Mars/Saturn 16th Mar.

[asimov]

Wow what a night/morning. Humidity would have to have been 100% & had to setup the pedestal fan to stop my glasses from fogging up at the laptop. Helped to keep the heavy dew away as well. Just got Mars on the chip & it blinked out. Next minute the heavens opened up & down it came. I'm pretty quick these days at getting that roof shut. Only a few drops on the corrector thanks to the long dew shield I use. Eventually got a few captures in a few sucker holes, but none were as long as I wanted. Won't bore you with the rest of the comedy of errors but suffice to say this happened 5 X while I was out there. Wringing wet so time for a shower!

Damn I hate this place! Great seeing when it decides to come good but boy, it can be a test to your sanity, I'm crazy enough as it is now ;)

[iceman]

Wow, awesome results despite the troubles.

[cybereye]

Very nice indeed, Asi!!

Cheers,
Mario

[strongmanmike]

Yes great reward for your anxiety output I would say :thumbsup:

Now, forgive me for my deep sky imagers ignorance and I know we have our Ea Carina :lol:.... but how many images of two planets can a single imager take..? You planetary guys must get bored eventually surely?? To me it seems like fishing, you keep throwing the line out hoping for that elusive perfect fish night after night, same species of fish every time but you keep throwing the line back, in hope for a better one :lol: Not sure I could do it :question:

The beauty of our diverse pastime I guess :thumbsup: I know I enjoy the odd look and make involuntary rude proclamations (privately) at the big fish when you guys do catch'em though :thumbsup:

Mike

[bkm2304]

Understandable thought, Mike. While there are thousands of different targets for DSI fans there are thousands of different aspects of the Solar System Family - every rotation of planet, rings, moons gives a virtual infinite set of possibilities so it works out about even stevens!;)

[strongmanmike]

Yes, I guess most planetary fishermen are hoping this doesn't happen to them ...well they'd still be happy, maybe just jealous it wasn't actually them :lol:

http://theanimal-zone.blogspot.com.au/2011/10/bored-girlfriend-who-only-took-up.html

Shame ya can't hug Saturn :P

Mike

[Quark]

Really nice images there Asi, top shelf results both.

Well done
Regards
Trevor

[strongmanmike]

Well I have to say I am rather gob smacked and disappointed really at this completely unecessary response mate :shrug:

I was in no way denigrating the work you have mentioned here in your..?..almost soliloquy :lol:.

I was making what I thought was a very light-hearted observation and that's all, it was well intentioned and the emoticons are for exactly that.

Chill man, I love your work and that of other planetary imagers :love: (I am using this emoticon in a clearly exaggerated way to show I love you but in a light-heared well intentioned way :thumbsup:).

Mike

[Poita]

Yeah, but the DSOs don't exactly change much, whereas Juipter, Saturn, the Sun and Mars are all pretty dynamic, so you get something new each time.
It's a bit like golf, I don't understand why people keep chipping away at it, but I keep dragging my sorry arse out to try and get a better planetary shot than last time.

But DAMN Asimov, how do you get such images, I was so happy with my Saturn image, especially since it was very cloudy, but then I saw yours....
I'll be out again tonight.

[strongmanmike]

Forget my fishing comments guys, we don't want this to turn this into a planetary imagers are more professional and better than deep sky imagers etc, that was 100% not my intention, misinterpretation of my humour just gets me in trouble sometimes.

Sorry Asi I didn't mean to divert your image thread, your planetary shots are great and I do not belittle or devalue them in anyway.

Mike

[Quark]

Chill man, I love your work and that of other planetary imagers :love: (I am using this emoticon in a clearly exaggerated way to show I love you but in a light-heared well intentioned way :thumbsup:).

Mike[/QUOTE]

Appreciate the clarification Mike, I mistakenly took your post as caning planetary imaging in general. Put my over reaction down to another over 60's moment, Keep spreading the love brother.


Cheers
Trevor

[strongmanmike]

Appreciate the clarification Mike, I mistakenly took your post as caning planetary imaging in general. Put my over reaction down to another over 60's moment, Keep spreading the love brother.


Cheers
Trevor[/QUOTE]

Phew! :lol:

Let's leave it there or Asi will kill me :scared:

Mike

[Poita]

Mars continues to elude me, seeing was okay at about 4am this morning, but I still only got the merest hint of any feature on my blobby red stack.
Well done.

