Back from Qld, with pictures

[bird]

I got back yesterday afternoon from a great time in Queensland, part holiday and part imaging fieldtrip :-)

The main target for the trip was saturn, which transits at a lowly 33 degrees from canberra, but from where we were staying in Rockhampton it reached 45 degrees - enough for me to have a go at it!

Leisa & I stayed on a farm called Henderson Park - I can thoroughly reccommend it to anyone that wants to experience frogs, echidnas, snakes, gekkos, birds, etc etc in the wild.

For most of the 2 weeks we were there, the skies were clear but the wind was blowing from the east. I found a couple of nights when the wind dropped, and one of these (17th April) was what I would call a "hubble night", when for the first time I really felt that I was at the limit of what my camera could resolve.

On Jupiter that night, not only were the small white storms in the polar region clearly defined, I could see details *inside* them, live on the laptop screen. That's a first for me...

So, onto some of the images. I'm still processing them up but here are three of the best (so far) from the bunch.

All images were taken with the following equipment:

10" f/6 newtonian, Primary by Mark Suchting of Berowra (Deep Sky Optics)
- 4x TV Powermate
- TruTek filter wheel
- Astronomik RGBI filters
- fire-i modded camera @ 25fps
- Losmandy G-11 mount
- Linux + coriander for capturing, Registax, Astra-Image, and the GIMP for processing, plus some custom s/ware for centering.

regards, Bird

[bird]

Next image...

[bird]

Now (finally) for a saturn, my first of this season and with saturn vanishing into the west probably my last until the end of the year.

This time I imaged at 12.5fps, and captured 5000 frames of red and green, and 10,000 frames of blue. The ccd is not very sensitive in blue, so the signal-to-noise is quite low. I compensated a bit by grabbing 2x as many frames.

The capture run went for more than 25 minutes, so no chance of getting any cloud detail, but lots of nice bands etc.

I think the CD is too wide in this image, probably caused by overprocessing, but at an altitude of 45 degrees that was the best I could manage.

Bird

[bird]

One more Jupiter, this one processed differently to the others, using the FFT filter in Astra Image to bring out detail in addition to the usual gamma adjust, LR deconvolution etc.

regards, Bird

[iceman]

Welcome back Anthony, we missed you :) although if you come back with images like that everytime, go away again! :P

They are fantastic, the last one is the best for mine, the level of detail if superb.. the rifts on the NEB and the detail in the GRS is stunning!

You've got to send those into the mags..

[gbeal]

Oh darn, that has just raised the bar, considerably. Why I even bother Bird is beyond me. They are simply stunning, congratulations.

[iceman]

oh btw did you take enough images for an animation? An animated gif at that detail would be awesome.. you would probably even see the GRS spinning.. :clap:

[bird]

The images you see here are pretty much the first & last from the session, so the GRS was only just coming into view when I ran out of good viewing. BUT I have enough data for an animation of about 20 frames, so you never know...

The temperature profile in Rockhampton was much more conducive to this kind of imaging that I find in Canberra. The sunset temp was about 25C and overnight minimum temp about 19C. My cooling gear had no problem keeping it all together. Compare that to current canberra climate - 20C at sunset and overnight low of 8C :-(

Of course the mozzies liked the conditions too. I think I personally fed every flying insect for miles around. They just couldnt resist the lure of a laptop screen. It was kinda amusing watching insects crawling around on the screen, drawn to the live video image of Jupiter. I had to keep swatting them out of the way to see what was going on.

regards, Bird

[[1ponders]]

Welcome back, bird. I was starting to suffer withdrawls. :) Now I get an overdose.

In a word -Stunning- Anthony. :eyepop: Gary I think I'll just join you on the sidelines and clap . :clap::clap::clap: Seriously brilliant.

Gee if I'd known you were coming up this way bird I would have crash tackled you at the highway and kidnapped you here for a few day for some capture and processing tutorials. :einstein: :P

[bird]

Maybe next time Paul :-) I went the inland way through Miles, Toowoomba etc. On the way back I only had a couple of days to get home so I drove about 900km per day :-)

Next time I'll try and allow a bit more time at the end for visiting.

cheers, Bird

[[1ponders]]

You would have had some lovely dark skies out Miles way. I used to go out with a girl from Drillham (I think that's how its spelt) near Miles. Blackest skies after the northern end of Fraser Island that I can remember. Not much humidity either out there.

[Exfso]

Damn they are absolutely awesome. I would donate my "left one" to get that sort of detail..

I reckon he has a direct link to Hubble..

:abduct:

[ving]

I would donate your left one too exfso :P

welcome back bird. like to make a grand entry dont you? ;)

[toetoe]

Very very nice pictures, even my wife liked them. :)

[Striker]

Very very nice Anthony......about time you come back....

I dont remember authorising any forum away time for you...

[xstream]

Well done Bird........awesome detail.:thumbsup:

[rumples riot]

What can I say, my attempts of late have been pretty good, but pale into insignificance compared to these lovely shots. Anthony you are the undisputed master. I have seen shots from guys in Hong kong, America, Philipines, and many other countries; no one produces the same quality shots that you do. I am glad to say that you are an Aussie.

