Jupiter 19/03/05

[westsky]

Hi Got this last night through the cloudy Brisbane sky.
250 images stacked Meade LPI,C11@ F20

David.

[bird]

Nice image David. It looks very "natural" - like you'd see through the eyepiece.

regards, Bird

[westsky]

Thanks Bird , I,m still trying to get them as good as you get, long way to go I think.

David.

[[1ponders]]

Good shot for the LPI stacking David, its a pretty steep learning curve I've found. What sort of processing have you done with it? PS Etc.

Have you tried to use the LPI just as an avi capture device, rather than using Autostar Suite to capture and stack? I've found K3ccdtools in conjunction with WcCtrl works well with itfor capture and Reg3 for stacking and processing (all free, though K3 does need a renewed key every couple of months). K3 does a fairly good job of stacking and processing them but I've not found it as user friendly as Reg3. But then maybe that's just me. I've consistently captured and processed better imagaes that way than using the default Autostar suite capture and stack. Plus its a lot quicker. How long did it take you to collect your 250 images and did you save every image or did you allow Autostar to select the images and autostack them?

[westsky]

Hi Paul,
I let autostar do its thing and this image is only darkened slightly in PS, basicly this is how I got it from the LPI.
I have no problem getting good images from the LPI the problems start when I try to do the processing as I have to do with K3 :)
I had the quality set at 70% fairly high but I get better results that way, total time was around 5 or 6 mins I think, sorry I cant remember I did 40 or so images like this last night, finished at 4am
I have the start of the GRS from the right edge to the left side, I was thinking of trying an animation but that means a bigger learning curve and I dont know that I am up to it :)
I will have a look at the other images I did last night and have a play to see what else I can bring out.

David.

[westsky]

Another one taken before the last, similar specs, around 200 images stacked @F20 with a C11.
Applied a unsharp mask using PS first time I have tried this, it does seem to bring some finer detail out.

cheers
David

[iceman]

They are really nice shots David! As anthony said, very natural looking. I really like the colour.

I'd be very interested in seeing a stack of bmp's produced by your LPI, and stacked/wavelets done in registax.. I think you could pull more detail.

Very nice job!

[westsky]

Hi mike I did these all in BMP, I can send you the original if you like I think they are around 900kb,but these are allready stacked did you mean single BMP's?
I can try again tonight if the clouds stay away.

David.

[iceman]

I would've liked to have seen the original BMP's (pre-stacking), but whatever you've got would be nice to have a look at, if you can upload it somewhere, or email it to me?

[westsky]

Mike, I had a play in Registax 2 here is the result, proberbly overdone but I see what you mean about getting more from the image.I will email you the BMP of this image.thanks

David

[iceman]

That is really, really nice David! A superb shot, one of the best Jupiter's posted here. the colour and detail is so natural.

With your C11, and a 3 or 4x barlow, you will get fantastic image scale! Was that with a 2x barlow?

What's the FL of your C11?

[westsky]

Thanks Mike, the C11 is F10 so a 2x barlow was used, I think using a 3x would just about be the limit getting focus at F30 would be tough.
I have sent you the BMP of this image. if anybody else wants it let me know, i,m only too happy to see what others can do as long as you tell me how to do it :-))

David

[Comet Hunter]

I agree, very natural looking well done David!

[Striker]

Very Nice David......keep it up.....

[iceman]

Hey Dave.

I couldn't do any better than you've already done, possibly because autostar suite already has done most of it.. would love to work off the original bmp's, but alas maybe next time.

Anyway here's my attempt of processing your stacked bmp.. It's very similar to yours, i just pushed the wavelets a little bit more to bring out more detail, but to purists yours is probably more pleasing to the eye, more natural looking. In the end it's personal preference.

The image also stands up to resizing very well, there's a 20% upsized version to compare.

Excellent image - you should be really proud.

[Mick]

Amazing images David, well done. What time did you take the images, Jupiter must have been almost overhead?

[astro_south]

That's awesome mate. I much prefer these softer (in colour saturation) images over the deeper colour images. It really does look like the image at the eyepiece. As others have said - very natural looking.

Love your work!!

[westsky]

Mike you have brought out some more detail that's interesting, so it wasn't a wasted effort, as you say if I had the single BMP's it would have given you more to work with, well I have 220 BMP's taken tonight
I will put them up onto a web site for you to D/L and have a play.
I have waited more than 6 months to get a Jupiter shot like this I got the LPI late last year and Jupiter was already well in the west really too far to get good images so it's been a long time coming, I still have another 20 or so similar shots to process, all in all I can say I had a good night :-))

Thanks Mick, I started around 10pm and finished about 4am, most of the images where taken between 12.00 and 4am clouds where a bother at times.
Tonight the clouds got me again, I did some of saturn early on while waiting for Jupiter to rise , got a few images of the GRS transit and one of the moons, then the clouds rolled in oh well thats life :-))

Thanks Andrew, the interesting thing was a lot of the shots where done through thin haze or cloud and the seeing was great, like the night at your place looking at Saturn in the big dob ,through the thin haze that time.Tonight was clear early and the images I got where not as good.

David.

[Starkler]

Are you going to give the first image the same treatment?
Id love to see the result.

[westsky]

Hi Geoff, yes when I get around to it :-))
I have a few very good quality shots and I have to go through them and see what I can do with them. so in the next couple of days I will try to finish them.
What I should do is farm them all out to the members and see what results we get, its good practise, anybody want an image to play with?
pm me if you do.

David