[asimov]

Geez guys. I have (looks at watch) 5 hrs sleep, come into my thread only to see all this...I've a mind to.............:lol:

Does that explain it:thumbsup:

Thanks for all the nice replies:D

[venus]

Simply amazing what can be achieved!

[von Tom]

Very inspiring images asi - beautiful! :)

Tom

[Shiraz]

fine images Asi. great discussion too. regards Ray

[asimov]

Found this data exceedingly difficult to work. Every Mars capture has clouded out sections in it, with me playing the gain slider like a damned fiddle again. Any resizing on any data coincided with lines & so had to rotate this one to kill them off. Plenty of other stuff went on to get this image to the best of my ability. All part & parcel in the black arts of planet imaging/processing at times:scared2:

For what it's worth Mike. Nope. In 7 years of shooting planets, I've never been bored once;):D

Bring on the next session!! :thumbsup:

[jjjnettie]

:) lovely work as usual John.

[Matt Wastell]

Beautiful images no matter how many times we see such images! What I love about the planetary stuff is that it is kind of here and now (Sun and Moon included) - sand storms, clouds, comet impacts, active regions, storms etc etc - we will never see the same thing again. Please do not get me wrong I love the deep sky stuff too but it is static in comparison.

[Quark]

It sure is frustrating Asi when the detail in the live feed is good but the signal keeps swinging due to cloud wafting through. I reckon, particularly with Mars, that it maybe worth a try to just leave the histo at your selected optimum setting and take out the sections of crook avi later in VDub. That way at least you end up with a consistent max value of gain and even cutting out a few thousand cloud effected frames, if the detail is good, really doesn't matter too much.

Cheers
Trevor

[asimov]

Yes Trevor, I'd love to be able to just cut the bad frames out with VD like I used to do, however AS!2 refuses to deal with/load any AVI saved as a 'full processed mode' ..

[asimov]

Damned software & computers are determined to make a fool of me - No sooner did I say the above that I tried it again, & this time it worked :rolleyes:

Well ok, if problems are that easy to solve that all I have to do is say something doesn't work publicly to make it work, lets try this :D - "Under no circumstances do I get really good seeing!".............

............Nope, still raining outside! So much for that theory:lol::help:

[Quark]

Reckon your onto a winner there Asi.

A couple of times of late, while rotating my manual filter wheel, I have accidentally lost the planet from the capture screen. I am using FireCapture and have set it up to allow me 10 sec's to rotate the filter wheel between channels before it starts the next capture. There have been occasions where the next capture has started while I am still driving the planet back onto the capture screen, meaning that the first 3 or 4 hundred frames have been either of a black screen or partial planet.

Castrator has problems with these AVI's, so I have been loading them into VDub, deleting that section then running the edited AVI through Castrator and then AS 2 with no problems at all.

Regards
Trevor

[asimov]

I've been onto it for years Trevor, for cutting & shutting but with one shot colour data depends what codec gets used as the if VD will touch it or not. VD is where I usually resize the data ready for Registax but AS!2 is singing that tune "can't touch this" right now..Without the resizing it's fine as far as cutting frames out is concerned. Plenty of other ways however. Oversampling at the scope: Drizzling: Resizing after: Etc..

[Clayton]

A lovely couple of shot's Asi :)

[Paul Haese]

Missed this one John, nice work. You have had a great apparition of both planets so far. Saturn is nice and smooth with lovely colour.

Mike, to go along with the fishing analogy it is like pulling in bigger and bigger examples of the same fish. As planetary imagers we are just never satisfied with if we have got that perfect image. Well maybe Anthony and Trev can say they have examples of the perfect Jupiter image. I reckon this is what drives us onward. I thought I had seen perfect seeing in 2008, but now having seen Bird's and Trevs data from 2010 I want to pursue that seeing further and keep trying to get that perfect image.

DSO by comparison has another angle at which our obsessive compulsions can be played out. Each image has to be better or more interesting than the last with more and more punch. Each image requires more time, planning and research.

So while seeing plays an ultimate part in planetary imaging (without out it we just cannot perform the processing that you see here), time and planning plays the part of the DSO image. Horses for courses.

[John K]

Beautifull images Asi,

certainly inspiring for others to get out there and image both planets.

Heaps of details and excellent processing!

[h0ughy]

brilliant results - love the skill and effort for the great results

[asimov]

Thanks guys. As I said earlier John, great to see you back in the game!

[John Hothersall]

Still fine results, looks like I have had my 2 goes per month for March with the permanent drizzle alley here in Bris.

John.