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What I have learnt...
Capturing the best quality image is hard and is the most important aspect about the whole process. I learnt this the hard way, I thought post-processing will fix everything, it won’t. Get the best image you can before thinking about post-processing.
Your setup must be close to perfect:
Good Seeing - Pick a day with good seeing. No wind, no clouds. Even if the scene seems calm, the atmosphere could still appear turbulent.
Polar alignment - Not as crucial as deep sky imaging but still important
Collimation - This is extremely important. Even if your mirrors are misaligned slightly, it will affect your image. You may capture a reasonable image with collimation out, but you'll find it difficult to focus a sharp image.
Temperature control - Cool your mirror. Air turbulence in front of the mirrors due to heat dissipating from them will affect your image.
Focus - Focus the best you can, but without attending to the last two points, good focus will be hard to achieve.
Secure the optical train.
The equipment I used for these pictures were:
· 10" Skywatcher Newt - Cheap telescope
· NEQ6 Pro - Really good mount - I upgraded mine with the belt mod
· ZWO 174MM B/W Camera - One of the best planetary cameras. It’s a few years old now, so there are better ones, but I see no reason upgrade yet.
· ZWO LRGB Filters - I got the latest version, ver 2, I think. They're reasonably cheap and worth it. They're bandwidth coverage isn't perfect, but I still get good results with them. Post processing can correct some of the issues they generate.
· ZWO Electric Filter Wheel - Perfect for filters above. Small and works well.
· 5x Powermate by Teleview - Expensive but is built very well.
My optical train looks like this:
Filter Wheel, 5x Powermate, ZWO camera. I have a low-profile focuser which helps a lot with this setup.
Software use for capturing: Firecapture!! Firecapture is an awesome application and the best part, it’s free. It works with a range of cameras and electric filter wheels. The application offers a lot. I haven’t explored it all yet but some of the features I discovered are:
· You can programme your capture sequence.
· Adjust ROI (Region of Interest)
· Adjust Exposure
· Adjust Gain
· Adjusting the above two affects your FPS – the more FPS increases the luck of capturing good frames for stacking later. However, this all depends on how well your equipment is calibrated. If calibrated well, you can get away with lower FPS.
· Centre images – centres the image despite the image jumping all over the screen.
· Capture length
· Set capture frames
· Live histogram
Each planet will require its own Firecapture setup; what each filter settings being different. Filter/camera setup will differ for you to what I use.
This is all I have right now… May continue later..
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