Embarrassing Jupiters webcam clinic

[DrRobin]

Hi Stuart,

That's excellent, much better colour balance and I can see the detail much better. I am going to have a go with those settings in Registax on the original, it should have more detail than the one posted here.

Many thanks for having a go with my image and thanks for all of the tips and hints.

[Parus major]

Focus looks ok with 2 moons clearly visible. If seeing is not good its hard to get a sharp image. Dew on the secondary mirror can also soften the image. I would increase saturation to bring out the red more.

Thanks for the input. The colour looked ok at the time. but looking back at the video I see it could have had higher saturation as you say. I know what I'm doing wrong now. Last time it came out monochrome so I know it's a thing I keep missing. I'm ashamed to say I hadn't even noticed the slider for saturation until you mentioned it easier!

Onwards and upwards! This is only my fourth imaging session ever amd second on a driven mount so at this stage I take everything on board.

[Space Cowboy]

Hi Stuart,

That's excellent, much better colour balance and I can see the detail much better. I am going to have a go with those settings in Registax on the original, it should have more detail than the one posted here.

Many thanks for having a go with my image and thanks for all of the tips and hints.

If its possible Robin could you post up an image that has just been stacked in Registax but not had any wavelet work and I will have a play with that. I don't know why the noise level is so high if you've stacked 2000 frames. A TIFF file would be great or PNG.

[DrRobin]

Hi Stuart,

Many thanks for having a look at my original frames prior to any wavelets or post processing. I have taken a screen shot of the reference frame prior to stacking, this is typical of the image and seems a bit noisy to me? Perhaps my exposure was too short and the gain too high to balance the histogram?

I have included 3 pictures after stacking, one stacked with 90% 2997 frames (out of 3000), one stacked with drizzle and 90% 2997 frames and the third stacked with 94% 408 frames. All three are from the same file using the same reference frame and settings other than the quality limit.

I am not sure if the quality will be compressed through here, let me know and I will paste them to dropbox or something. Hover over the picture with your mouse to get the frame description.

[Space Cowboy]

Thanks Robin I've had a mess with them and got a very similar result to the previous repro. Unfortunately the noise level is preventing more detail to be revealed as heavy noise reduction is needed each time the image is sharpened. What gain setting did you have on capture? I know that night I tried 1/60 sec with Gain at 850 and that was quite noisy though not as high as your images. Its a shame because you've captured some nice detail. I would keep exposure at 1/30. I assume these were debayered RAW images? There is an article on the Cloudy Nights forum suggesting Registax debayer method is inferior to that used by Firecapture. Telescope Reviews: Debayering DBK Y800 (again) I have found the debayering noiser than standard rgb24 colour capture.

[stargazerlily]

Update to a photo I posted on 2nd November (page 11, about half way down). I've been tinkering ... with the wavelets in Registax and have come up with this image. It's a huge improvement compared to the original image.

There is so much to learn about this image processing lark ...

Pete

[DrRobin]

Hi Stuart,

Thanks for the help, I think you are probably right too short an exposure and too much gain has resulted in a noisy image. I know I used about 1/60th for the run you tried, but can't remember what gain setting I used to balance the histogram.

I know the runs I did later (mist or high cloud) I could only get 1/38th and had to run more gain, I haven't stacked them but they look just as noisy.

I will have a look at Firecapture and might give it a quick try.

I still think that picture you posted a couple of days ago from mine is absolutely excellent, I did try reprocessing the original but I still could get the detail and colours you managed, perhaps I need to learn how to drive Registax a bit better.

[Space Cowboy]

Try Image Analyser Robin. Its free and easy to use. Thats what I used to perform the noise reduction and Saturation adjustment. There is a deconvolution option on there that brings out more detail similar to Unsharp mask does in Gimp.

I would try and keep Gain below 800 when capturing assuming you have Gamma at 100. The good pic I captured was at 750 though I know you have a dfk 31 rather than my 21 so its possible they have different noise levels.

[DrRobin]

Thanks again for all the help and advice. I gave FireCapture a go, but it would only load 1360 images (I think there is a 1GB limit and my frames are higher resolution than a DFK21), it also didn't render the colour correctly despite fiddling with settings.

