Beginners Imaging Comp - Comments/Advice/etc

[asimov]

Great images Andrew! I really like 'em! You have great detail just waiting to be 'enhanced/teased out'. One Q. hand-held or is the camera attached to the scope?

Heres a real quick reprocess of your last image I just did. I'll be trying on a few others later.

Well done mate!

[iceman]

Hi all

Post your comments/advice/reprocesses etc about the beginners imaging comp entries here.

Thanks

[astro_south]

Asi

All handheld. I "mate" the camera lens to the eyepiece with my thumb and forefinger. I don't have any remote shutter button, so I don't think setting it up on a tripod would help me either. I think one key is to use eyepieces with long eye relief (such as the radians) as this also usually gives you a larger eye lens and allows you to 'search' for the planet in the field. Exercise in frustration, but occasionally it comes off.

What software / settings did you use / play with for your reprocess? I don't want to learn everyone's secrets, but want to know enough to start and learn some 'secrets' of my own ;)

[asimov]

Was about to PM you Mike about splitting the thread, you saved me the trouble. Thanks.

Andrew, knowing there hand-held makes them even better. Well done. This is how I first started, with the kodak easyshare. I eventually made an adapter & fitted the camera to the OTA.

I use picture Publisher #8 as my image editing software. First I took your image & gave it 2 points of less gamma on all 3 red green & blue channels. Saved. Went back into gamma, 1 point less of the blue channel. Saved. Went into tone balance, up 4 points on highlights. Down 1 on midtones, up 2 on shadows, saved. 5 points of sharpening, 1 point of unsharp mask, saved. Went into hue map option, in there I have 11 colour/hue sliders. Tweaked 5 colour hues. Saved. Saturation shift, up 1 point. Saved. Resized smaller, Saved. Back into sharpening, up 2 points. saved. Down 6 points of despeckle. saved. Into Colour balance, up 5 points of contrast on red channel only. saved. contrast/brightness, up 2 points on all 3 red green blue channels on contrast, down 1 on all 3 channels brightness. Saved. Posted.

This is all just a basic 'tweaking' really. A lot more is involved to get the very best out of an image. Takes hours. I do it that often I don't need to think about it now. I think its taken nearly 3 years to learn this program, rather complicated, lol.

[ving]

gulp!
so thats the competition hey? :eek:

[davidpretorius]

Well done JJJ,

COLOUR!!!

well done, i will have a little play in astra image to see if i can get any more detail.


top stuff!

[davidpretorius]

JJJ, when at the wavelets there is a rgb align tab, press estimate and the colours should then align better. ie at the moment it looks bluer at the bottom

[ving]

might have a go tonight or tomorrow night... gee its been busy at home :(

[jjjnettie]

Come on Ving, we need more than 2 entrants to make it a valid competition.

[ving]

i want to, but i have to find time jeanette!!!
:(

[davidpretorius]

top stuff vingo,

did you use the RGB align in registax at wavelets time, some of them seem red at the top and blue at the bottom.

thanks for having a go!

[ving]

regiwax?
little waves?
:P

i think its something to do with the camera lens dave. those are but single shots. i cant take AVIs so i didnt even bother with registax... would it help?

[davidpretorius]

my hat off to ving!!!

single shots - awesome!

yes if you can take avi, you get 100's of single shots and then get to use registax.

reigistax may work on a single frame, but i will have a go in astra image

[ving]

i doubt you will get too much more out of them dave, those are pretty well tweaked. :)
good luck anyhow :)


ps, sorry i got the boring side, but at least i got a transit :)

[davidpretorius]

Ok, into astra image, split into red, green and blue channels. Very intersting to see the blue is the cleanest!!!

a 5x1.3 ME deconvolution to clean it up a bit and then recombine.

Moved the red down 1 and the blue up 2. Result the left "combine"

the right "combine" is vings original recombined but colour shifted.

Top stuff ving for a single shot!!

[ving]

you can tell i am a observer. the more i look at it the more things i think i can see in it :P

quite interesting astra image... thnks for the compliment dave :)

[ving]

hey bmanners sir, you have bands in that large one! :D
what sorta webcam did you use?

[davidpretorius]

Well done brett, great start.

