jumping JUPITER! tues morn 31 Jan

[Robert_T]

Hi All, left scope out after a quick session with Mars yesterday evening and was lured from bed around 3.45am by clear skies. Managed to get, caps of, powered up, focus on Jupiter, slipped in the neximage, centred the image, touched up the focus... AND watched as it suddenly faded from view - looked up and the sky was wall to wall cloud GRRRR:sad:. Hung around hopefully and finally took 90 secs worth (900 frames) of avi during a thinner patch of fast moving cloud - lost a couple of hundred through fading alone.

Wasn't even going to bother processing, but glad I did. Seeing must have been quite good as even under these conditions the detail I got was not bad at all - here they are, same frames just different degrees of jiggery pokery with Gamma adjustment, curves and soft sharpen. Both were LR deconvolution processed in Astra Image.

It's no Bird, but what the hey:P

cheers,

[davidpretorius]

well done!

i still get excited when the pure scale of this planet at the moment pops up on the laptop screen. It is so huge.

You wouldn't be able to use your 5x powermate, it would not fit on the screen!!

Can't wait til mays opposition!!

[matt]

Well done Rob!:)

That's inspired me to turn the 9.25 in the big fella's direction.

Now, if the weather here would just co-operate.:mad2:

[iceman]

Wow Robert, they look excellent! Heaps of detail! A little "brown", but a great image to start the season.

[janoskiss]

Looks rather Birdesque to me, Robert! :)

[RB]

Good one Robert, I'm glad you didn't give up mate. Well done.
Hopefully we'll get better weather soon.

Cheers

[Robert_T]

Thanks Guys!

Mike, yeh it does look kinda brown here on my desktop... on the lappy not so brown. Bit of a concern as I process on the lappy and don't really know how my images are appearing to others. The obvious - on my lappy - crepe ring on my last Saturn was barely visible on the desktop...:confuse3:

DP - sure do love the image scale. if I get one of those magic seeing nights I'll be pulling out the 4x powermate ... one of Damian Peach's best Joops was taken with the C9.25 and a 4x.

cheers,

[davidpretorius]

hmmmm, well, get your collimation spot on, the temps nice and stable and lets give that young northern hemisphere newbie a run for his money!!!

We'll teach him a thing or two!!!

Signed
Bird!

[ving]

woah! thats great robert!!! :)

[bird]

Nice image Robert! This is the best time for imaging Jupiter, over the next month or so as it transits in the morning twilight.

The Real Bird

[davidpretorius]

hey bird, i have been imaging at 5:30 and jupiter is still so bright, do you recommend a time ie 4am transit, 2am transit?

[matt]

Rob

What settings did you use in LR deconvolution in AstraImage to process?

Can anyone actually explain how you arrive at what numbers you use in LR/ME etc deconvolution in AstraImage? More importantly, can anyone explain it in plain English not geek-speak:lol:

Anyone got any good "How To" links for this software?

Thanks:)

[rumples riot]

Robert good image despite the conditions. I find that sometimes cloud can cut the glare enough on Jupiter to get some good detail. You have some good detail there. Well done. Colour is a little off, but that is what you get with cloud around, it can interfer with your white balance.

[rumples riot]

Matt, with deconvolution, just try differing settings. Each avi will be different due to light intensity, how good your focus is (it changes during the night BTW), how fast your scope is and your local transparency. I find that With my scope Me on Saturn works well with good avis repetitions of 6 and 1.6 on radius. Fiddle around here to get night and well balanced images. With jupiter I used reps of 4 and radius of 1.3 in LR. You will know if you go too far and all you need try is backing off a bit. Hope this helps.

[matt]

Thanks Paul.

I had a feeling it was a case of trial and error but just wanted to see if anyone was aware of explanatory literature or could explain the principles of decon and how to apply it?

I'll grab some Jupiter avi's soon and take notes on varying settings.

How's the seeing in SA? About as good as Canberra I'm guessing:lol:

[Robert_T]

Matt, Rumples has pretty well covered it, it's all a bit suck and see. For some reason I've never had any success with Me deconvolution and find it over-exposes the resulting image and obscures detail in a way that LR doesn't. I typically run LR for from 2 to 6 iterations depending on how much fine detail I already have in the raw - the less you can run and get detail the better as it introduces ring artefacts on the globe edge. For the curve radius I use from 1.8 to 1.5 with the lower the number the more detail, but also the more noise.

Paul, yeh the colour bit's got me a bit stumped, jupiter was appearing with no colour while capturing despite what I did with saturation etc. Cloud must be playing a part and also I'm getting much different colour appearance between the lappy on which I process and the desktop?

Cheers,

[matt]

Thanks Rob.

Was all set to have a go this morning but clouds...clouds... clouds everywhere.

It actually looked quite nice around 8pm last night but not when i turned the 6mm Vixen (in the 8") on Sirius and Rigel about 10pm. One of the worst seeing nights I've had in ages. Couldn't even get rings at all for star test.

[bird]

The later the better at the moment, Jupiter still doesn't transit before dawn but it's getting close. I've had the best results between 5am and 5.30am recently (at Lostock).

Bird

[davidpretorius]

need i say any more!!!!

i must admit, these last couple of months have not been good. Rob had a good run with mars, i have a few nights with jupiter, and so did ice. Canberra (Matt & Bird) and SA (Rumples & ASI) have had diddly squat!

http://maps.wunderground.com//data/640x480/2xau_jt.gif

[davidpretorius]

at star camp, it should be transitting at around 5.40 am

[acropolite]

Nice work Robert, I feel the colour's fine, I think colour's a preferential thing anyway, given that we can't see much colour visually. :D

[bird]

Robert, I have seen that cloud causes the ambient temp to rise by a couple of degrees, as the clouds prevent the ground from cooling and reflect the heat back down again.

Normally the mirror will be lagging a couple of degrees behind the ambient temp as it falls, and so the sudden appearance of cloud can bring the mirror and ambient temps together, meaning your mirror suddenly performs better as the boundary layer and other thermal problems just "go away" under these conditions.

regards, Bird

[Robert_T]

thanks Bird, had never occurred to me that cloud could be the planetary imagers friend :P - makes sense.

cheers,