Jupiter 14th Feb.

[Portmac]

Well I have just started to play with my newly aquired LPI and what fun it is.
I am currently at my inlaws property 35Km outside of Wee Waa in the bush, I just wish the Moon was not full and that I didnt have to go home on Thursday. Light polution is 0 here unless the house lights are on, the nearest neighbor is 5Km away :)

Anyway the images below were done this morning between 4:30 - 5.

I used the software included with the LPI (Envisage) and set it to automatially stack the images and save the output as a bitmap (resaved as JPG's for the forum), minimum quality was set to 80% and each picture was around 500 stacked images.
There has been no processing done at all, simply because I have no idea how one would go about it :)

Whilst I was at it I fired up a trial of K3CCD tools and used it to capture two avi's, one is 12MB and the other is 292MB. Will be fun to play with and a good learning experience, anyone know a good guide/tutorial site/page for processing?

If anyone has any pointers on using the envisage software it would be appreciated.
Sorry for the extended post.

[davidpretorius]

http://precons.com/iceinspace/Articles/imaging_toucam_planets_notracking.a spx

i wrote this a while ago and some of it needs updating, but have a read through this.

I intend to get a recipe book idea happening soon


________________________________

now to these images.

I love em, i believe the great red spot has moved around the corner, but there is a mini one on this face higher and to the right. I do not know if you have tracking, but if you can get your hands on a 2x barlow (cheap even), The thrill of some bigger image scale will be worth the $40 or $50 busk of a cheap barlow.

Another way is to use resampling. Most people will use registax in automatic mode, but this article turns that off, so when you get to optimising, you can use resample at say mitchell 1.5 and then your image will get bigger.

Great start, ask some questions. If you like and you have broadband, email me your 12mb or zip up the 292mb and send to (dp at precons dot com).

I will have a play.

Well done

[Robert_T]

excellent pics for little/no processing - one of the benefits of the LPI :)

so what were these taken through? Have you got a barlow for extra image scale?

cheers,

[ving]

nice pics :)
like robert said, got a barlow?

[Dennis]

Hey Portmac

Nice bunch of images - well done!

A couple of thoughts sprung to mind as I read your post, as follows:

1. Generally, limit your exposures of Jupiter to 90 seconds, to avoid "smearing" caused by the movement of features on Joop's disc, as he rotates once just under every 10 hours.

2. I did read somewhere that the optimum number of stacks for the LPI is around 50. Any less, and you may not get the best signal to noise ratio; any more and the improvement is not significant, with the risk of degrading the image.

Cheers

Dennis

[Portmac]

Thanks all :)

Sorry I forgot to add the other information....

Was done with a Meade 8' LX-90 and 2x barlow.

@davidpretorius
Thanks for the link, had a little play with the avi in registax using the settings on that page and it comes out quite nice.
I will have a proper go at it a bit later, there is some work I have to get done, work goes where I go.

I will have a go at uploading the files to my website, but not sure if thats going to be possible from here as the inlaws have Satalite DSL and it is a bit funny at times.

I should also point out that the avi's were done as an after thought and I had been playing around with the focus and the conditions were not so good (breeze had started and was getting light fast).

@Denis
Tomorrow morning I will have another go and this time limit the stack size.
Regarding point 1., does this also apply to capturing avi's?

When I first started after I got up this morning the GRS was there but my ability to work the camera and software was lacking, but improved with some poking :)

An example of my skills at the start is below, the Jupitur image was this morning and the Saturn image is from the night before.

[Dennis]

Hi Portmac

Yes - it's a kind of rule-of-thumb that applies to any ccd capture device for Jupiter, whether it be an LPI or ToUcam, although a shorter focal length instrument is more forgiving. For my C9.25 with a x2.5 Barlow, 90 secs seems to work fine.

So, if you can stack 50 LPI images in 90 secs, that's good and if you capture an avi at say 10fps, then that will give you 900 frames in a 90 sec capture.

Cheers

Dennis

PS - The above applies to Jupiter only. For Saturn and the Moon I usually expose up to 210 seconds as over that, Registax seems to fall over when trying to process the larger avi's.

[iceman]

For Saturn, you can capture for up to 3-5 minutes as there's very little surface detail you're likely to catch, especially at that focal length.

[Portmac]

Thanks for the tips, I will put them to good use tomorrow morning.

I have managed to upload the smaller avi and some bitmaps (all zipped), I wont even try the large avi as it would take forever to upload from here but will do it when I get home if anyone wishes me to.

Zipped bitmaps (3 files) (60KB) - Click Here (http://www.portmac.com/Astro/jupiter.zip)
Zipped Avi (5MB)- Click Here (http://www.portmac.com/Astro/K3CCD_0000.zip)

Some of the neighbors are comming over at 4AM tomorrow to view the heavens so it should be a fun morning.

[Portmac]

Well its 4:20Am and its cloudy with patchy rain so wont be getting any pics this morning :(
Disappointing......