What eyepiece are you using and what does your eye see before the camera comes into play. Can you make out bands or was the image shifting all over the place. As you saw with the moon, if you have "heat waves" so to speak it means that the seeing is not great. The atmosphere is shifting or your telescope mirror is warmer than the surrounding air.

This is part of the comp to estimate the seeing and to start to get a feel for putting a number to it . So "School is in!!"

The moon is a great start and you have mentioned that it was wobbling. (http://damianpeach.com/pickering.htm) next, try finding a nice bright star and then putting your highest magnification on it. Can you then match it with this link?

If the seeing is bad ie number is low, then you will not see detail on jupiter. If the seeing is great then, you will see lots of fine detail.

Leave your scope out for at least 1/2 an hour to 1 hr before you start imaging etc.

[davidpretorius]

excellent andrew!

[astro_south]

Thanks David

Anyone got advice on wavelet value choices in Registax? I realise it may vary with image, but is there a good starting point? I am probably already at the limit of what I can get out of these single shot pics, but just curious to experiment some more. What other options are available for processing?

[Bmanners]

Ving: those images were taken with a Sony bullet camera plugged into a panasonic camcorder.

David: I was only using a 3x barlow for those images. No ep's and the lense from the camera was removed. Hmmm I just thought, the distance between the Barlow lense and the CCD will affect the focus as well as the distance from the secondary mirror to the barlow, right??? I seemed to get good focus on themoonhowever so it can' tbe that bad.

I could see the bands when looking through the ep but they faded in and out. After reprocessing the images I can clearly see the bands in the photographs. I found the wavelets section had a big impact on image quality. Setting wavelets 6,5 and 4 to 30,20 and 10 respectively did wonders. I played around a little more from there but only got small improvements.

I tried the star test thing with that link. I think the seeing is about 2-3 but I would have thought it would be better than that (no wind, no clouds, no moon but in dark backyard of Perth). Interestingly the abberations seem to form 3 prongs from the center rather than a full circle. Does this mean I have alignment problems? This is meant to be done focused on the star right?

Still waiting on a laptop to get the logitech webcam going. I installed the K3CCD software on the desktop and had play. I can change the exposure and a heap of other setting so hopefully I can get better images even though the resolution of this camera is much lower than the bullet camera.

Cheers
Brett

[davidpretorius]

Hey brett and andrew, here is a tut i wrote last year before i had tracking

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

Also brett, seeing is mainly to do with the quality of the image / view. The word transparency helps describe the prescence of clouds / moon etc.

Ie you can have a great seeing night, ie the planet or star does not shift or bulge or go out of focus, but then clouds come in and stuff up the view. so seeing is great, transparency is bad.

It also sounds like the scope is out of collimation (aligmnent).

You find a nice bright star at least 60 degrees above the horizon and then slightly defocus in both directions. This is called a star test. the defocussed image has to be perfectly concentric.

This is a great article, it gets a bit tricky later, but you can get the idea.
(http://legault.club.fr/collim.html)

If the scope is out of collimation, then your views / images are not as good.

Were the three prongs only on one side?

[davidpretorius]

Ok, here is some wavelet example that i tend to use always.

Seeing was 7 to 8/10. 200 odd frames were used.

The last lot of wavelets is just starting to push it just too far in my opinion.

Also notice the RGB align i have done by pressing estimate and the colour channels have been amended

[Bmanners]

David,

So seeing is only related to how the atmosphere affects the view via that 'heat haze' effect. Assuming tranprancy is good ie no clouds etc. Is seeing a result of temperature gradients in the atmosphere?

The three prongs I see are in an even pattern ~120degs apart but one is smaller. The "defocused" star seems to produce a rounded triangle pattern so it does look like the scope is out of collimation.

I found a description on the net how to align a reflector (http://www.btow.com.au/pdf/tips/Collimation.pdf) (http://www.btow.com.au/pdf/tips/Collimation.pdf%29). I've done the daylight basic alignment and now need to do a star test to get the fine alignment. Will be very interesting to see the difference. It did need a bit of movement in both the primary and secondary mirrors.

I also managed to get the webcam going for a short while before the batteris in the laptop died. Not long enough however to get any video though. The resolution is really bad so I'm not too hopeful for the webcam.

