre aligned with the largest box, as can be seen by the sharper floor on clavius, 5000 frames captured, 1400 frames stacked ( breaking all the rules i know )

Just as well, this is in colour with my DFK as i part ex my DMK for a 8" lx10.

Seeing was good trans poor, as such the gain was about 80% DFK is not smooth enough for this, and the frames are badly noisey. poorly polar aligned and using manual controls to control the bad drift ( no hand control ) im surprised how well this scope is performing. but the star tests are text book so that explains a little.

Think i want a C11 or a meade 12 " Sct, think im becoming converted the SCT way woops. Working on a slightly better aligned one at the moment.( More of the edge ) Need to try avi stack and registax, i have a small mosaic to work on of this area, hoping its as sharp as this capture, but will be noisey as i only captured 2000 frames a peice.

Heres the redo tighter, not sure if i prefer it though, changed the processing a little it seems ?

[Nick Smith]

Nice Neil!

Welcome to the SCT club. The reason I went for a C11, and now a C14 is because they weigh so much less than the Meade equivalents. I do not think there is any evidence that the optics are better from either manufacturer.

Cheers

Nick

[neil phillips]

Thanks Nick, it seems its a club worth joining, i am very surprised by tonights results, seeing was good yes, but i was shooting over a house roof way before due south and the moon isnt exactly full height at the mo as you know. IF i could get a 12" meade i think things could start to happen. But as we discussed there is a little consintency difference, for variouse reasons.

So would want to test it i think. Sure would like a 12 " SCT with optics like this Meade. I would rate this better than my meade Mak i had, which was slightly worse than the first one i had. ( ive had two)

Ed roach had a nice 8" meade. Im thinking this might be on par. going to do some more star testing of the Orion when i can, to make sure things are as they should be. if not ill be calling them. Even when my 12" is up to scratch, i cant help feeling theres too many benefits the SCT way. will have to see. But this scope for 8" is dangerouse. Short tube and ease of collimation really do matter im starting to feel. Difficult with longish newts. They can be great, i loved my 10" Orion, but so far. im not there yet with the 12"

think thats obviouse.

[resonator77]

How did you get it so smooth ?

did you use any barlow?

what were the settings in IC capture?

sorry for many questions:D

[neil phillips]

Hi Ramis first i want to thank you for doing the deal with me. ive had some bad experiances with second hand scopes, i trusted you, and for once didnt get burned. So when it comes to getting your scope, i would say to the dealer if the star tests are not up to scratch ill be bringing it back. Cover your back Ramis, its likely you wont have to, but better to be safe. ill help you test it if you want.

I got it so smooth because seeing and focus was good and got away with a much larger stack than i would ever normally try ( i may cut it back soon ( needs experimenting ) i stacked 1400 frames, which is a huge amount, almost virtually unheard of. a credit to the seeing and scope. yes i used my celestron 2x but with a diaganol. which adds a little magnification. Not sure how much ? but i reckon im at about f22 f25 ? the settings were ( not the best Ramis ) but i used them because of bad drift of the mount, and having to manually correct those drifts ( not easy ) to cut down the amount of time i spent doing drift corrections. at 30 frames per second i had to shoot at 1/30 th secs exposure. as such the film was very very noisey. Gain had to be at about 80%, but the large stack will correct for that. A mono camera will be much smoother than my DFK, its not ideal for lunar, the DMK is. The frames were some of the noisest ive ever caught. But the sharpness of the data was good

[brianb]

Nice result .... the second is better for me, the smear in the centre of the image is better controlled but there is a bit more round the edges where it matters less. How did you do the stacking? The reason I ask is that, having taken the trouble to get up the learning curve (and I admit it's a steep one), I find Avistack is much better for surfaces than Registax ... at the expense of three or four times the processing time.

