Jupiter 23 dec o4

[rumples riot]

Hi all thought I would get my sorry behind out of bed early today and get the big fella.

images taken on LPI, stacked and wavelet in registax2 and then processed in photoshop and finally filtered in Noiseware.

First image taken at F10

Comments welcome

[rumples riot]

This shot is at F20. Only had a few minutes of night left once I worked out how to get the scope focused with 2x barlow in place. And could not get many shots, only 8. If I had got to 10 they LPI software would have selected sharper shots. Oh well, tomorrow. Sorry about the planet not being centred.

On the f10 shot you can see two of Jupiters moons down and to the left of the planet.

[rumples riot]

BTW, this is my second attempt at getting Jupiter, last time was in may this year and I had not used the LPI much at that stage.

Pretty happy with this progress.:cool:

[iceman]

Great work Paul! Very nice shots!

[rumples riot]

The f20 shot is way out of focus, but before I started it looked really blurred, so I was happy enough with it to post it. This is what it looked like before I started.

[iceman]

The focus does look a bit soft, did you use a hartman mask and focus on a star first?

It could just be bad seeing too..

[ving]

nice colours and banding! :)

[rumples riot]

I used the hartman mask on the f10 shot, but day light was rapidly approaching and Jupiter was getting very dim when I tried with the 2x barlow. I got it focused again, but then started taking shots. The LPI software has a setting for rejection of images under a certain level. I had this set to 65% and so it never got above 9 shots. When the percentage of a shot gets over the set limit, the software records it. It takes about 10 shots for the softeware to get a baseline to work from and then the shots just get better if the seeing remains above the 65% level. You can actually set it to what ever level you want, just that if you go too low, the shots will include those moments of bad seeing. So in this case I just ran out of time. Still I am really pleased; that is my first f20 shot and I will practice again tomorrow morning. I want to use the 3x televue that I bought 2 weeks ago and that will give me f30. Double that size again. Need very good seeing for that though.

Paul

[iceman]

You might need a flip-mirror or off-axis guider to get the planet into the FOV at that magnification.. or a very accurate finder, like me :)

[rumples riot]

I got the goto, but was in such a rush to get those images and being dog tired (don't know how you do it every couple of days) that I slipped with the centering. Next will be better.

[rumples riot]

Did a crop of the top shot and then blew it up a bit, just to show a bit more of the detail.

[gbeal]

Hi Paul,
now I am jealous, we have had nothing but cloud and rain.
Good stuff, and progressing well. Do you use the auto white balance, and then uncheck it? If not try that.
Focus, and seeing is where it is all happening. I simply eyeball it, but if the mask makes it easier then by all means. Bottom line. Shoot more, which is easy for me to say.
Gary

[iceman]

Good work Paul, you could try the "resample" method in registax which is supposedly better than just blowing it up in PS.

I've done a 1.3x or 1.5x resample using the "mitchell" method, and chris_go from CN does it on his images too.. If the quality of the original is good then it can usually work quite well without losing too much quality.

[ving]

just noticed a nice lil' storm on the top band on the right hand side :D

well captured:astron: