Jupiter - Monday 11 October - SPC900NC

[Logieberra]

Study break...

Taken with my 10" Skywatcher Black Diamond newt, Philips SPC900NC webcam and NEQ6 Pro.

Can't really comment on seeing conditions - if this is a standard result then I look forward to a 10/10 night.

Still coming to grips with the settings in Registax 5.1

Overall, pretty pleased with this new (cheap) webcam.

Logie.

[mswhin63]

Very nice, can see a bit of small detail coming through. turn the brightness down a bit and adjust the contrast up about the same amount. Give it a go would like to see the difference.
Nice round moon too.

[madwayne]

Pretty pleased? Logan you should be stoked with this, it is a fantastic image of Jupiter in my opinion. Hopefully Mike, bird or one of the other planetary gurus will come along and give you some pointers for the future.

Wayne

[Quark]

Looks pretty good to me logan, really nice job. Some more image scale would be good, perhaps a 3x TV barlow. With it the greater the distance from the top surface of the barlow to the chip in the camera the more magnification your get, you can use extension pieces to great effect. Most important things are the collimation of your scope, focus and temp of your primary. If you have a fan on your primary running it for an hour or so before you image will help.

Also helps to rotate your camera so that the movement of the planet in RA is parallel with the long axis of the frame, that will make it easier to track.

There have been some really nice planetary images come from the venerable old Phillips webcams.

Cheers
Trevor

[Logieberra]

Sorry for the delayed reply guys, busy with uni.

I had a fiddle with the settings Malcom, and she turned out about the same…

Thanks Wayne, I was REALLY pleased when registax finished doing it's thing. This was the first time that the program has work for me (user error). A great feeling.

Trevor, I failed to mention that I'm using a Powermate 5x barlow... Should I stack it on my Meade 2x APO barlow, or use a spacer?

I'm pretty sure that my collimation is spot on, I'm using Catseye gear. But there's always room to improve I'm sure.

I leave the scope outside for an hour+ and run a small cpu fan against the primary (the skywatcher mirror cell is machined to accept a small fan with 4x mounting screws).

One problem that I do have:

I'm not polar aligning my mount in the backyard. It's a very rough SOUTHERN alignment and that's it, so Jupiter is speeding out of the FOV.

Registax doesn't seem to like a planet that moves about the FOV, especially if it comes near the edges. Is this correct?

When I process this footage - the centre weighted alignment box does not stay in one place and slides across the planet.

Looks like I really need to do better polar alignments right? (The way it's running at the moment, it's more like a dob setup, with small corrections to the EQ6 to keep Jup in the FOV - annoying - and it introduces vibrations to the system).

Thx guys,

Logie.

[mswhin63]

Read this article - http://www.iceinspace.com.au/63-306-0-0-1-0.html for comprehensive information.

One thing I know do is use clicking "Centre of Gravity" in registax align tab. and increase the detection level a bit so it locks on to the planet as it is running across the FOV.

If you want a more comprehensive way which can sort quality the article which I follow partly uses ppmcentre or if handy with DOS command Ninox (newer version of ppmcentre). This requires a bit of fiddling but is works well for me although now I am tracking I suspect I only need Registax centre of gravity to align well.