I did manage to get Registax 6 working correctly and I reckon it makes a slightly better job of the alignment and the linked wavelets and noise reduction also help when used correctly (I think I am using them anyway).

I managed to reprocess one of my images in Reg 6 and get a final very similar to the one you did for me.

I am definately going to have a go with Image Analyser, I have got a copy of Photoshop, but never really got on with it, some something that is a bit easier to use will be great.

I am not sure that the DFK31 is quite as sensitive as your DFK21, certainly even if the pixels are the same they are smaller on the DFK31 and that always means more light. I am guessing in future that 1/30th exposure and around 20 fps is going to be ablout the best I can manage for a reasonable gain figure.

[Space Cowboy]

Update to a photo I posted on 2nd November (page 11, about half way down). I've been tinkering ... with the wavelets in Registax and have come up with this image. It's a huge improvement compared to the original image.

There is so much to learn about this image processing lark ...

Pete

Looking good

[Space Cowboy]

Thanks again for all the help and advice. I gave FireCapture a go, but it would only load 1360 images (I think there is a 1GB limit and my frames are higher resolution than a DFK21), it also didn't render the colour correctly despite fiddling with settings.

I did manage to get Registax 6 working correctly and I reckon it makes a slightly better job of the alignment and the linked wavelets and noise reduction also help when used correctly (I think I am using them anyway).

I managed to reprocess one of my images in Reg 6 and get a final very similar to the one you did for me.

I am definately going to have a go with Image Analyser, I have got a copy of Photoshop, but never really got on with it, some something that is a bit easier to use will be great.

I am not sure that the DFK31 is quite as sensitive as your DFK21, certainly even if the pixels are the same they are smaller on the DFK31 and that always means more light. I am guessing in future that 1/30th exposure and around 20 fps is going to be ablout the best I can manage for a reasonable gain figure.

Yep the firecapture debayer is a bit funny with avis captured in ic capture. Glad your having some success with Reg 6. Its worked fine for me until I got my new quad core pc and then its been funny when using multi alignments. Reg 6 wavelets are for sure better so I've been stacking in Reg 5.1 and then using wavelets in Reg 6.

[DrRobin]

I have Reg 6.1 and 5.1 on two PCs a laptop, used for capturing and a fast desktop for processing. I also have access to another couple of PCs at work with various speeds/core arrangements, handy to stack at work on one PC whilst working on another, swapping screens when needed.

I found that Reg 6 gave the same results on all PCs, that was the crazy paving or fractals in the stacked image. Without changing anything it now stacks correctly, but the difference is the camera.

The DFK is producing far more frames of higher quality than the 900 or Lifecam and it seems to me that Reg 6 can't handle low quality images or images that move a lot on screen. I am sure the multipoint alignment in Reg 6 is better as well.

Image Analyser is good, thanks for the tip.

[Russe]

here is my first attempt from tonight.

skywatcher 127 mak

goto mount

spc900

astrocapture

brightness 50

gamma 0

gain 15

5fps, 1000 frames

registax6, drizzling stacking, RGB aligned, wavelets 3.3, 1.3, 1.1, 0.7, 0.7, 1.1, contrast 73, brightness -57

any ideas?

the second pic is without processing

[Russe]

i didnt find the planet in my 2x barlow... too cold to be patient

[Johnboy2011]

I seem to have hit a bit of a wall using my C9.25 and SPC900. I've attached a non barlow and barlow with capture settings to show where I'm at. I am processing with Registax 5 but mostly just move the wavelet sliders in random directions until I pronounce it finished! I feel that I should be getting more with my kit, what do you think?!

Thanks,

John

Capture 01_11_2011 19_26_36.CameraSettings.txt

Capture 01_11_2011 19_36_41.CameraSettings.txt

[Russe]

Could be the weather isn't permitting better viewing, but - unfortunately - what do I know...

[Johnboy2011]

I've been wondering if it is the seeing, but as I am pretty inexperienced too it is hard to know. My results, sporadic as they are, seem fairly consistent though. And no where near as good as a lot of the images on here.

