Jupiter season opens (19 Jun)

[brianb]

A clear night!!! First one for ages, and my first view of Jupiter since conjuction in February.

Decided to wait until Jupiter was at a decent altitude before imaging. By this time the Sun was well up in the clear transparent sky, and the seeing was starting to deteriorate. The bright sky background has had a bad effect on the colour balance. Anyhow, here it is - my season opener:

Transparency very good, seeing poor. Temperature 10C, wind N force 3.

[riklaunim]

Nice images. Rising sun shouldn't affect the colors to much. IR-RGB images should be quite sharp and clear.

[AztecastroMcJ]

great detail Brian

[neil phillips]

Not easy to get a polished result this early is it Brian,But you got some excellent detail there. I also would have liked to have gone higher than the 22 23 degrees i got, but as it got higher and hits my neighbours roof any benefit in altitude was offset by turbulance from the roof, Its Going to stop my early results from being what they will be untill its between houses at full height. some time away, but i know youll agree its good practice to get on it early for the real deal later. Once again good shot and excellent detail coming through. But as you know we will look back on these at opposition and see how much we are missing this early.

[Space Cowboy]

Love the detail!

[Kokatha man]

Hi Brian.....that's a nice early Jupiter there mate....!

.....not meaning to be insulting but do you use the circular marquee tool (elliptical+shift) and "select>inverse" in Photoshop at all to seperate the background and planet so that you can work on either in these daylight situations....?

I've found it can be usefull at times myself: takes a bit of practise to get your eye in and make a perfect delineation (and this is a reall "quickie" job!)

Hope you don't mind this little play.....just ignore it if it's something you avoid etc....!

[brianb]

Hope you don't mind this little play

That's an improvement, much appreciated.

With a bright background what I do is to use the levels tool to darken the sky background to black (or nealy so). The colour balance problem isn't fixable with the marquee tool, the basic issue with Jupiter (or Saturn) is that the (strongly blue tinged) diffuse skylight makes more contribution to the disk near the limb than to the centre of the disk because of the natural limb darkening of the planet.

[Kokatha man]

Fair enough Brian - I just think that seperating the background with that tool not only allows you to alter each area independantly of the other but allows the use of selective curves etc in the channels to ameliorate the most obvious effects of the daytime imaging.....doing this seperation most certainly gives you a much better histo display of the actual planet's disk in curves, levels and for colour balance etc. etc imho.....

I just grabbed a screenshot and applied aforesaid.....only afterwards I noticed that the channel alignment was out on the LH limb so I didn't bother correcting that: well, I did afterwards but not on that image of yours I played with.....RGB align in R5 wouldn't actually correct properly automatically, and I found I had to do a manual shift which i found most interesting - possibly another aspect to the situation you were imaging under....?

Looking forwards to some possible reasonable seeing (and clear sky!) in the next few days myself for a crack at Jove.....I'm feeling very happy about the modifications I made to the C11 but want to really be able to put it to the test!

[brianb]

RGB align in R5 wouldn't actually correct properly automatically, and I found I had to do a manual shift which i found most interesting - possibly another aspect to the situation you were imaging under....?

Yeah ... either I didn't shoot RGB in a short enough time window & got some differential rotation, or seeing distortion has taken its toll ... a bit of both I suspect ... I did the RGB alignment on the bright white oval in the NEB & let the limb go all wrong, deliberately left it that way rather than "fixing" it by painting in a sharp edge which some people do but looks artificial to me.

The differential rotation problem is a real concern with Jupiter. Probably the one planet where a colour camera is not at a significant disadvantage. (Discuss!)

[Glasspusher]

Excellent work Brian, well done.

John

[neil phillips]

Will be interesting to see what a single shot colour camera can do this year on jupiter Brian, Although at some point i would also like to try RGB with a mono DMK because of its advantages sensetivety ect, I just cant afford a new mono camera, filter wheel quality filters right now. But im hopefull i can push the DBK above and beyond the limitations of single shot cameras. We shall see. as my focal length increases near opossition i will cut the time window down to about 2 mins, continiouse filming for the short time window wont hurt thats for sure, although i guess the better one gets at switching filters, not too much time is lost, having never done it, you will know more about that than me

[riklaunim]

Will be interesting to see what a single shot colour camera can do this year on jupiter

Having DMK I can say that there is a huge difference between IR-RGB and RGB or RRGB. Those color cams would have to make good IR image.

