My best ever Dob work!! Saturn

[Chrissyo]

Last night was amazing! I was able to get my 10" dob (no tracking) operating at 1171.875X Magnification (according to my calculator) and the image on my video camera still looked quite wonderful. I decided to go for Saturn in one avi, and its moons in another using the low light feature. I processed both in Registax, and used photoshop to stick them together (and slightly touch up contrast etc). Here is my result! I hope you all enjoy, I am quite proud of it (no more wanting tracking for a while anyway :P ).

[fringe_dweller]

:bowdown: :bowdown: :cheers: :cool2: :party2:
that is seriously Amazing - congrats - Wow!

[asimov]

Marvellous work with no tracking!! Well done dude! Nice colour/banding/CD!

[jjjnettie]

You are the Master. :prey2:

How big was the avi?
How many frames did you end up stacking?
Could you post a pic of a single frame to show what you started with please.
Is there any chance of you letting me know what your wavelet settings were as well.

:drink:
Cheers
Jeanette

[janoskiss]

Well, you should be proud Chrissyo! That's got to be the best non-tracking Dobbie Saturn ever!

[Chrissyo]

The avi was 891 frames.
I stacked about the 100 best in this shot.
The first frame (left) is the best raw frame, and the second (right) is one from about the middle and represents about the average I guess.
I can't remember exactly what the Wavelet settings where, but I think I had it at about 70 in 6, and 50 in 5, and left the others at 1.

[beren]

:) Wow excellent

[ballaratdragons]

Wow Chrissyo yoyo, That is excellent!!! Beats anything I ever did hands down!!!

Now I am depressed :sad: :sad: :sad: :sad:

[Chrissyo]

Lol Ken, you'll be far surpassing this in no time with your new EQ ;)

And thanks everyone else for your kind words :)

Also, I've had a new mini-breakthrough sorta thing.. I'll need all your help for this one... Whilst checking over the frames etc for jjjnettie, I decided to go and reprocess it to see what I could do. And I think I might have JUST managed to capture the little faint inner ring (its name starts with an E doesn't it? Ench??). I might just be excited and seeing some slight smudges, but you be the judge.

The uploaded image is about 300 or 400X zoomed in.. tell me if you think the smudges in there are that inner ring (espessiouly look at the right hand side ring). Thoughts?

[Wombat_In_Space]

Top image for no traking
:prey2::prey2::prey2::prey2::prey2: :prey2::prey2: :bowdown: :prey2::prey2::prey2::prey2::prey2:

[ballaratdragons]

Tired eyes but I think I can see it! only on the right hand side though.

[davidpretorius]

encke is located just near the outside of the rings (outside the cassini division)

this is a fantastic result. i love the combined image of the moons!

brilliantly done!!

[iceman]

Excellent result! Looks like you had some great seeing, and even the raw frames look excellent.

The inner ring is called the "Crepe" ring, and yes you did capture it. It's fairly easy to capture to crepe ring, as long as transparency is good, and you also need a fairly healthy gamma and brightness capture setting.

You can see it on my recent Saturn pic posted the other day.

It looks like video cameras are doing a great job for non-tracked dobbies!

[iceman]

Oh also, how big is your avi? I wouldn't mind having a go at processing it??

[Robert_T]

brilliant :) , now this is something I've been wanting to try for a while, but always get carried away at the scope and never remember to try for the moons as well - can you describe the low light feature you mentioned?

This image is great!

thanks,

[ving]

:prey:
that is friggin fantasmagorical chrissy!!!! :D

saturn looks great and the moons are great too! :D

[Chrissyo]

Mike: Unfortunately, the avi is just over 1 gig in size. So I wouldn't be able to upload it anywhere.

Robert: The low light feature is basicly a 'night mode'. All you do is flick a switch and its on (so its nothing overly technical). Its just designed for filming at night time, and the image comes out in black and white. Sorry if this isn't a very good explanation. I'm not really to sure on how to describe it :P

Once again, thanks everyone for kind words :)

[iceman]

Chris, try winzipping it and see if it's under 650M to fit on CD.
Or burn it to a DVD if you have a burner.

[Chrissyo]

I got it down to 300mb by zipping. However, there may be an easier way.. when I import the video from my camera, I first use Windows Movie Maker to split the nights work. This saves the movie in wmv format (I then use a seperate program to convert to avi. I could download another program to go straight to avi, but I'm too lazy). The wmv file for this saturn is only 14 mb, so if someone can suggest somewhere to upload it, you can download it and convert it yourself.

[rumples riot]

Great image, one of the best non tracking images that I have seen. Well done. Looks like you had quite high seeing conditions. Congrats.

[danielsun]

WOW!!! Thats absolutley brilliant Chrissyo!!!!!:prey2:

And to top it off, a dob with no tracking!!!!

