Europa Shadow Transit

[Hitchhiker]

With the images I took on Saturday morning, I thought I'd put them together and make an animation of the shadow transit of Europa. Here it is - had to make it fairly small to upload. Hope this works. :)

I have a much larger avi, which looks a lot better.

[matt]

That's very good. Well done!

[[1ponders]]

Good show Adam. That's excellent. :cool2: Thanks for taking the time out to put it together

[h0ughy]

wow, now thats impressive, and very clear

[mickoking]

Thanx for that Adam :thumbsup:

[asimov]

Nice job Adam!

[Hitchhiker]

Thanks for the comments everyone. I forgot to add that the moon heading away from Jupiter is Io.

[Lester]

Great action shot Adam.

[Robert_T]

Adam , that's fantastic :) - one of the beauties too I guess of the LPI producing optimised shots on the fly. Amazing how far ahead of EUROPA the shadow runs isn't it!

cheers,

[RB]

Great work Adam.

Well done.

[Hitchhiker]

Optimised shots on the fly? I wish! :confuse3:

I think my imaging with the LPI is very similar to your process with the NexImage (or a ToUCam, for that matter). I take sequences of images - in this case 7 sequences of images at 2 minutes duration roughly 10 minutes apart. The LPI is a little easier in that I can capture sequences of bitmaps rather than capturing AVIs and having to split into BMPs. I then post process in Registax and other applications.

The software that comes with the LPI can stack and combine in real time, but I don't use it. It does a good job, but it doesn't have anywhere near the features of Registax - I think for a first time user it would be OK to start with the supplied software while getting used to the process. The software actually does have the ability to do a time lapse sequence but this only does one frame at pre-determined interval.

I should have explained the details of the shots - I took 2 minute sequences of images every 10 minutes. This resulted in about 280 images for each sequence. I then used ppmcentre to crop and centre each image,stacked each sequence in Registax - soft wavelets, and created an AVI in AIP4WIN. Unfortunately, the AVI is too big to post here so I used Paint Shop Pro's Animation Workshop to create an animated GIF.

The result actually looks better as an animation than the individual images - they have an extreme case of 'onion rings' but that's another post!

[Hitchhiker]

Here are the original frames used in the animation. Went very soft on wavelets as I had major onion rings (gain set way to high). These are reduced slightly from original (75% reduced.

[EzyStyles]

amazing adam! well done. I like how you put the frames into a mini movie. thats from the LPI i presume?

[davidpretorius]

these are very good, moons, jupiter, the whole lot!

well done!

[Hitchhiker]

Yes Eric, the images were taken with my 10" SCT + 2.5x Powermate and LPI. The sequences of images for each frame were taken at roughly 10 minute intervals.

I had not actually planned to capture the shadow transit - I didn't even know there was one happening. My intention on Friday night/Saturday morning had been to do some lunar imaging. When I looked at Jupiter low in the East I realised there was a shadow transit happening and swung over to Jupiter instead.

When the shadow transit had finished I swung back to the moon, took one sequence and started getting warnings about low disk space on my laptop!:doh:

Anyway, I'm happier with the Jupiter images and animation than I would have been with some lunar shots.

Eric, you will be able to get some pretty decent lunar and planetary shots with your DSI - maybe you should give it a try!;)

[ving]

hey thats super!!
can the avi be slowed down and still be kept smooth?

[Hitchhiker]

I'll give it a try. This is the first time I've done a GIF animation so I accepted a lot of the defaults. I'll try to slow the whole thing down and see what I can come up with.

[Hitchhiker]

Slowed the GIF down to about half the original speed. Any slower and it looks very jerky.

[EzyStyles]

i have tried it with the DSI. The best image i have taken of jupiter is the pic attached. quite a shocker unless im doing something wrong there. :shrug: :shrug:

[iceman]

Focus looks a tad off, and the exposure is too high, by the looks of it.

[Hitchhiker]

Hi Eric, everyone's got to start somewhere!

If you are using Envisage, try using the Auto Exposure button - it can get you a reasonable starting value for gain, offset, and exposure. Once you have a reasonable exposure (not too dark, not too light) try focussing to get some detail on the disk of Jupiter - do you have an electric focusser? Even if you don't, with some patience, you might be able to go close. The latest version of Envisage allows you to zoom in on the laptop screen,which can make focussing a little easier.