[Kokatha man]

Having DMK I can say that there is a huge difference between IR-RGB and RGB or RRGB. Those color cams would have to make good IR image.

Well Piotr, you show me yours and I'll show you mine.....or rather, you can just go to the top of this section (Planetary Imaging) and look at my entry (the last one) in the 2009 Planetary Imaging Showcase.....

Sorry to sound really crass mate.....but I think you have a bit too low an opinion of what a colour camera can really do!

Seeing is allways going to be the supreme influence, but those images weren't taken in fantastic conditions.....in fact, less than 8/10.

Neil has taken some lovely images with the colour cam too I believe.....and one should be really carefull just how much "techno-babble" one swallows when passing judgements! (all in good humour and in the pursuit of reality!)

[riklaunim]

You can do IR with color DFK using the red pixels so whats the problem?

IR-RGB:

R-RGB:

Made them on 05.06.2010 at about 4 a clock morning not waiting for very good seeing SCT 8", f/10, DMK21.

[neil phillips]

Hard to argue with Jupiter image on showcase K man, While i do think ultimately Mono rgb is superiour for quite a few reasons, in the real world it doesnt always seem to pan out that way, clearly equipment is only a part issue of quality, Expertise is just as ( actually more important ) both in capture and processing, Collimation, focusing, local seeing conditions all play a part thats just as important. I recently had someone say to me they regretted buying a mono DMK after they saw what ive been doing with the DBK, technique ( or there lack of it ) is so important. doing single shot colour very well. will most likely outperform mono RGB done badly. I have seen many examples of this ( i suspect k man has too ) with regards my own shots, against mono rgb in others hands. of course one can not argue with Damiens work Chris G. A wesley D parker the list goes on. But my points are still true and valid. I think if one wants to get obssesive about best technique ect. Then starting from the ground up is most important. Only when Collimation is mastered ( or close to it ) focusing is mastered and consistent. Capture regarding the best settings is mastered for the conditions AT THE TIME one is shooting. And lastly one has a location that will actually allow great images to be got ( local seeing conditions ) can one move on to the finer things like Single shot versus mono RGB.

Infact unless all these things are considered and actually got right, no amount of better equipment is going to outperform what others can achieve with so called inferiour equipment. And this is why i say, i have seen ( often ) Single shot outperform mono rgb. The one area i do like about single colour is not stopping for a flter change. ( helpful on jupiters 2 min window ) and the colour accuracy one can get with single colour. So although yes i do agree mono rgb is superiour. Its not a totally open and shut case the way i think some like to belive. One day ill certainly go the RGB way if i can afford a mono camera filter wheel filters ect. But untill i mastered the technique of RGB imaging. I suspect my single colour could still possibly look better. But again thats a expertise issue, not a equipment issue. But still will affect the final image. Thanks for the vote of confidence K man i think what i achieved on saturn this year shows just what is possible when single colour is done well. as oppossed to average mono rgb captures.

[brianb]

i guess the better one gets at switching filters, not too much time is lost, having never done it, you will know more about that than me

With a set of parfocal filters & a filter wheel, not very much time at all. However good colour seperation filter set may have a higher overall transmission (less loss between the bands, and less "leakage") than the cheap dye-based filters that may be used in a Bayer matrix.

The mono camera will also have more resolution in the individual R G & B colour layers, though that is not much of an issue in practice as the eye tends to judge sharpness on luminosity.

A Bayer filtered camera (without integral IR blocking!) is at a big disadvantage for monochrome IR imaging as only 25% of the pixels will be effective. But for general views of Jupiter I find it's quite reasonable to do without an IR channel.

In any case, equipment is a fairly small part of the equation - seeing is the real determinant of what you can achieve; if you have rock solid seeing you can make nice, sharp, noise free images with a camera with poor sensitivity. A better camera does help, though, especially with poor seeing - if you can shoot more frames at a faster rate (more sensitive camera) you reduce the seeing wobbles & distortions, and still have plenty of sharp ones after you've thrown away more of the smeared ones.

As the seeing tends to be better with small apertures, and there is plenty of detail at a variety of scales on Jupiter, you should be able to make quite reasonable images of it with a cheap colour web cam and an aperture around 6". They won't be as detailed as the ones made by e.g. Bird operating from a good site with superb equipment, but hey, you'll have made them yourself - and there's pleasure to be had from that.

