|
great start there. though do not increase exposure time, you want to reduce instead (faster shutter speed) and anything you can do to increase frames per second like reduce the capture resolution. Typically with zwo type imagers you restrict to a region of interest, I dont use my nikon for planetary so I dont know if you have a ROI option available on canon or byeos. Also on dslar dont worry about trying to get perfect exposure levels. AutoStakert does the boosting (and why do people use AS! and Registax???). So reduce exposure time (faster shutter speed) until the planet is maybe half bright or even dimmer. Take time and test shots to get your focus as best you can just before you take your shots to process.
Icrease iso if you need to get more frames per second. Run your capture through PIPP to center object and maybe crop a bit to increase processing speed and save to uncompressed format to throw into AS!. You can even sort frame quality and debayer in PIPP as part of this.
Planets are typically small in the number of pixels and the image is mostly just black pixels all around. You can sometimes get moons when imaging Jupiter or Saturn but rarer with the rest of the planets. Stars not often appear in the shot either, plus as the planet will be moving relative to the bacground stars you cant really stack to pull those forward cleanly anyway.
Your capture gear can only capture a certain number of pixels in a single frame plus can only transmit and store a certain amount of data (bits per second) and its a common mistake for people to capture planets at the highest resolution but all that captures is a huge amount of black only, so theres little point wasting the data bandwidth to do that. If you can crop the resolution at the camera so you only capture a smaller region containing the planet. The planet will still use the same number of pixels (or should) and therefore provide as much detail as a larger resolution image. This means you are not sending maybe 80% useless data (the empty space) so by using a smaller capture you can capture more frames for the same amount of data and when it comes to planets the more frames to work with the better chance of a great end result. Unfortunately the best planets for us to image all have features and since they spin we have a small capture window to gather frames before the features can no longer align and wavelet sharpening quality starts dropping off. I limit myself to a 3min capture time, you can go longer but features will start to smear and there is little effectiveness in derotation techniques as they can only compensate a little bit. Unless you intend to have the moons in the shot too by capturing at smaller resolution you have so much more data of the exact subject to process with. For example I often end up with over 15,000 frames captured in video with my zwo178mc capturing at around 480x480 instead of its 5MP(i think) capability. So I capture a few 3min videos and each one I often try to refocus and I process each to a single image using PIPP and AutoStakkert3. For me focus is my weak point, I cant complain about the atmosphere as I cant do anything about that. And yes when you magnify with barlows etc you are amplifying the atmospheric problems so try backing off trying to capture a planet fullframe. Focus and increase fps and use the analysis graph in AS! to determine % to process. ISO noise will vanish with this process so dont worry about it too much at capture... more frames, more frames, always more frames.!
enjoy it most of all! the planets are awesome! you're producing images that are a great start, so keep at it!!
|