Jupiter 14may

[Lester]

Hi everyone,

Well as I was about to go to bed last night, one last peek at the sky and the clouds were breaking, so off to the observatory=1km drive to highest point on farm, at 11.30pm.

Telescope was the same as ambient=12.1
brightness=50%
Gamma=25%
saturation=100%
shutter=1/20
Gain=50%
seeing=8/10
captured at 10fps
Processed in Registax and Picture Publisher
Jupiter was just past the meridian.

Who do you stop the cross hatch effect on the jpeg? It wasn't noticeable on the bitmap.

Thanks.

[[1ponders]]

Hi Lester, just for an experiment, open the bmp in Paint and then save it as a jpeg. The quality won't be great but it would be interesting to see if you get the same compression artifacts.

[asimov]

Cripes! Look at the detail you've got in this one!

Did you compress it in picture publisher? Check the compression settings..you dont need to compress it once its a JPEG to get it on site..

[iceman]

Ditto to asi. It looks like you've compressed the jpeg.

Make sure you use no compression when saving a jpeg of that size - it will still be under the forum guidelines.

Heaps of detail, and much brighter than your previous efforts. Well done!

[davidpretorius]

very nice lester, great to see you can monitor the temps!

it will save you lots of time!

[matt]

That's a great image Lester. Well done!

You've really improved very rapidly. Must be a natural.

Good advice from Mike and Asi as well.

Excellent!!!

[Lester]

Thanks everyone for your guidance,:thumbsup: :hi:

Will see if I can get uncompressed jpig (oink oink) jpeg ;)

[[1ponders]]

Wow, much better, especially around the limb areas.

[iceman]

Awesome!

[Lester]

Thanks to Mike :thumbsup: , Paul :thumbsup: , Matt :thumbsup: , David :thumbsup: and Asi :thumbsup: ,

Because I feel you have given me a lot of information to acheive in this area.

Here is my second avi from last night= same setings as no.1

But added colour saturation in picture publisher=bit toooo much. Even though was the lowest setting. Will try again later when got time.

[iceman]

Lester do you have an FTP program? It would be great if you could upload the AVI to the IceInSpace FTP area for me to have a play with! :)

[Lester]

Sorry Mike,

I don't know what a FTP program is, I will ask my special wife who know heaps about computers when she gets home from work.

[Lester]

Hi,

Here is another from last night. At 15fps Brightness=25 gamma=40 saturation=100 shutter 1/10 gain=30

Seeing conditions has dropped off to 5/10
Telescope was 1.1 degrees above ambient= forgot my ice packs to keep scope cool.

When I brighten image onion rings increase. I think in future I will just use 10 fps and 15 only when seeing is very good.

[davidpretorius]

i would recommend always going to 5fps instead of 10fps when the seeing is great. less compression of the images

[matt]

Good effort Lester.

I'd go for a little less gamma and a little more brightness, maybe?

The other thing: unless I'm mistaken and I'm sure someone will correct me if I am, but in better seeing conditions I think you actually need to go the other way, 5fps rather than 15fps.

I think that way you get less compression on those very nice frames captured on very good nights?

You push the fps higher if you want to maximise the number of frames in less than good seeing in the hope you'll get more good frames to work with from a bunch of ordinary frames?

[Lester]

Okay, here is another try at No.1 which is the same avi as entry 7 and 10

[asimov]

Gee! Getting good mate! :thumbsup:

[[1ponders]]

Nice shot Lester. I really like the detail on that last shot.

Ditto about the frame rate, plus boost your gain. Don't be scared to have the image on your laptop look a bit too bright. That is more than likely where your onion rings are coming from. Not enough gain. Don't worry too much about getting the colour right on your screen. You can worry about that after you have processed through registax. If you don't have it download K3CCDTools V1 and use that to capture with. It has a histogram you can use to judge exposure. Keep it in the 230 - 250 range using mainly gain and gamma (brightness around 30 - 40 %) and you will be sweet.

Oh and if you are able to dim your laptop screen.........don't! Leave it at normal brightness. You are the only one there. You are not worried about being dark adapted and IMO a dim screen will not produce the results you want. In fact if you can calibrate your screen if you can, though if you laptop is anything like mine its a bit of a joke to calibrate without access to a full range of controls.

Do you use the histogram in registax when you are processing to adjust the white and black point?

[Lester]

Thanks John and Paul,:thumbsup:

Wrote that in my recipe book, boost gain.

Better go stick my scope on ice ready for tonight.;)

[davidpretorius]

i like that one lester

[Lester]

Thanks David, if you like it ,it must be good. :eyepop: Hey mate I am loading your AVI of jupiter it will take 1.5 hours= we haven't got broadband.:doh:


Paul, No I didn't use histogram in registax this time, I have in the past. I must have been in toooo much of a hurry. :P Might give it a try and see what comes of it.

Sorry this should have been 2 seperate replies.:thumbsup:

[davidpretorius]

no worries lester, i can always shoot you a cd if needed, don't blow your monthly allowance!

[Lester]

Hi everyone,

Here is another one.

[Robert_T]

OMG:eyepop: :eyepop:

you can really see the resolving power of the 14in coming into play here - check the detail... fantastic stuff Lester :thumbsup:

[Lester]

Thanks Robert,

I think it was just a matter of being at the scope at the right time during good seeing conditions.

Plus the help of Asi in the processing side.

[iceman]

Wow, I would really love to have a go at that avi!

Top stuff Lester.

[davidpretorius]

that is excellent.....hmmmmmm 14", i want one.

[Dennis]

Wow - now that is very nice indeed; huge image scale but not at the expense of detail. My, my, what a difference 14" of glass makes.

Great job in capturing a cracker of an image, and Asi for processing it.

Cheers

Dennis

[davidpretorius]

dennis wants one too, his 9.25 is now for sale!

[asimov]

Hi-ho Lester. A reprocess of your second image posted in this thread I did lunch time yesterday...RGB split & LR deconvolution & all that jazz.

Pity about the edges of Joop. Wouldn't mind having a crack at stacking this data next time I'm out at your place...or at mine for that matter. :)

[Lester]

Thanks everyone, for your comments.

Yes the conditions were good (as good as I have seen in 2 months, since I started imaging Jupiter)

One thing I am going to try to see if there is any improvement is not use the Heated dew stopper and have a fan on a pedestal blowing ambient air over the corrector. Many years ago when using the Celestron 8" all I used to prevent dew was just that. Seems to me the Ice packs around the tube are fighting against the heated dew stopper. Last night when humidity was high the ice packs were not bringing the scope temp down to any more than 1 degree above ambient.

On the 14 may when I took this shot the tube was the same as ambient. And as the seeing deteriated the tube temp climbed above ambient by 1 degree. So its critical to keep scope at ambient. I know you chaps know this already, but it may help someone else who reads this.

[Lester]

Just another reproduction of Jupiter. Managed to limit the stack in Registax to 200, still got a long way to go in Picture Publisher and Photo Shop.

This image was processed in both Picture Publisher and Photo Shop.

[asimov]

Very nice Lester, very good processing work.

[Lester]

This is the 2nd Avi from that night.

Stacked 170 images=manually done, just started from start of list after alignment and discarded the bad ones, until I reached 170.