Once you've got as good an image as you can get, save as bitmap files and 'save all uncombined' as a save process (if you are using Envisage to capture). Hit 'Start' and let it run for a few minutes. You will get a couple of hundred images in your image folder.Load all your images in Registax and process as per Mike's or Dave Pretorius's tutorials.

[EzyStyles]

Thanks Mike and Adam! will take your advises and give it a go tonight. that is, if my mrs stop nagging me :)

Envisage is in black & white only correct? if you are using Envisage to take those pics, how did you get it in colour?

[Hitchhiker]

Not correct! Envisage can save in grayscale (black & white) or colour - it just depends on what settings and file format you are using.
There is a 'mono' check box. Make sure it is unchecked if you want to take colour pics.

As far as file format goes, if you use FITs format and 'save all uncombined' as your save process you will get 3 files for each image - each is a grayscale image for each colour (red,green,blue). There is a FITS3P format which is a colour FITS format, but a lot of image processing software may not recognise it. You can even get a 'raw' image (ie no dark subtraction, no de-bayering) if you select 'save all raw uncombined' - you then get a single grayscale file for each image which you have to fully process because no calibration or extraction of colour info has been done.

For planetary stuff, I would recommend using a TIF or BMP file format. You will then get single colour files for each image. You can then stack these in Registax. The advantage of a TIF format is that you will get higher resolution as it will use the whole 16 bits of resolution the DSI is capable of. BMP format only gives 8 bits of resolution (256 levels), but this is probably going to be fine for your purposes.

I have attached a couple of images of Jupiter taken with the DSI last June, before I had discovered Ice In Space (or read the manual, probably!). This is a single image taken at prime focus of my SCT. The second image is just enhanced to bring out the moons. If I get the chance, I may take some more images of Jupiter with my 2.5x Powermate and DSI this weekend. It would be very interesting to compare with my LPI images!

Hope this illuminates, rather than confuses! Feel free to ask any questions - it's the only way to learn!

[EzyStyles]

hi Adam,

The mono checkbox in envisage is greyed out and i can't uncheck it? not sure why even changing the file format is a no go. Thanks for your help so far, i don't think i would have taken any pics without your guidance.
When taking pics, i don't use envisage but the Meade DSI. there are too many scanlines? unless im doing something wrong again :P

[Hitchhiker]

Hi Eric,



Autostar Envisage is Meade's latest name for the capture software that came on the disk I gave you. Have you updated the software at the Meade site since installing?



Since you're taking colour pics we won't worry about that for the moment!



In the capture software there is a button labelled 'Save Proc..' in the right hand top corner. If you press that button a dialog box will pop up. One the left hand side at the top of this dialog box is a drop down box labelled 'File Type' - you can select various file types. Just below this is another drop down box labelled 'Save Options' - there are quite a few options but I use 'Save all Uncombined images' , this saves all images in the 'Meade Images' directory and I can process them at a later time.



Not sure what you mean by this - the latest version of Envisage lets you adjust timing - the images you have posted are all OK - you don't need to worry about this. What do you mean by 'too many scanlines'?
Hope this helps. Feel free to ask any questions.

Have to say I was really blown away by your image of M46 - the planetary nebula was so bright and so Green for a 20 second shot! Keep up the good work!

[EzyStyles]

Sorry think im confusing you Adam :P

Installed full autostar suite and update v4. in the installed folder eg: c:\autostarsuite\dsi\dsi.exe . That is the file i run normally the dsi.exe .

Or I can run autostar suite then --> image --> DSI imaging which opens Envisage.

To get it in colour, i have to run the dsi.exe file which i believe isn't Envisage but the old program?

Here's the two different programs. One is call 'Meade DSI' which is the dsi.exe and the other is Envisage.

In Envisage, the mono button is greyed (see attached) out as i can't click on it which means if i use Envisage, i can only take black and white pics only with scanlines. I have attached a pic of saturn taken in Envisage. lines on saturn everywhere.

Thanks for your comments re. M46. :) and thanks for your help.

[Hitchhiker]

Confused is my normal state of mind! :P

That's really weird - colour is available in Envisage when I use my DSI (or LPI). I have no explanation for that!

Anyway, you're taking fine images and stacking them so it doesn't matter anyway.