Planetary Session South Coast

[Startrek]

Last night started out clear but then continuous patchy cloud moved in so that put an end some DSO imaging. Set up for some basic planetary imaging for a couple of hours with my basic planetary rig
Seeing conditions average


8”f5 GSO newt
EQ6-R pro mount
Canon 600D
Televue Powermates ( 2x , 4x and 5x )
Tracking and Goto EQMOD and Ascom Stellarium
Captured with BYEOS Planetary Mode
ISO 800
Lunar 1000 x Avi frames ( sampling 30 fps)
Jupiter and Saturn 1500 x Avi video frames ( sampling 30 FPS )
Stacked in Autostakkert 3 ( ranging from a 30% to 75% stack )
Processed in Registax 6

Comments welcome
Thanks

[Tulloch]

Very nice images, especially the lunar shots.

You can capture the planets for longer to reduce the noise further, up to 3 minutes for Jupiter, 5-6 min for Saturn which should get you up to around 5000 frames for stacking.

[Saturnine]

That night wasn't too bad, you managed some nice images, especially like the Appenines Archimedes one.
Was out doing almost the same thing Tuesday night, at least Jupiter was a bit steadier than it was for the Sunday / Monday show, when it was a quivering mess.

[multiweb]

Very tidy pictures. Love the moon shots. :thumbsup:

[Dennis]

Lovely series Martin.

Cheers

Dennis

[Startrek]

Andrew
Thanks very much
Jerry Lodriguss ( DSLR Planetary Guru ) advises maximum recording time at 0.5 arcsec of detail smearing due to rotation is as follows -
Saturn 5 minutes
Jupiter 2 minutes
Based on my recording frame rate of 30fps that means -
Saturn 30 x 300 sec = 9000 frames
Jupiter 30 x 120 sec = 3600 frames
At those recording periods the planets especially Jupiter would have drifted a fair way from centre of FOV
I’ll take your suggestion and try longer captures day -
Saturn 3500 frames
Jupiter 2500 frames
My DSLR is only 8 bit on video with live view resolution of 1024 x 680
At the end of the day atmospheric seeing and lucky imaging governs how much I can improve the quality of my images with my basic rig
Cheers
Martin

[Startrek]

Jeff,
Thanks
Yeh every nights difference down here
Just have to get out and try
Martin

[Startrek]

Thanks Marc
Planetary imaging is a lot of fun plus your not imaging for 4 to 8 hours like DSO imaging. It’s a short capture time in comparison
Martin

[Startrek]

Dennis
Thanks
Appreciate it
Martin

[Tulloch]

Honestly, 3 minutes on Jupiter is fine, it's what I (and a lot of others with bigger scopes than me) do all the time, and I don't see any blurring due to planetary or field rotation with my Celestron C9.25" on an Evolution (alt/az) mount.

I did a study on my 700D vs ASI224MC about the number of frames you need to stack to remove the noise and posted the results here, you really need to stack about 2000 frames to reduce the noise to acceptable levels.
https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/674997-canon-700d-vs-asi-224mc-on-6-sct-test-three/

If you are still not convinced, just capture the video for 3 minutes and stack a smaller section of it in AS!3 using the "Limit frames" tool and compare the two, stacking more frames means you can sharpen more without introducing more noise.

Andrew

[multiweb]

With my ASI462MC I get 5000 frames in 1min :)

[Startrek]

Yeh DSLR’s struggle ( 1800 frames per minute ) but a snack to use on BYEOS
I’m not a serious planetary imager but really enjoy it for hand full of weeks a year and have fun that’s the main thing

Andrew I’ll try 2000 to 2500 frames and see how it comes out

Thanks Gents