I keep thinking about investing in an Imaging Source cam but want to make sure I am getting the best from the little Phillips before throwing a load more cash at the problem!

John

[Space Cowboy]

Good effort Russe not much wrong with what you've got there. You can try 10fps for more frames say 1800 in a 3 min avi and obviously a 2x barlow will give you more detail.

John your setup can produce a lot more so don't give up on your webcam, that little beauty can give you some great shots with your quality scope. Looking at your settings I would drop gamma to 0 to give more contrast. Keep gain at over 50%. How many frames did you capture? The larger image is too dark try using the exposure histogram on sharpcap and make sure its around 70% full.

Make sure your scope is well cooled, collimated and free of dew. If seeing is very mushy i.e its wobbly like a jelly and very fuzzy then its near impossible to get a good image. Try focusing on one of Jupiters moons. Get them sharp and you are in business.

Check out the Registax tutorials below.

[Space Cowboy]

Registax 6 tutorial :

http://www.sunspot51.com/Registax6/Registax6.htm

Kokatha Man's excellent Registax 5.1 tutorial:

http://stargazerslounge.com/primers-tutorials/110593-registax5-1-dbk21-colour-cam-tutorial.html

[Johnboy2011]

Thanks for the info and encouragement Stuart! Those tutorials are new to me, I had used the one on Astronomy shed. Also good tips on the settings. I am happy that the scope is cooled and I have focused with the Bhatinov. Collimation I have done each time by eye with a mid power eyepiece. Do you think this is good enough or should I be using a cunning piece of software?!

Thanks,

John

[Space Cowboy]

You're welcome John! You could do a star test with your webcam, getting the star on screen at the same focal length you image would be more accurate than using an eyepiece. Maybe capture a short avi and stack the frames giving you a good view of your collimation result.

I have a newtonian so use a laser collimator.

[Russe]

Thanks Stuart! Will read the registax tutorial. There's loads on registax 5 out there but little on 6.

Still have a few avi's from that night with lower gain.

Shall try the 10 fps as well.

Is there actually a camera out there, that shows a picture quality close to what you can see on observation only?

[chris285]

My post is an embarrasing one but its not really about Jupiter specifically, my problem is the webcam just stops picking up any light and its happened randomly a few times now and getting very annoying. Its a Phillips SPC 880 flashed i beleive to a 900, but its picked up as a 880 still in sharpcap

The other night i got my skywatcher explorer 130m trained on jupiter after roughly polar aligning just so i can track for a few minutes, stuck in my 25mm eyepeice and worked down to my 7.5mm so it was central before i put my webcam in but couldn't pick it up in sharpcap

so i moved my iphone screen in front of the webcam and it refused to pickup the light, went inside and rebooted the asus 701eee i was using and was then working as i moved the webcam in front of a lamp in the front room and was fine but by the time i got outside and moved to get jupiter central again it had occured again

At this time i came inside and stop for the evening before i got too angry i broke something, i was using sharpcap to caputre and temp was about 2 or 3 degrees c but i am at a loss why this keeps occuring. Can anyone offer me any suggestions, i am yet to try on another laptop btw

[Space Cowboy]

Are you sure Jupiter is actually on screen Chris? If your finderscope is not bang on target when you insert the webcam (the slightest nudge will knock the scope off target) the planet may be out of view or possibly way out of focus (image like a huge doughnut) and if exposure is not set on auto the cam wont pick anything up. Make sure your gain is set to max when locating the Planet.

[WayBig]

Are you sure Jupiter is actually on screen Chris? If your finderscope is not bang on target when you insert the webcam (the slightest nudge will knock the scope off target) the planet may be out of view or possibly way out of focus (image like a huge doughnut) and if exposure is not set on auto the cam wont pick anything up. Make sure your gain is set to max when locating the Planet.

Wind your focuser all the way in too - if I just replace a focused eyepiece with my webcam I too cannot see anything not the screen because it is so far out of focus. Webcams normally need the focuser to be pretty much all of the way in...on dobs anyway