How long do you capture a planet for?

[Stonius]

I've seen some people mention that they'll record 'half an hour of Mars' for example.


I wonder what people are hoping to do with these amounts of data?


Is it an attempt to capture time-lapse animations, or just continuously capturing in the hope of catching a break in the seeing? In either case, that's a lot of data to process, isn't it? I get it's necesarry for a timelapse, but for a single image it seems like a lot.



I tend to 'have a few goes' and get a few sets of data, then move on unless conditions change markedly, but maybe I could learn from others here?


Markus

[Tulloch]

The seeing can (and does) change quite rapidly, so taking a number of captures (or one very long capture that can be split up into parts) is useful for getting the "best" result.

On Mars, it's generally recommended to limit the amount of time for each video to around 6 minutes at opposition to avoid any blurring caused by rotation of the planet. For Jupiter the recommended time is 3 minutes, Saturn is also 6 minutes.

As you say, another advantage of taking multiple captures is you can turn them into an animation of the rotating planet, for example here.
https://www.cloudynights.com/gallery/image/165130-mars-animation-17-nov-2022/

Andrew

[Paul Haese]

Extended runs are generally derotated using WinJupos. This is why you might see an image with 20 minutes posted. That might be 6 x 3 minutes captures on Jupiter or 3 x 6 minutes on Mars. Each data set is stacked first, then it derotated and then final processing can occur.

An advantage of doing this is that you get better definition detail near the limbs and less smearing.

Winjupos processing has definitely changed the outcomes of a lot of planetary images in the last 12 years. Seeing is still king but average seeing can produce very good images now using WinJupos.

[denodan]

I tend for example take a 3 min video of Jupiter, and use autostakett, and Registax, and gimp for final process. Seen winjupos and looks to complex, even after seeing videos on how to use it. Although this year has been bad, only got one decent image this year and not as good as last year eith amazing seeing, as this shot is from a 3 min video, with my SCT 9.25