So, I'm getting excited about Mars. But I've never done planetary imaging.
Can I do it with my gear?
- 8" F5 newt which I suppose would be better the f5.9 80mm refractor.
- ASI224MC. Or I've got an ASI290MM - mono but smaller pixels
- And I found a 2x Bintel Barlow in a box of stuff I've never used that came with my first scope.
The newt, 224MC and barlow combo is 0.39"/pixel. Is that enough to have a go? And I've got sharpcap.
No point waiting, opposition is right on the Full Moon, and I can tell you that it is still dust affected. I was looking at it with my 8" Edge @ 2032mm focal length for the last couple of nights and there is little chance of the dust storm clearing the atmosphere in the next ten days. It is very bright, and filters (like a red) will improve contrast a little, but don't expect to see much detail. A number of folks checked It out last night at Mangrove Mtn, and it was generally disappointing, regardless of equipment.
Mars is bright and big already. Get out there and image now for practice at least. You want high frames per second with a histogram around 60%, gain as low as possible. Set a cropped Region Of Interest like 640x640 or less if you have steady tracking to gain fps. capture 3min SER video. capture another. and another and another. each ser file should contain a few thousand frames and will drop into autostakkert to process, if you go beyond 3min you risk mars rotating during that time and reducing your chance of getting sharp feature details. 3min is a good rough guide NOT an exact number. Recording to a SSD is faster and more reliable (less dropped frames) than to a HDD. saturn is also up there ahead of mars so practice on that with same advice above.
Chris, your gear is more than enough to get great planetary images. Any zwo imager will be fine and pretty much any scope really, barlow optional. Dont bother asking just get out there and image!
Last night, second attempt saturn & mars. On 8" F5 with 2x (bintel barlow) and ASI224MC - gain 150 ~3-7msec exposures
Did 2min and got ~1600 frames, then dropped into autostakkert and 10% of frames seemed about the best I could get. Any suggestions? For one, I think this barlow I have might be not the best. Maybe try without it and I use my ASI290MM which has higher resolution?
I would think improvements may come from getting better seeing and maybe a larger selection of captures...
Anyways you are there...just do a few more using the exact set up so you can get it as good as possible and from there consider improvements that may be made.
I find your effort most encouraging.
I have a 2x barlow and a 3 x barlow but my recollections of planet photography is that getting the object in frame is a frustrating task although that was three mounts ago☺
I have a 150 doublet refractor and a set of filters...do you use filters these days? I guess the rotation thing would exclude their use.
I suppose a stack in each colour then combine those and lose something on the edges.
I keep telling myself not to get involved but....
I went to Bintel again today.
That Don is such a great man to deal with and very interesting so I did not mind dropping another $600 odd to get my rig working. I only went in to buy a $70 cable☺
The dust on Mars may start to settle before it gets too much further away ...two three weeks...but be ready for the winds dropping and getting some features.
Alex
Yes I concur Alex , Don is a wealth of knowledge and most obliging bloke. He always stops for a chat even when I know he’s under the pump with back orders , technical enquiries and sorting orders etc..
He even eaves drops on your discussions with John or the other sales guys and offers assistance where possible
Great guy and great support for your Astro needs !!
capture 3min SER video. [...] if you go beyond 3min you risk mars rotating during that time and reducing your chance of getting sharp feature details.
Question; With a mono camera is the best strategy to capture 3 mins at each filter setting and de-rotate in Winjupos? or is it better to get 1min x 3 filters so the total period remains under 3 minutes?
Which is more important? Time on the scope to get those lucky frames, or less rotation?
I think I'm getting marginally better at this. Shots from Sunday night actually look like planets after stacking and waveletting. But then monday night - the planets were bouncing around like my cat was attacking them. Last night - clouds.
Might try my mono camera. But one question - how do you align RGB planetary shots from a mono camera? I'm using autostakkert & registax.
Mars is not very forgiving at the moment, with the dust storm going on. Even if you get good seeing, the surface details are still ghosts of their usual selves, very low contrast, with a slight exception to the polar caps.
Mono on planets is not easy due to the time required for the RGB channels and planetary rotation, especially Jupiter. maybe not so much with Mars. OSC seems the way to go but I've upped my frame take to 5000 and stacking only the best 20% or so.
Mars is still fuzzy ... Jupiter and Saturn are good.
Use the camera you have with smallest pixel size and highest frame rate, NOT the camera with most pixels, you're c ropping away 99% them , so use a region of interest or smaller capture resolution to capture already cropped close to the planet, this lets the camera capture at best frame rate. Likewise exposure small and gain small if any, I use between 10ms and 30ms exposure and maybe a little gain to get histogram above 50% if needed and reduce both if above 70%. I capture around 100fps regularly with over 15,000 frames within a few minutes capture time. So lots of data to choose from to process.
Not sure about mono rgb, i do osc. But dont you need to refocus for each filter even in rgb?
Derotation with winjupos is technically always useful but it doesnt fix everything. I'd say 3min is your capture time limit from start to finish for data to make one photo. So if you can capture rgb with mono within 3min thats best, not 3min per filter unless you want a mono only shot with the contrast one particular filter gives. So go back to my first suggestion on capturing as many frames cropped within the timeframe.
3min is a good guide, not an exact rule. On mars 5min is ok usually when its not so close to us but for jupiter 3min is about it since there is so much surface detail going on its quick to blur. There is information online about working out the precise limit for your gear and target on a given night which is worth slogging through if you are measuring surface features but for most of us 3min is good. I find by sticking to that limit for all the big bright planets I get a 20-30gb ser file for each capture and I dont have to tweak settings for different targets, plus its easy to take a few such captures back to back for planets with less features and combine all the data if i want.
Not sure about mono rgb, i do osc. But dont you need to refocus for each filter even in rgb?
True, you do, but that can be sorted out ahead of time and automated so it doesn't involve a slew to a bright star, bahtinov mask, etc.
I'm thinking the best strategy for mono would be 1 min per filter to keep things under 3 mins, then keep repeating that run in 3 minute blocks hoping to 'get lucky' (insert Daft Punk song here).
Final frames from adjacent blocks might de-rotate in Winjupos too, if, say green is better in block 1, but red is better in block 2, maybe?
Just a thought. I'll try it myself next time I get a chance and post results if I don't manage to muck it up completely. :-)
Jupiter and Saturn are good.
