Planetary video length

[Hemi]

I’ve been reading about planetary imaging, and the recommended length of video for the main 3 tends to vary from site to site.

For example many sites say 3x1 minute videos for Jupiter, max.

I have videos of anywhere from 1-10 minutes for Jupiter and Saturn.
Would it be reasonable to just chop a 10m video into appropriate segments for the desired amount of data?

What are you guys/gals doing?

Thanks

Hemi

[multiweb]

I think it depends on the level of details you are after and the seeing conditions at the time you image. I've read as low as 1min for jupiter for very fine details at very high magnification. In practice I use 3min top for Jupiter, 5min on Saturn and 5min on Mars. AS!3 will derotate that alright. I haven't used winjupos yet. You can shoot one continuous video if you want then process parts of it or shoot multiple separate videos. I do separate. My thinking is that if the camera crashes or disconnect you don't lose the lot.

[rustigsmed]

yes -my experience is pretty similar to Marcs. i aim for about 1 min per channel on Jupiter at high frame rate. note that i have to manually change the rgb filters (via a filter slide). if i had a osc i would probably go a bit longer like 90secs.

winjupos does a pretty good job at de-rotating jupiter but it does take a bit of finesse. (also very handy for those with Alt-Azi mounts/goto dobs and mono/filter imaging).

saturn i go a bit longer up to 2min, Mars i think you can go as long as you like with it's relatively slow rotation period (with pc storage being your limit).

[Hemi]

Thanks Marc and Russell,

I’ll try chopping my videos into 1-2m segments.

This one was a Single 3m video that I put thru pipp, AS3 and RegiStax and PS. Keep in mind that I’m quite clueless in regards to post processing.

Cheers

Hemi

[Saturnine]

Hi Hemi

Just a slightly different method, as I use a OSC , an ZWO290mc,
What my system is , set a number of frames per video which at the moment is 10,000 frames. At a frame rate of approx 100 fr/sec for Jupiter, that equates to a 100 sec (1'40") length for each video, not enough to be affected by the planets rotational speed.
My reasoning is that I couldn't be bothered with taking longer vids as the file sizes can quickly fill the hard drive and and there is no worries about having to de-rotate with Winjupos or whatever. Just trying to keep it simple.

[Hemi]

Thanks Jeff,

I’m using a 294 (one shot color as well) with the ROI set to 800x600. I use sharpcap and I don’t quite get to 100fps, before it starts dropping frames. I have a speedy nuc pc at the mount with a fast SSD and usb 3.

[N1]

FWIW, I've been finding the optimal number of frames highly dependent on the seeing conditions on the particular night. If I want to end up with a decent number (say 600-1,200) of stackable frames after quality based elimination, then a night of good seeing will allow these to be captured in significantly shorter time than when the seeing is poor. As far as time goes, that depends mostly on the target itself, with Jupiter probably allowing the shortest windows of all planets, followed perhaps by Mars.

[Tulloch]

With my C9.25 and ASI224MC, my normal process is to image Jupiter for 3 minutes at 150 fps (so 27000 frames) from which I normally use stacks of 3000, 5000 or 7500 frames (seeing dependent). For Saturn I use 5 minutes at 100 fps (so 30000 frames total), and stack 5000 to 10000 frames. For Mars I use 4 minutes at 250 fps (60000 frames) and stack 3000 - 5000. Neptune and Uranus I image for 5 minutes at 20 fps, normally stack about 50% of them.

I recently tried using WinJupos to derotate longer videos for Jupiter and Saturn, my latest effort was a 15 minute video on Saturn (see image section below). Since I'm on an alt/az mount I was able to use WJ to remove both field rotation and planetary rotation on the video, then stack and debayer in AS!3.

Don't be afraid to capture more frames, I store my videos on a 3TB external hard drive (about $100 at Officeworks) so I can always go back a reprocess data if I want :). AS!3 also has a great feature whereby you can just stack a smaller segment of the video stream, so capture for 10 minutes, stack the best 3 (as long as the 3 minutes are continuous).

[Hemi]

Thanks Mirko and Andrew.

Thats great info re AS3, I didn't know it could do that...will explore.
It will save me from chopping the videos up in a video editor.

Cheers

Hemi

[Tulloch]

Yes, it's the "Limit Frames" button next to the "Open" button on the main page. Emil talks about it when he was being interviewed about the release of AS!4, due soon.

https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/722214-autostakkert-4/?p=10413936