On the planetary imaging learning curve…

[Dave882]

With quite a bit of extra time during the Sydney lockdown I thought I’d have a go at some planetary imaging for the first time. It’s a bit of a steep learning curve but great that it’s achievable to get a half decent result from light polluted suburbs.

Here’s my 2nd attempt at processing a shot of Jupiter (first with GRS). Feels like I spent all day shifting settings and wavelet sliders!!

10” LX50 on a CGEM
ASI224mc captured with ASIAIR Pro
2.5x powermate (I have a 1.8x Barlow maybe that would be better?)
ZWO ADC (pretty sure it wasn’t calibrated properly but reckon I worked it out now)

1.23min @51fps
640x480 - RAW8
10ms exposures @ 275gain

AS!3 - 10% of 4300frames (tried 20% and wasn’t quite as good)
1.5 drizzle
Registax6 for wavelet processing
PSexpress for crop and bit of contrast

Still trying to tease out the fine detail so would appreciate any comment or suggestions.

Anyone used WinJupos derotate longer videos and increase SNR?

Thanks for looking
Dave

[Retrograde]

Looks good Dave. Nicely done.

[Dave882]

Thanks Pete. Been trying to learn as much as possible from the previous IIS posts to try and get the right settings and processing. Honestly I reckon it’s saved me months. There’s so much gold on the forums!!

[Camelopardalis]

Nice one Dave :thumbsup:

I would try the 1.8x Barlow for sure as that puts it in the sweet spot for the camera.

A couple of tips... keep your ROI as small as you can as it means you can kick up the fps in the spirit of being "lucky". With Jupiter it rotates so quickly at this kind of focal length that you want to run the fps as fast as you dare to increase the odds of getting enough good frames from a single stack.

Try dialling the blue channel back a bit - check your settings in the capture program for the R/G/B values. You can fix this is processing just by applying a small curves adjustment in the editor of your choice, so that the white zones on the planet are more neutral white. You can also get good results from hitting the RGB balance button in Registax 6.

I wouldn't worry too much with the ADC this year, it's mostly useful when the altitude of the planet is getting down to around 50 degrees, whereas this year Jupiter/Saturn are much higher (at least, up here in QLD :lol:)

Finally, don't forget that the seeing can be fickle. Not only can it fluctuate before our eyes in fractions of a second, but what you get one night - or even minute - can be vastly different from the previous/next. Sometimes we get lucky :D