[neil phillips]

Thats not somthing ive tried Rik but looking at your images it does look interesting. But still hope you agree my points are very worthy of discussing

[neil phillips]

I agree Brian, seeing is the single most influential thing on a quality issue. but lets not forget my other points, collimation capture settings AT THE TIME ITS TAKEN trans ect gain exposure. planet surface brightness. something that was paramount on saturn this year i found in the quality stakes

Processing. I know these are things that one assumes all will get right. but in reality thats far from the truth. as many begginers on here prove time after time. I think in many ways the issues ive raised ( and you too about seeing ) are if anything more important than the question of single colour versus mono rgb

[riklaunim]

Even with color camera you can use some filter magic to make LRGB images that will be better than RGB image (either from mono or color camera). With mono it's easier to do good L, but with color cameras it is still doable (broad high transmission red filter or IR filter on lower focal ratios) And the L can make a great difference to the image.

[Kokatha man]

.....I agree in general with everything Neil and Brian have said in the preceding posts.....in retrospect i think I've was a little uncharitable in the way I put things to you Piotr: I apologise if I was a bit blunt:).....but I don't believe you're personally in a position to yet state.....

Quote: "Having DMK I can say that there is a huge difference between IR-RGB and RGB or RRGB."

.....this simply doesn't equate with the fine images of Jupiter that people have and are achieving.....and over my way there are those like John Earl and Lester (who's posted his images on SGL) who also have achieved remarkable images using OS cams.....

Perhaps if you achieve images in the future that (apertures taken into consideration) are commensurate with their images (or our's) you'll be able to back those claims with your own "hard evidence" .....simply referring to technical specifications isn't any absolute: as Brian says, equipment isn't the "b-all and end-all" of the equation.....

That said, I am about to go mono - not because I think my imaging outcomes suffer in comparison to most mono cam users (far from it, if I can be so rude ) but because this planetary imaging is a real passion for me, and I wish to push things to the absolute limit with the latest mono cam, especially now that I have done so much work on the C11 and hope to have the 16" working shortly.

I guess what I'm saying is that there is much more to a really good image than possessing any particular device: (leaving aside seeing for the moment) those things mentioned like razor collimation, optics at ambient temperature, acquired skills in capture (razor focus being something I rate right up the top of the tree here) and processing etc, etc..... all hard-won and studied acquisitions!

I mentioned this particular topic after Brian made comments with his "(Discuss!)" re the alignment issue we were discussing in his image.....and when Neil said it'd be interesting to see what a colour cam could do this year and you (Piotr) came out with your statement I thought "Hey.....show you can walk the walk, when you talk the talk mate....!":D

But honestly, ultimately I think it is important to have a sense of perspective with all these matters - on another forum I sometimes feel that some of the claims and certain technical diatribes not only fly in the face of reality but (imho) seem to take on "The Emperor's New Clothes" sorts of proportions.....

Neil, I'm fortunate to be soon receiving a small legacy so the electric filter wheel and filters (plus cam) are my (big) self-indulgence there.....but as I said elsewhere, and as Brian himself (also elsewhere) has said, these challenges of mono capture aren't really that much a challenge with the right gear.....I said on CN that doing a 2.5 minute colour avi, pulling the cam out and unscrewing the iR/uV cut filter and screwing a 742nm filter in and refocussing and getting the next avi in on Mars in the required interval has made me realise automated mono imaging should be a doddle.....I'm sure you'll take to it like a duck to water yourself when the opportunity arises!

[Kokatha man]

.....ps Piotr - those images on SGL of mine of Jupiter are just straight os cam images: no luminance etc!

[riklaunim]

It's just matter of seeing. On epic seeing even a 1FPS free webcam will do stunning image. The less perfect seeing the more advanced camera and post-processing is needed.

Epic seeing example:

[brianb]

Epic seeing example:

Tee hee!

This has been an interesting discussion, I hope it's been helpful to some people & encouraged others to have a go even if they have less than optimal equipment.

[Simon1990]

Nice shot! Loads of detail!

[Kokatha man]

It's just matter of seeing. On epic seeing even a 1FPS free webcam will do stunning image. The less perfect seeing the more advanced camera and post-processing is needed.

Epic seeing example:

Heh-hee Piotr.....I look forward to you demonstrating these claims of yours.....perhaps this opposition..?!?