First Jupiter from a great night! 25/05/2006

[iceman (Mike)]

Hi all.

Here's the first avi from a great night last night. I started quite early, around 8:50pm and finished around 10:00pm when the seeing started to deteriorate.

In that time I captured 7 "normal size" avi's and a few (I think) at the large size with the extension tube. I'm not sure how many, because my tracking was not accurate at that stage, so I captured many small avi's and have to see how many I can join together.

For this shot, I captured at 5fps for 120 seconds, at 1/25s exposure. Gain was around 30% and gamma 50%.

Normal processing, split RGB, process each channel, 150 frames of each channel stacked, followed by LR 7x1.4 in AstraImage. Ganymede was aligned and stacked separately (each channel as well), and composited onto the final image in Photoshop.

Comments welcome

[davidpretorius]

you beauty!!!

detail on ganymede, I reckon your extension tube ones should be fine and awesome.

you will have to redefine "normal" size at f38.5 and small as f25.

thanks mate, I will get no work done at all now waiting on more goodies!

[iceman (Mike)]

Thanks Dave, I need to clean my CCD chip and fix up my tracking before I call the extension tube "normal" It's even more frustrating than usual at that image scale

Forgot to mention in my first post, I had the scope uncovered from around 7:00pm and the fan was running for a few hours. It helped bring the mirror temperature to within 0.7deg (ambient 9.1°).

[bird (Anthony Wesley)]

Nice work Mike, that's a great image.

Bird

[davidpretorius]

the best thing about all of this is that once the ccd is clean and an ir/uv filter over it, your equipment is as ready as it will ever be.

the cooling system and temp monitoring means that you are making the most of the time in the conditions you are faced with and getting the best data possible for those conditions and scope.

I get the feeling that this preparedness is what makes Damian Peach great. All the basics are ticked off, no shortcuts, and when the seeing turns 8.5/10, BANG, you are ready!!

Top stuff mike and as always, great processing. you have that colour balance now spot on!

By the way, the grumpy boss on this site wants some pics for the front page, make sure you read the guidelines, but you may be in with a chance! <--- gee i like this emoticon

[sheeny (Al)]

Well done Mike!

Question... what's the D=44.1^o?

Al.

[Robert_T]

Mike that's just ABsolutely Fabulous... I saw a nice break in the Jetstream around Sydney and wondered how you'd go. This is beautiful and that's the most Mar's-like Ganymede I've seen yet!!!

[Dennis]

A special image Mike - well done. You must be doubly pleased having got your dob back on track recently too.

Cheers

Dennis

[acropolite (Phil)]

Amazing shot Mike, among the best I've seen, Dave's right, most of the work is in the preparation.

[iceman (Mike)]

Many thanks guys.. the good news is, the avi I just processed is even better! I've never captured such fine detail in the belts before. I'm blown away by it. Hope to post it soon.

I am very pleased to get the image in great seeing, as I missed the opportunity 2 weeks ago when my platform broke. I still had to battle it last night, there were many missed avi's because the planet would just wizz off the screen when it had a bad patch of the tracking. Still some work to do.

Al, the 44.1° is the angular diameter of Jupiter from Earth. Oh, of course I meant 44.1" (seconds).

Thanks for pointing out my error.

[sheeny (Al)]

Aah! That's makes sense, now!

Al.

[Lester]

Excellent shot Mike,

Heaps of detail.

[asimov (John)]

Great capture Mike.

Your processing abilities are second to none. Colour/balance/contrast/etc spot on the money. And detail on Ganymede sticks out like a dogs hind leg!

YEEEE-HAAAA!!

[iceman (Mike)]

Thanks guys.

The final washup from last night is here:

http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/s...ad.php?t=10273