[jjjnettie]

Chris,
I've always thought that Windows Movie Maker was a great application, simple and straightforward, but found that when you saved your movie to avi format within the program, Registax wouldn't recognise it.
I'm taking an idea off you and at the moment am downloading a wmv converter.
Thanks for the tip.
Do you have to download from the camera through a tv card or usb?
Jeanette

[Chrissyo]

Yeah, I found the media player avis dont work which is why I convert from wmv. I use a firewire card and cable to get the footage onto the computer.

Also, a question cause I think I might be cheating :P Someone asked me about this shot at DeviantArt today and they asked "surely you track by hand, at that mag." At the magnification I was using, it was unpractical to let saturn 'drift' across the field of view because it would be gone in like 2 seconds or less. So, I centred saturn on the camera screen and dragged the scope (by hand, just pulling it) whilst imaging and keeping saturn in the centre of the screen. So it is cheating to say 'no tracking' if I was was pushing the scope after saturn?

[davidpretorius]

what scope do you have and what eypiece do you whack in?

it still is not motorized tracking, and any sort of manual tracking is to be applauded!!!

[Chrissyo]

Just using my 10" F5 Dob from Bintel. For imaging, I use my 32mm eyepiece, and connect my video camera to it by a home made camera bracket, then use zoom in the camera to get the image scale I want.

[netwolf]

Hi Chrissyo,

Thats an excellent image for a Dob with no tracking.
If you have firewire miniDV camera then the following tools will enable you to transfer the raw movie from the DV tape to your PC. As i understand it miniDV does not require you to capture via Windows Movie Maker, the information is already in digital format on the tape and you just need a transfer tool.

http://windv.mourek.cz/
http://www.carr-engineering.com/dvio.htm

Using this method however you will get a much larger file than by using wmv.

Regards

[h0ughy]

what an amazing and fabulous effort!

[Chrissyo]

Thanks for the DV capture programs, I'll try them out next chance I get (stupid clouds are everywhere right now :sad: ).

[[1ponders]]

A truely fantastic image Chris , especially considering the equipment you are using. As Rumples said, one of the best (if not the best considering you got the moons as well) I've seen afocal for non-tracking and non-webcam. With those restrictions in mind that shot is well worth sending to the astromags. Top Marks :thumbsup:

[netwolf]

Chrissyo, what model minidv camera are you using? And could you please share some pics of this homemade adapter of yours. This is the best photo i have seen taken with a dob and manual hand tracking. I tried hand tracking Mars once but it was near impossible, whats your trick.

[Chrissyo]

My mididv camera is a Panasonic NV-DS50. I have uploaded a pic below showing the camera bracket - one of the bracket and one with eyepiece and camera. I don't really know my trick :P Keep at it, and get used to how to move the scope.

[fringe_dweller]

sorry more brain picking here mate, that image size is pretty damn good for a .8 MP camera! (have i got that right?) I read on a site that it has 10x optical/500x digital zoom - were using those to get image size - or was it just due to ep and /or barlow set up? btw what eyepiece or barlows did you use - sorry i may have seen those details on your other posts, but not this one? i know you said it was 1000X ish at the start, but how did you achieve that mag - btw to hand track at that mag you must be part equatorial platform/part human ;) j/k /compliment
Very interesting stuff!

[Chrissyo]

I have no idea how many MP my camera is. Yup, the zoom figures you got there is right. To get the mag I use my 32mm eyepiece with a 2X barlow. I then use the camera zoom (I had it at 15X for this shot). Therefore mag = (1250/32) X 2 X 15. That gets 1171.875.

Also, I had another attempt at imaging Saturn at this mag tonight. Its not very good though, there we clouds everywhere (imaging through little gaps) and my focus was a bit off.

[fringe_dweller]

Thanks Chris their also great too! Huge image scale again. banding on planet is spectacular, and detail is plentiful :-)) I m still very impressed - you are a now officially a poster boy for the dob brigade propaganda machine :D!
sorry for more questions, but was that a 2" or 1.25 ep/barlow
and one more what did you have for breakfast that day? ;)

[Chrissyo]

Both the eyepiece and barlow are 2". And breakfast, I have no idea :P

[astroboy]

great work Chrissyo
lets hear it for Girl Power:prey2:

Zane

[jjjnettie]

Chris,
You've set the standard for afocal photography. You know I can't post any more of my bodgy images now. LOL Thanks for the extra info.

[Wombat_In_Space]

I had a look at the image yes there is a smudge on the right side it looks to be almost a finger print could have been on the lens maybe, but other than that Top Image,

Love your mount to, so simple and works great after seeing this image.

:bowdown: :bowdown: :bowdown: