Hi all.
On Saturday morning, I had the best seeing I've ever had! As soon as I looked through the eyepiece and saw the big fat shadow of Europa, jet black and still against the backdrop of a detailed Jupiter, I knew the seeing was well above average.
I couldn't wait to get the ToUcam fired up. I captured 12 avi's leading into day break, and the seeing deteriorated after that. At first, I was meticulous in capturing every 2 minutes so I could create a smooth animation, but I got bored after a while and the last few frames were 20 minutes apart
The first image here is almost exactly the same face I captured
last week on the 18th, and while I thought that was my best image, side by side with this image you can see the extra detail in this latest one thanks to the improved seeing.
As I said in the teaser thread, I had the gain at about 15% because the transparency was so good, but it seems to have contributed to some onion ringing that's evident mainly on the left side. I had to go softer on the processing so as not to exaggerate the effect too much.
Anyway, here's the stuff..
- Captured @ 5fps, 1/25s exposure, 40% gamma, 15% gain
- Usual processing routine, split into R/G/B, 100 frames (out of 450) stacked in registax, LR deconvolution (7/1.2) in AstraImage, and final USM and colour balance/curves in Photoshop.
- I used Jasc Software Animation Shop 3 to create the animation.
Download the animation here:
-
Windows AVI (DivX 6 codec) (132k)
-
Animated GIF (414k)
And below are 3 of the better images.
Comments/feedback welcome.