|
You should be able to get the Jewel Box without it "burning out" the stars. It's been a long time since I tried such an object with my LX200 & SBIG but I'm pretty sure with a minimum exposure time I wouldn't have a problem.
You need to come to grips with the capture and processing software, not a quick task unfortunately. I'm not familiar with CCDOps, I quickly gave it up in favour of CCDSoft which also came with my (and all I think) SBIG. For LRGB imaging I usually end up using Photoshop as much as CCDSoft.
You need to capture exposures where the stars aren't burnt out, in CCDSoft this would be ca case of looking at the maximum ADU of the image, or moving the mouse over the stars and reading the brightness (ADU) in the status bar of the app. Checking it's not at the maximum of the camera. Or playing with the histogram a little to check there's range left.
You then need to combine the LRGB exposures and fiddle with the settings in doing so. CCDSoft has a colour combine function which would give you basic results reasonably easily after some fiddling with the sliders for the exposure of each component (LRGB).
Once that's all done you could save as TIF and load into Photoshop to make it look nicer again.
As other have said, Jupiter isn't a good target for the equipment you've got. I'd suggest a galaxy or nebula with even brightness across the board, where details shows well in 10 sec exposures. Mag 8-10 kind of objects. I haven't been doing any astronomy lately to remember what's up at the moment to specifically recommend one, sounds like you're capable of finding one anyhow (you got to the Jewel box).
I don't think the equipment you have is necessarily bad or a bad choice, you just have to learn to work with it and what it suits, not battle against it with the wrong kind of target - something which takes time & experience.
Roger.
|