Starting to get dark now so let the fun begin:)

Cheer
Brett

[ving]

hey brett, you 3" pics are showing almost as much as my 8" :eek:

davo, i could be wrong but registax doesnt process mpegs does it... I am thinking of ways to get movies down rather than just single frames :confuse3:

[davidpretorius]

hey vingo, bink and smacker from rad video could easily convert mpeg to avi i am sure, have you any mpeg to trial.

download bink and smacker from rad video and we can check it out on one of your vids once converted to avi

[ving]

i dont currently....

the problem with this is going to be that i cant adjust very much in mpeg mode. it might just get burnt out.
i'll give it a shot tho... otherwise its just a case of getting the most out of single shots :confuse3:
i may very well have reached my limit :(

[ving]

well i was going to give it a go tonight... alas clouds abound... maybe tomorrow or the day after? :(

[ving]

clouds cleared and i got some shots off (10-12 shots). they are all the same size so would it be worth stcking them?
the seeing was pretty bad but i think i might have a couple of ok ones in there... Bec took over the computer last night so i didnt get to process them :)

[davidpretorius]

definately, give it a go, any luck taking some video???

[ving]

bugger! thought i'd forget something! :(

next time.

[ving]

well processed...I dont know, the stackign didnt seem to help much but then the seeing was pretty crap :)

[ving]

very cool jeanette! I like that strip you did! :D

have to try and get some more shots before monday...

[ving]

got some shots lastnight... seeing was like 3/10 tho. visually thru my 7.5 i could make out the belts (as a shape) but zero detail in the blets.... snapped some shot anyhow. looks like i have been plagued with bad seeing for the entire comp :P
snapped a couple of jewel box shots too :)

have yet to process them.

[davidpretorius]

consider yourself entered yagon, spot on with the conditions of entry.

"seeing" is a way to rate the twinkle formed by the atmosphere and heat shimmer from your mirror being warmer than the surrounding air.

"transparency" is a way to rate the clearness of the sky ie clouds and light pollution.

great link from this sight is http://www.iceinspace.com.au/index.php?id=63,196,0,0,1,0 and damian peach http://www.damianpeach.com/pickering.htm, by the way, this guy is the best amateur planetary phtographer, so spend some time looking at his stuff, it is amazing http://www.damianpeach.com/

well done, thanks for entering!

[[1ponders]]

Impressive guys. With the equipment you are using who would have though you'd get the quality of image you are all getting.

Great idea for the Comp Dave.

[iceman]

Ving, the seeing has been woeful around our parts, so don't be discouraged.

[ving]

tell me about it mike!
i'd give it another try tonight, but its cloudy so far :(
only one thing worse than bad seeing and that zero transparency :rolleyes:

[[1ponders]]

Chrissyo, have you thought about converting your Avies to individual bmps using Virtualdub and then either running them through through Registax as bmps or trying bird's ppmcentre then through Registax?

I don't know what is causing your ellipsoid shaped planet except for the movement of Jupiter across the field of view and Registax has to "chase" it. If you can work ppmcentre it will center each image first so that Registax is not chasing the image. Bird, DaveP or Mike might be able to give more info on how it works and how to process using it.

[Chrissyo]

I have a new idea about what might be causing the skewed shots - the camera is on a bit of an angle when afocally held to the eyepiece by my bracket. I assume this contributes to it, as well as skews the colours? I was considering taking the tripod out last night to push the bracket up a little bit to see if it helped, but the jetstream stopped me going out. :P

As for vitrualdub/ppmcentre, seeing as tomorrow is a holiday, I might give them a try. I've never used virtualdub, but I've given ppmcentre a quick go. Tomorrow looks like a processing day =) (Plus, lets hope there are some gaps in the clouds later tonight before midnight to sneak in a quick last image or two :D )

[[1ponders]]

I don't like your chances of getting a quick look in tonight. It's looking pretty lousy atm.

[Chrissyo]

Yup. 11:30pm and its clouds clouds clouds. :sadeyes: Do you reckon they would count it if I printed off a hubble pic of Jup, stuck it down a hallway and pointed the scope at it? :P :D

[[1ponders]]

As long as you do the processing youself :P

[ving]

hey no cheating chrissy :P

finally got a proggy that'll change mpegs to avi... hopefully i'll get a chance to use it.
goin out tonight so maybe tomorrow :)