Now its time for you to help me get to this level.:P

Congrats, nice to have you back.:cheers:

[seeker372011]

Wow! superb...and thanks for sharing these wonderful images

Any blood donation to the mozzies was well worth it

[Comet Hunter]

Thats some nice shots you've got there Bird! The detail in the GRS of the last shot is amazing.

[bird]

Here's a pic I snapped of the scope setup outside the cabin where we were staying. You can find more of Leisas pictures at http://www.acquerra.com.au/personal/phoenix/

regards, Bird

[rowena]

Bird,

did you happen to go up to Mt Archer in Rockhampton?
I lived in rocky for about 5 years while going to uni there.

if you go up to MT Archer when a shuttle launch is on, you can actually see the shuttle going up (as long as its on the right inclination at lift off). I have seen the SRB's seperate from the shuttle. All you need is binoculars or a 300Mm plus lens on a camera.

I can hear everyone say yeah right the shuttle is the other side of the world.. well basically the reflection off the atmosphere bounces so that you can see it on the western horizon about 1-5 degrees above the horizon. it is so thrilling to watch one!!!


rowena

[videoguy]

Bird, Stunning images...!!

[h0ughy]

why is it everyone else can get stunning, vivid ,wonderful pictures and all I get is a blob. They are wonderful pictures

[rumples riot]

I feel your pain H0ughy. I wish I could get mine like that also.

[videoguy]

Houghy

Don't worry about only achieving blobs... I was the blob master for many years when starting out with film photography in particular and still get shockers today. The most important thing is the act of getting out there and having a go. There are many factors involved, the most basic of which are good clean optics, suitable focal length to capture the maximum detail your telescope and camera can achieve, good exposure settings, image processing awareness but most of all, excellent seeing (in the hands of the gods unfortunately) that allows you to capture lots of sharp moments (the more the better).

As far as the planets are concerned my mantra has never been to obtain the best pictures (although this is of cousrse a huge bonus if the gods allow..) but most importantly capturing what's going on with the planet. In the case of Jupiter and Mars for example there are a lot of fascinating meteorological changes that can be observed with the simplest camera so long as you are prepared to get out under the stars at every opportunity and spend the time working with the images to obtain the best results. Those blobs (so long as they're not completely awful) often contain a lot of information but you need to spend the time learning how to extract it.

Thanks to the new age of digital imaging, many of the most basic pictures I've seen (so far at least) here on this forum far exceed what the worlds best amateurs were achieving with film photography some years ago.

But...sometimes I feel we get too caught up in producing wonderful images rather than appreciating the what it is we're seeing and why it's happening.

Keep at it. Every image/photo is a unique record of a moment in time.

[bird]

Rats - I was there a month too early!! :-(

Yes, we went up Mt Archer. Was a rainy day though, so we didnt walk too far. The view down both sides is very good though...

Bird

[h0ughy]

thanks for the encouragement fellas.

[iceman]

Leisa has some excellent shots there Anthony.. looks like you guys had a great time, and from your shots, a very constructive holiday.

So when are you moving there? :D

[ErwinvdVelden]

Hi Anthony,

It looks like you had a ball of a time up there, with some excellent results. We had around that date also a decent seeing here in Brisbane.
I find that very elongated oval very fascinating, and imaged it myself also a few times. Can anyone shed some light on it's nature?

Can you give me also an indication of the costs and the transmission rate of the fire wire camera? Currently I shoot at 10 fps on Jupiter with out much image degradation, but it is still USB1.1 @ 12Mbit/s.
It would be nice to upgrade to 25 fps without bus compression.

Cheers,

[bird]

Erwin,

The camera is a Unibrain fire-i mono camera, currently on the unibrain website they cost US$154. I modded mine with a simple alteration to the board so that the shutter is always open - i.e. at 25fps I get exposure times of 40ms. Normally the onboard controller has a max exposure time of 30ms, not long enough for my 10" mirror.

This camera has worked pretty well for me, but it has a few problems, and I'll be upgrading to something better in the near future so I don't know whether I should reccommend it to you or not... I've had mine for about 15 months, and I know that the newer fire-i cameras are better than my version, but you might want to hold off for a couple of months until I get to try out a new camera in case it's a lot better.

firewire is 400Mbit, so no image compression at all. I use a mono camera + filters, so I get full res in each colour and no hassles fiddling with colour balance etc in the camera.

regards, Bird

[iceman]

Are you going to have a crack at mercury, Anthony?

[bird]

I thought about it, but I can't see either west or east from my backyard, which makes it kinda tough. I've got a chunk of work-related stuff waiting for me to do so I might be just reprocessing the holiday pics for a while...

cheers, Bird

[Exfso]

Bird, I have an Orange Micro I-Bot firewire webcam, any reason why it should not be useful over the Toucam2 mate.

http://www.orangemicro.com/ibot.html

Just your thoughts..

Peter

[bird]

Peter, The trick will be finding out what CCD is in that camera...

But what the heck, hook it up to your scope and see what happens. If it's sensitive enough etc then you should see an improvement in image quality.

Bird

[ErwinvdVelden]

Thanks Anthony for your information. I'll think I'm going to wait until a USB2 or firewire webcam with a chip sensitive enough for planetary imaging.

I find it a bit amazing that I'm using the same camera for 3 1/2 years and still making satisfying images. It looks almost as if technology doesn't go as fast as it used to be.

Cheers,