Embarrassing Jupiters webcam clinic

[msinclairinork]

ahh brilliant...looks promising.

My only concern is my scope with its short focal legnth, but I suppose there is no harm in trying!

Thanks,

Michael

[Johnboy2011]

Stuart,

This is my first pic on my 3rd night with a scope! I am using an SPC900 on an 8" LX90. No idea what I am doing. I used Sharpcam and Registax. I think the seeing was very bad with lots of turbulence.

What do you think can be done?

Thanks,

John

Capture 19_02_2011 19_29_08.CameraSettings.txt

Capture 19_02_2011 19_29_08.bmp

[Space Cowboy]

Firstly John great effort getting an image on only your 3rd scope outing! With your setup you have the potential for some knock out images!

I'm assuming you did not use a barlow as the image is quite small? For sure Jupiter is low in the sky now making very difficult seeing conditions. Make sure your scope has cooled properly for at least one hour before imaging if it's kept in a warm house.

How many frames did you stack as the image looks under stacked. Focus is probably out too but with turbulent conditions its tough focussing. I find using a barlow to make the image larger (but not too large) makes it easier to focus. Best way is to turn the focuser until the moons of Jupiter appear...once they are pin sharp then focus is good. You will need to set the gain in sharpcap high to see the moons (reducing down to around 50% for imaging the planet). Gamma should be set to 0 and shutter speed 1/25 or 1/33. Capture an avi of 3-4 mins at 10 fps and then stack at least 500 of the best frames in Registax.

Check out the tutorials on page one of this thread.

[Stargazer Jack]

What would i be able to take photos of with my SW Explorer 130M and SPC900NC ?

[red dwalf]

i had some reasonable images using a 130p of saturn and jupiter but using a 2 x barlow, image will be smallish but you can try using a 3 x barlow but i found the field of view very small and hard to get an image onto the pc screen

[Space Cowboy]

As the Jupiter season begins to hot up thought I would dust off this thread for anyone looking for useful tips or tutorials.

[drewk1]

Here is my first effort.

Using a Celestron Astromaster 114 EQ and a Logitech 3000 Pro

mounted in true Blue Peter style with an old 35mm film canister and lots of black insulating tape.

It was bit of a struggle keeping it in frame and the wobbly mount dosn't help.

Captured with WxAstrocapture on a Acer Aspire One running Ubuntu 11.04.

Stacked with Registax 5.1

[Space Cowboy]

Well done getting your first Jupiter! Bands clearly visible. Are you using a mount with no tracking? Try to capture 3-4 mins of video giving 2-3000 frames.

[Odd Dob]

Not another "this is my first Jupiter" post, surely? Yes. Surely.

This from the 19th.

Now, allowing for the fact that it's upside down and I had absolutely *no* idea what I was doing, I was quite surprised how well it turned out. Focusing was a lot harder than I expected, and Registax is just magic, isn't it?

This was with a QHY5v through a SW 180 Mak on a HEQ5.

I am fairly certain that I'm not getting the best out of my kit. In particular, what's best duration of exposure/capture? This was only 30s but looking at this thread I see people are recommending longer. Any rules of thumb to apply here or is it trial and error?

[Space Cowboy]

Looks like your a "Dob hand" at this job Mr. Dob that is an excellent capture very good focus!

Generally 3-4 mins is best for Jupiter unless someone is using huge magnification i.e over 10 metres focal length when rotational blur may creep in. 30s is way too short so that shows just how good an image you can potentially capture. You should be looking to stack at least 500 frames preferably 1000+ depending on how steady the conditions are.

[drewk1]

Well done getting your first Jupiter! Bands clearly visible. Are you using a mount with no tracking? Try to capture 3-4 mins of video giving 2-3000 frames.

Yes using a mount with no tracking.

I tried to slowly keep in the centre of the frame manually but the wobble was too much.

I think I need to start the slippery slope to upgrading.

[Odd Dob]

Cheers space cowboy. If the weather behaves I'll have a go with longer exposures this weekend. Once I've got that sorted, maybe I can start thinking about doing them in colour /o\

[drewk1]

Another attempt.

More frames but need to read up on Registax to get the best out of it.

[RogerTheDodger]

Focus and detail are still eluding me, but get closer each time.

[tango]

Afternoon all, have been out the last couple of nights, (like loads of others!) trying to get some pictures of Jupiter. I've attached the best, any suggestions will be really useful as I hope to do better tonight!

I used a SPC900nc webcam in a x2 barlow. My scope is a SW130p. My tracking is useless, only captured 255 frames (at 10fps) and stacked in Registax 6. Can I expect to get much more detail? Or am I at the limit of the equipment I have? Seem to struggle getting much more colour as well.

Any help or guidance is really appreciated, can't wait to try again tonight.

Thanks a lot!

