Whoa! What a morning!! 14/01/05

[Comet Hunter]

Setup late arvo, messed around till about 11pm - Saturn hides behind next doors HUGE gum tree :fight: and Jupiter was still too low. Came back out around 2ish after Saturn had appeared on the other side of the gum tree + Jupiter more favourable hieght, ended up with these by sun rise.

First off the rank is Saturn. No processing except align and stack, taken around 2-3am sometime...
http://comethunter.com/images/130105saturn.jpg

Next is Jupiter, again no processing except algin and stack...
http://comethunter.com/images/130105jupiterg.jpg

Is that a hint of the GRS in the upper band on the left? Hope not, I spent about 1.5 hours takin an over exposed image every 5mins trying to record some piddly moons revolving around the planet when I could been concentrating on the GRS transiting!!! :doh: :lol:

Then we have Venus, with a bit of phase, aligned, stacked and brightness and contrast adjusted slightly to kill the glare....
http://comethunter.com/images/130105venus.jpg

Taken at dawn, around 5ish I'd say

And lastly Mercury, same as details as Venus.....
http://comethunter.com/images/130105merc.jpg

These are THE best images I've taken so far, all due to the help you guys give.... :clap: to you all

[iceman]

Great shots, i'll do some wavelet processing in them and see what I can do with them.

How come they're black and white? Doesn't the QC image in colour?

It also looks like Venus is overexposed - what settings on the capture did you use? You could try really low gain or a faster shutter speed to make it less bright and get the phase detail.

Very nice shots!

I tried to image Saturn last night but clouds ruined the fun.. this morning was clear but I was too tired to get up early again.

[Robby]

Great effort...
A planet quadruplet!!!... The Saturn is stunning. Did you have poorer seeing for Jupiter. I would have expected crisper detail considering the detail you have with Saturn.
Still great work. Getting good planet shots is one of the most challenging things in astrophotography. So many things count against you.. Seeing, collimation, Northern Dec etc etc! not to mention the Registax mission.
Cheers

[Comet Hunter]

Thanks Ice,

Yeah the QC does colour, think I need to up the saturation a bit - was at about 25-33% I think (really should start takin notes of these things), was afraid of washing the colours out with too much saturation. :confuse3:

Saturn and Jupiter were taken with very little gain, and just enough brightness to see an image on the screen, but once I starting takin the over exposed images to get Jupiters moons, for some reason the camera/software would lock up untill gain and/or brighness was increased again - so started to become a trade-off of high gain+brightness or nothing at all :sad:.

Edit: Thanks Robby

Ice, found the colour issue (I thought it was strange there wasn't much colour - jsut too tired to really notice :P) ...damn Registax didn't feel like processing in colour so it unclicked the 'colour processing' option :bashcomp: - I'll update with colour versions asap

[iceman]

Definitely up the saturation.. on the ToUcam I have it around 95%.

You'll have to try venus again from scratch with low gain and a higher shutter speed..

[iceman]

haha cool Andrew, np.

[gbeal]

Ice,
did you get that WebCam Control program to work?
I use it all the time now, although I have yet to commit the settings to "memory"
Gary

[iceman]

I haven't tried it yet Gary, thanks for reminding me.

[Comet Hunter]

ok, all shots are now colour enabled :cool3:

Robby, Jupiter was taken shortly after Saturn - within the hour for these particular shots I'd guess - conditions seemed to be the same throughout till early dawn.

Mike, yep will do re: retry Venus/Mercury - hadn't planned on bagging them but noticed they were up and I'd had plenty of Jupiter avi's by then. If'd I'd put abit more thought into the nights imaging I could've gotten Mars too :doh:. Though 4 out of 7 planets aint bad (Pluto's too dim to pick up so it doesn't count :P)

[Mick]

Excellent images.

