My best image of Saturn so far. 01-08-2020 at 9:30pm.
Meade LX90 ACF 8" F10 SCT at prime focus, ZWO ASI 183mm Pro with Svbony LRGB filters, 32,000 frames stacked. Processed in PIPP, Registax and Photoshop for levels.
I notice you didn't mention AS!3 in your software list, you don't use it? From what I've heard, it is far superior than Registax for stacking. Also, no Barlow?
Hi Andrew, no I'm still trying to figure out how to use Autostack program thingy.
No, no barlow. The ASI 183 has tiny 2.4um pixels and it helps keep the frame rate up if I don't use one.
IMHO, using AS!3 is the easiest part of this whole AP process. Just drag the video onto the screen, click the "Analyse" button, auto choose the alignment points with a size that gives me around 100 APs, stack 3000, 5000, 7500 and 10000 frames, make sure 3x drizzle is on and press "Go". Easy . Attached is a screen grab of my settings FYI.
Understand with the 183's pixel size, optimal focal ratio for that camera is around f/12, so all good
Drizzle magnifies the image by shifting pixels a little bit left/right/up/down to eek the last little bits of resolution out of the image. It increases the size of the image which I think makes it easier to post-process as you can see the effects more easily. After I do all the adjustments I want, I can then reduce the size back down (usually Jupiter I reduce by a third to get the planet size back down to captured size, Saturn I reduce by a half to show it at 50% larger than captured, Mars I show at 2x etc). Here is a long description of the process, all I know about it is that it can potentially improve my images (even if it's just a little bit, that's enough for me). http://www.stark-labs.com/craig/reso...rizzle_API.pdf
It takes longer, both to stack and sharpen, but I have time ...
Gotta take a lot of frames, for Jupiter I image for 3 minutes at 150 fps (=27000 frames), Saturn is 5 min at 100fps = 30000 frames. Cropped appropriately, each video is only about 4GB or so. The most recent images I took of Saturn and moons were 15GB each