Hi Darren, that is good for a first attempt at Jupiter, with some nice banding showing up. The detail looks to be smeared and one of its moons trailed; try and keep capture time to 3 minutes max to avoid this.
Excellent first image of Jupiter. Some detail there, you've caught Europa and I can even make out its shadow.
Like Lester said, the Moon seems elongated - how long was your capture time? The smearing could be a stacking artifact too. How many frames did you capture and stack?
I hope you don't mind, but I've had a quick play to adjust the 3rd image.
- Realigned RGB channels
- Adjusted levels to set the black point and neutralise the backgroud
- Curves (to give some contrast)
- Saturation (to give it a bit more colour)
Oh also, Jupiter would still be quite low at 2am. If you wait another 2-3 hours, it'll be almost overhead and the seeing should usually improve with altitude.
Thanks for the tip Lester, there's just so much to keep in my head.
As I stated in the original post, it was a quick setup when I saw a window of opportunity.
No accurate polar or drift alignment, just a quick 3 star align and sidereal tracking. My thoughts were that this could also of caused the streaking of the moon. But the 3 minute tip hits home as well. Thank you.
Mike, Thanks for the encouragement and the tips, I'm glad to learn as much as I can and am not that precious that I would be offended that anyone could edit my data so as to teach me! I have read your planetary imaging page, using vub, ppmcentre, rgb split and son on.
I just haven't really had that much success. I'll get there in the end.
Very good first attempt, Lester and Mike have given you some excellent advice.
I would also suggest that ounce you have acquired the image on your computer, rotate the ToUcam in the focuser to get the banding horizontal with South up and West to the right.
By initially setting up as above, any corrections for drift of the object will be in the "x" or "y" axis and you will probably only have to make correction in one to maintain the object in the centre of the field.