[Odd Dob]

Did you fiddle about with the wavelet sliders in registax? If that help in teasing out a lot of detail from some very blurry stacked AVIs I was playing around with.

[Odd Dob]

Oh, and here's my last effort:

Decided to give colour a go.

The picture is far too noisy, so was going to tone down the gain and up the exposure time (which seems to reduce the noise artefacts). Also a bit small, so was going to use a barlow (been slotting straight in).

As I've got a mono camera, I needed to take separate exposures for LRGB. How do people combine them? I found that registax seems to combine them if I save them as separate FIT files with names ending in _L/_R/_G/_B but this doesn't seem a very well documented feature! I've been trying to figure how to do it in GIMP but without much success.

[scarecrow]

Well this is my first shot with webcam through a 200p.

I can see there is a problem with the focus but i am happy with my first attempt. I guess to get a bigger image i need to add a barlow into the mix and a bigger image should be easier to focus. I have a x2 that come with the scope but may have to purchase a x3 for a larger shot.

[Space Cowboy]

Another attempt.

More frames but need to read up on Registax to get the best out of it.

Tutorials are on page 1 of this thread. The video cropping program "castrator" is a huge help when dealing with a drifting object as it centres the planet for stacking in Registax (link on page 1).

[Space Cowboy]

Focus and detail are still eluding me, but get closer each time.

Focus and detail looks pretty good to me. I reckon your next step is more focal length maybe 4 or 5x barlow to bring out more detail.

[Space Cowboy]

Oh, and here's my last effort:

Decided to give colour a go.

The picture is far too noisy, so was going to tone down the gain and up the exposure time (which seems to reduce the noise artefacts). Also a bit small, so was going to use a barlow (been slotting straight in).

As I've got a mono camera, I needed to take separate exposures for LRGB. How do people combine them? I found that registax seems to combine them if I save them as separate FIT files with names ending in _L/_R/_G/_B but this doesn't seem a very well documented feature! I've been trying to figure how to do it in GIMP but without much success.

Thats an excellent image. How many frames did you stack? Unless you stack at least 500-1000 frames there will be some noise in the image. Not sure about GIMP and RGB combine but Image Analyser does combine RGB.

[Space Cowboy]

Well this is my first shot with webcam through a 200p.

I can see there is a problem with the focus but i am happy with my first attempt. I guess to get a bigger image i need to add a barlow into the mix and a bigger image should be easier to focus. I have a x2 that come with the scope but may have to purchase a x3 for a larger shot.

Good first attempt! Maybe slightly over processed wavelet wise as this can cause a crayon effect. Assuming you have the 2x skywatcher barlow a 3x barlow would be a good choise as the 2x barlow lens can be unscrewed and the empty barrel used as an extension tube giving an extra 1.5x on top of the 3x barlow. You would then have a nice selection of focal lengths.

[Odd Dob]

I did a good old exposure there. I got about 1500-2000 odd frames for each channel, with Registax choosing the "best" ones automatically. The live display was a little noisy as well, do I do suspect it was down to the camera. I was going to have another go last night but yeah, clouds, eh?

So, Image Analyser, you say? Not heard of that before. Shall certainly give it a go.

[TheThing]

Odd Dob is a genius!

Here is his method for LRGB combining in Registax, from a PM he sent me: -

It does seem a very poorly documented feature, doesn't?

This is what I did:

1. Record .avi's for each of LRGB. I saved these seperate AVIs with this kind of format:

jupiter-001.avi

jupiter-002.avi

jupiter-003.avi

jupiter-004.avi

each one number corresponding to a filter.

2. I analysed each of these *separately* in registax, to produce a single .FIT file for each avi (i.e. a FIT file for each LRGB filter). These I save with different kind of file name format

jupiter_L.fit

jupiter_R.fit

jupiter_G.fit

jupiter_B.fit

by doing this separately, I mean I load up each AVI individually and complete the processing and save the result before loading the next one. I found it important to be quite conservative with the wavelet functions at this stage - any noise introduced can be problematical in the next stage.

3. Now the clever bit. Open each one of the .FIT files you created in one go. I.e. when you get the open file dialogue, select all of the in one go by holding down CTRL and clicking each one. I think it's got something to do with using the _L _R etc in the file names that enables Registrax to know which one is which. Now just do the stacking process as usual. The end result magically ends up in colour!

A word of caution. You don't seem to have a very clear way of controlling the combination of the layers. It does seem quite intelligent but noise introduced at the initial processing seems to make it worse, can you can get some very weird results . You'll also need to crop your pictures quite a lot as a lot of colour noise gets introduced at the margins.

I have no idea if this is the "best" way to do it, but it worked for me.

Good luck!

(do us a favour and cut and paste this to the thread, ta!)

I'll be giving this a go next time there is a clear night.

Thank you sir!

[drewk1]

Another attempt and I think my best yet.