[[1ponders]]

Four in one night is grand in anyones books Andrew. Good on you, and top marks for staying out that long :)

[rumples riot]

Nice one and a very busy night at that. Keep em coming. And yes that is the GRS, but I think in the NEB there is the shadow of a moon.

[cometcatcher]

Yes I was just about to say that looks like GRS on Jupiter also.

Nice pics. They would look even better with some wavelets.

[mch62]

Hey Comet hunter , your from Ipswich I'm from Lockyer valley we have Graeme from Laidley and there are a couple more out this way ---I think we have enough for our own Local Astro fest.

Mark

[iceman]

Hey Andrew..
Here's my quick attempt at processing using the wavelets..

Saturn:

[iceman]

And Jupiter:

[iceman]

Awesome shots, congrats!

PS; I couldn't do anything with Venus and Mercury.

[ving]

I never see more that 2 planets per night/session.. well done :)

[Mombat]

Nice job on the pics ice! The GRS is much more obvious!

4 planets in one night thats heaps good I got up at 3 this morning and decided that i can wait for a decent scope before i'm up at all hours

[iceman]

What scope do you have mombat?

[Mombat]

At the moment all i have is a no name 60mm refractor it's actually showed me some pretty good views of the moon Some of the brighter open clusters. But my granparents have a 80mm refractor from clestron. I could actually see the cassini division on saturn with it which was pretty cool

I don't really know what i should buy, but at home i have awesome dark skies. Problem is i'm moving down to melbourne to finish yr 11 and 12.

[Mombat]

I was thinking of getting maybe a 8" dob but i might wait till i'm back at home with more money to spend and better skies to view

[Comet Hunter]

Thanks for all the kind words guys :cheers:

Damn it, it wasn't suppose to be the GRS - all that time I wasted on the moons ggrr, just went through a few of my moon capturing attempts...rather ordinary..think it'll be a while before I try that again. :doh:

A Jupiter day is apparently 9.8 hrs so....say 10hrs, thats about 1am ish tonight local time it'll be out again...hhmmm :whistle: :camera: :D

Ice, how'd ya do that!! :eyepop: details my good friend! :D This is the best avi I've taken so I'll be working on it over and over for awhile, hopefully manage something similar to your results. The avi was taken at 5am using the 'Daylight' White balance option, shutter would've been either 1/15 or 1/30th (I think), 60sec avi @ about 20-25fps, redoing it now it only used about 250/1700odd frames in align and stacking!!!...

Mark, yeah we're slowing building up the numbers. You'd have some nice sky out you're way. :cheers:

Edit:

Here's my attempt, reprocessed the whole lot using 900/1700odd frames....

http://comethunter.com/images/130105jupiterg2.jpg

:jump:

[silvinator]

Nice job on CH's Saturn Ice. That looks like a much better Jupiter CH. The GRS is much more readily visible. It's amazing how much detail can be brought out with a little processing. Keep it up CH!
Hey Mombat, an 8 inch dob is a very good choice for you methinks. They are very affordable and there are some great deals to be had. A few forum members here have nabbed quite a few bargains and I believe they are all happy campers, well, except Striker but that's because one scope just isn't enough :P (Just teasing you Striker). I'm sure you'll be able to view heaps with the 8" in Melbourne. I live in Sydney and I have a 10" and it's not too horrible a battle with light pollution if you're just observing, though astrophotography-wise, it can be a struggle...but that's another kettle of fish altogether. Just get something you know will get used.

[Comet Hunter]

Thanks Silvie

Here's a pic of the raw avi for those interested...


http://comethunter.com/images/jupregistax.JPG

[iceman]

Hey great rework CH, it looks like you got 1 of the moons in your reprocessed version, far off to the right!

You should also get registax version 3, it's better and faster than v2.

[Comet Hunter]

I've been trying out v3 for last week or so, unfortunately it aint ready for me yet - keep getting errors/crashing etc, that avi you posted up a day or so ago of Jupiter kept crashing in v3 but v2 stormed through like a champ. :confuse3: