Jupiter & Moons from 1 Feb 2025

[Dekker]

Hi All,


I captured Jupiter and the 4 big moons on 1st Feb 2025. Equipment was:
Skywatcher 200PDS
Televue 3x Barlow
Player-1 Ceres C IMX224C camera


Stacked using my own software, currently using 100% of the ~2800 frames. I need to implement some sort of quality selection criteria to drop the blurry frames.
Passed it through an unsharp mask in GIMP, then stretched the histogram out for the moons so that they were similar brightness to Jupiter.

[Leo.G]

That's lovely Derrick and so much work to include the moons in the image.

It's so hard explaining to non astronomy type people that the only way to capture the reflected light from the moons is to overexpose the planets and cut the over exposed planet out and replace it with a correctly exposed image. Or maybe you did it through your stacking process, I'm not smart enough to do that and I do it the other way?
Very nice job, I know how much work is involved!


Not a criticism but there is a darker ring visible around Jupiter. What I tend to do is use the lasso tool in photoshop the match the diameter of the planet and then take an eye dropper sample from the background where the moons is and heal or whatever it's called. In me saying what I do, again, I'm too stupid so my son does a great job for me in less time than it takes me to even think about it.

[Dekker]

Thanks Leo!


In this case, the stacked image is purely from the one exposure time where Jupiter is not overexposed. The stacking process reduces the signal to noise ratio on the moons sufficiently to be able to just stretch the histogram out on them and not be left with a noisy mess.



The darker ring around Jupiter that you spotted is the border of where I applied the histogram stretch. I can see now that it would be neater to just stretch the moons themselves out and not "everything except Jupiter". Thank you for the feedback.

[Leo.G]

I've not stacked a lot of Jupiter images myself, stacked them but not a great deal of frames and I think last time they were shots done with my old D80 DSLR. Having gear which really only gave a smaller dot as the primary planet (8" reflector without Barlow) I didn't get great results, not terrible but not great either.
I now have a 5 times Powermate I haven't gotten to try yet (and won't for a while, I broke 4 bones in my left foot last night).
I won't ask what stacking software you used, I saw it mentioned in the main post, I'll read it again, stacking and having the moons visible without the need for extreme overexposure of the planets interests me considerably. Thank you!
Actually I think last time I tried to image Jupiter I was using my RC8 and I struggled to get focus and saw mention the central obstruction makes the scope not great for planets but it could have been poor seeing or poor seeing (bad eyesight).

[Dekker]

I'm sorry to hear about your foot, hopefully once you heal up you can try out the 5x powermate... I hear good things about them.


Also, switching to a dedicated planetary camera will give you much smaller pixels than the D80, and allow you to capture as many frames as your hard drive will allow, so you can be much more selective about the frames that go into the stack.


To create the stacked image, I used my own software developed in C++. This is something that I started a couple of years ago after trying, and not being satisfied with, SharpCap and the ZWO capture software (can't remember what it's called). It also serves as a framework for me to test out various image processing techniques.


It is very much experimental software that I work on in my (limited) spare time, and only supports stacking of images that have been captured in its own internal format. It also only supports capture from ZWO and Player-1 colour cameras (i.e. the cameras I own). Given these limitations, if you are still interested, send me a private message.

[Leo.G]

Thanks Derrick!
X-ray today,4 toes with multiple fractures in left foot, I kicked something hard, not intentionally, tripped over something heavy and solid with bare feet. I may go get a boot next week,I was supposed to wait in emergency for heaven knows how long (the lady told me to see my own doctor) today but I had to go get food and stuff and didn't bother, too busy at the moment (and a total idiot).


I have seen some amazing images specifically of Jupiter taken by other members here with the same level of equipment I have and the 5 times powermate. Great results.

My son was writing me software to process in C++, he's amazing with any language but he got distracted and I don't know where he got to, He was also going to do a tracking program.
Respect for your abilities, I learnt Basic and hated it and never went beyond there.

[Dave882]

Well I have to say I’m impressed by your ability to create a functioning program to process your images. I’m way too dumb for that - but I have found the ASICAP software for capture and the ol’ faithful Autostakkert4 & Registax6 combo for processing to work well for me.
Your result is quite reasonable and I look forward to more images from your setup. Well done

[Dekker]

Thanks David, I appreciate the encouragement.


It may seem like I'm wasting my time re-inventing the wheel when proven software already exists, but this is what I have to do so I can test out my own image processing ideas.


I'm still catching up on the stacking side of things, but I've made fair progress in the last few months, and I'm nowhere near done yet.