The Celestron Ultima seems to be slightly more than 2x with an Imaging Source camera attached directly, with a diagonal extending the light path it's probably more like 3x. The advantage of the mono camera over the one-shot colour is the extra resolution, which means you can use a smaller image scale & therefore have a shorter exposure (beat the seeing) and/or lower gain (less noise therefore need less frames to get a smooth image, either less imaging time & disc space consumed - useful for mosaics - or select a smaller percentage of frames shot & get sharper results).

But you still need a good scope, well collimated, good seeing and a good technique - focusing is the real key, and whatever aids you use, it still ain't easy. Neil, your technique is excellent, well done, if I got results like that regularly I'd be very pleased.

[neil phillips]

Thanks Brian i do have years of focusing experiance, going back to at least 1999 when i started imaging jupiter with camcorders. but webcaming only a few years.

And yes everything your saying about mono cams is the way to go, My petavius shot, i was shooting at 1/100 secs exposure, impossible with this camera on this night. but your comments about a good scope are the most important, and already after just two days me and this meade are like old friends.

So im not to dissapointed to lose the mono cam, I may try and get another mono spc as a stop gap, between getting another DMK. Setup time for my 12" is very bad, especially with the recent uk weather, so much so, that i hardly do astronomy anymore. Really a bad situation to be in. This meade lets me sneak in between the clouds and out again double time. Something im sure is going to up my imaging rate 5 fold.

Drift of the image is very bad Brian, registax 5 is not working properly on my system, i choose a referance frame and it either jumps to frame 1, or the last frame why i dont know, Any ideas Brian ?

as reg 4 doesnt do this. but reg4 doesnt like 5000 frames.

AVI stack does seem the way to go, but im lost on there presently. John h has given me a tutorial which i will use, and try and learn that software correctly. But ive been told that AVI stack doesnt like excessive drift, something i do have on this footage. But will experiment with johns advice.

So just to get a look at this avi, which i nailed focus on. I did a k3 ccd tools stack with a user defind LARGE BOX ( second shot here ) about 75% covering the intire page ( took ages ) then killed most of the missaligned frames, surprisingly k3 said 1300 was fine, so i went with that, a x2 stack, then histo down on k3, gamma down, then rgb balance and rgb align on reg 4.

A small amount of the top wavelet on reg 4 which produced a little bit of grain. So then to image analyzer and frequency domain filter. which killed all the grain ( but with no bluring ) then a little motion blur deconvolution, tiny amount of circular blur deconvolution. more frequency domain filter ( deconvolution causes noise to come back a little ) Then a very mild sharpen, watching the grain closely at abouut 300% image size,

On a 100% scale i droped the size 35% ( 50% drop being actual image size )

droped saturation a little, on exposure ( colour mapper on analyzer ) i dropped the blacks a touch, raised the brightness a touch. hey presto the recipe. Think its a fair go at it, but reg 5 and AVI stack will certainly be sharper.

Your thoughts please Brian, im always interested what others have to say, I learn a lot from others perspective and knowledge

Cheers Neil

[kev]

Just to say I love those images. You have got the focus great.

Kev

[brianb]

Drift of the image is very bad Brian, registax 5 is not working properly on my system, i choose a referance frame and it either jumps to frame 1, or the last frame why i dont know, Any ideas Brian ?

I don't have that problem.

I take it you set the tracking rate to "lunar" when imaging the Moon, if you don't do that you will get a drift of approx. 1/2 arc second per second of time in the direction of the Moon's orbit. But Registax easily cancels that out if you tick the "track drift" option box on the alignment page.

[resonator77]

Neil

is this 2 x or 3 x barlow?

love the image, very nice:D

[neil phillips]

Brian not sure if i can adjust to lunar rate, as i dont have a hand control, I dont think i can, trying to get a hand conrol but wont be easy.

Ramis i used the 2x barlow but with your diaganol you supplied which adds a bit more power Brian thinks im at about f30,

i reckon im at about 5000mm focal length, so about a medium power really