Reprocessed Jupiter

[rumples riot]

I did some reprocessing to a avi that I took several weeks ago with the Toucam and I came across the shot below. Out of 1211 frames, this is 89 frames stacked. Took me two hours last night just sorting the frames bit by bit and getting the very best shots. I think that this is the best jupiter that I have had so far and I did not even know it was there. The shot is still a little grainy, but this gives me hope that I will soon be heading to the quality of Bird.

What do you all think? Am I just seeing things or is this really better.

incidently, now I see the importance of deleting all the bad frames.

[iceman]

Easily your best, nice job. Also don't expect to get images like Bird for quite a while..
His images come from years of experience, in both capture and post-processing. Plus, his camera is better than a ToUcam to start with.

You will be able to get better image scale though because of your focal length at prime, so you have something on him at least :P

[Comet Hunter]

Good Stuff RR! Very natural looking too! I might test my patience and go through some of mine and try to weed out some of the poorer frames.

[rumples riot]

Thanks guys, but you can't blame a guy for wanting to do the impossible. It's just a matter of time, by the end of this season I want to be getting images that are close to Anthony. That sounds bold, but I am a perfectionist at heart and I have both the will and patience to persist until I succeed. Once I grab hold of something I will keep going until I can go no further. Aim high!

Anyway I am looking forward.

[bird]

RR - nice image!

I know how you feel , I started imaging with a ToUCam in July 2003, and it took me about 18 months to discover and squash the problems with my scope.

Your image here is much better than any of my early images. Just for comparison, here's one of my Jupiter images from april last year. At the time it was by far the best image of Jupiter I'd managed.

You're already beating that by a sizeable margin, so don't worry too much about the learning curve. The biggest killers for image quality are temperature imbalance and collimation. Understand how your scope is handling those 2 things, and how to control them and you'll be 99% of the way there.

Bird

[[1ponders]]

Top stuff Paul. Way to go:clap: :2thumbs: As the saying goes (paraphrased) "persistance pays off in the end"

Did you use Virtual Dub to edit the frames or did you simply uncheck each frame in Registax? The reason I ask is that when I delete images using VD the resultant image doesn't seem to take as much waveletting as the original before oversharpening speckling occurs, if those two terms used together make sense :P

[rumples riot]

No I simply unchecked the entire avi and then went through it frame by frame. Bit of a long haul but worth the effort. Thanks for the praise.

[[1ponders]]

I might do that whith one of my earlier saturns while I'm waiting for the cricket to start, see what sort of improvement I can get. Cheers for that

[iceman]

I don't think that's possible - there must be something different that you're doing - i've noticed some funny quirks in registax 3 sometimes that could easily provide strange images if I hadn't noticed it.

Virtual dub just loads and saves the raw frames, it shouldn't change what post-processing you can do. I haven't noticed that problem myself.

[[1ponders]]

Maybe I'm using a different process in VD.

After I delete the images I don't want I use "Save as AVI". Is this the correct option or should I be using one of the other "Save" options?

[rumples riot]

Just to interrupt, seeing was really good here last night, so I imaged the transit of Europa's shadow. Used your triangle mask and got six lovely spikes and I think some good frames. Stay tuned for latest images in a couple of days. Be happy!

[[1ponders]]

I look forward to it.

I'm happy for you..:cool2: At least someone is getting good seeing. Apart from the solid cloud, humidity is about 700% at the moment, well actually 83% by the old hygrometer, and you know what that does to seeing, and 31 degrees. Unpleasantly muggy.

I'd also like to hear your comparison between the non-triangular mask and triangular. All feed back useful for improving the design.

[rumples riot]

Well I got to say, the triangular shapes make all the diifference, when the scope is in focus, those spikes appear almost instantly. There is a little movement through focus where they are still present, but at least it is not like the circles where it could be in focus here or here or here or even here. Takes a lot of the guess work out of it. Thanks very much.

On my mask, it is made of steel and the caps are plastic. I cut the triangles into the caps. I did not stick them in place. So what I might do is try turning the triangles out and away from each other. See if this makes any improvement. I'll let you know how it goes.

[[1ponders]]

I'm glad they've helped. That a good idea turning the plastic caps. I'd be interested in any differences. I'm imagining it will be something similar to what Orion and I were posting in his mask thread.

I've got a couple of other designs in mind to try so I'll do a bit of construction next weekend, and hope for some clear skies after that. I want to try to remove that last bit of unsurity through focus. The design may be restricted or work best with fairly bright stars but I think I can do it.. I'll certainly post how I go.

:lol: I'm kicking myself at the moment. I deleted the Avies and stills processed from them of those first tests I did. (desperately needed space on my HDD and didn't think I'd need them again.) I'll just have to redo them for comparisons and for :P Mikes review. I should have known. First rule of Astrophotography: Don't throw anything out. You never know when you'll need it. :D

[rumples riot]

Na I don't abide by that rule, I have ditched heaps of crap. I now know what I am looking at and delete all the blurry stuff and keep the sharp. that way I have a half full hard drive of 29Gig

[[1ponders]]

I did burn a lot of stuff (I'm juggling only about 1.5 gig left on my drive. Gotta get a new one) recently, but thought, "Nah, don't need those" :P

[iceman]

Now you're thinking :D

That's what I use.. :shrug: The thing I like better about VD is it's just quicker.. Selecting and unselecting frames in registax seems to take forever, and I haven't found any way of doing a bulk unselect (except for unselect all).

At least in VD, the arrow keys and delete key act instantly and going to the next frame is instant. You can even see your movie by holding down the right/left arrow and looking for dust donuts or bad frames, and if you want to delete a bunch, just hold down the delete key.

My avi's always come out the same size (roughly), so it's not compressing the frames or anything. There's no options you've changed or anything is there?

[[1ponders]]

Now that is strange as my edited Avies ususally come out as a bigger file.:confused: Go figure. I'll have to look into this a bit more I see