Jupiter + Europa, 27/07/2006

[iceman (Mike)]

Hi all.

It's been 20 days since my last imaging session... well, not exactly true. I've had 3 clear nights since the 7th July, but on each occassion the seeing was 2/10, and i've deleted all remnants of those sessions in disgust.

Last night finally I got some better seeing, but unfortunately it was cut short by clouds. I was able to get 5 avi's before the clouds rolled in. I could tell the seeing was quite stable, but the passing clouds played havoc with the air and reduced the quality of a lot of frames, and transparency fluctuated between 0 and 4.

Turned out the first avi of the night was the best, and that's the one this image came from. I used 2-point MAP processing on this image - one on the bottom right hand side (for Europa and surrounds), and one on the top left (for the white ovals). The end result is definitely sharper across the whole image, than had I used one alignment point alone. I can't wait for the next version of Registax, to take the time consuming part out of MAP processing.

I also processed each channel slightly differently than normal in AstraImage - after converting to greyscale, I did lowpass-butterworth (99) FFT, followed by LR deconvoluion (10 iterations @ 1.25). After recombining, a medium USM @ 1.5 was applied, and in photoshop I combined the 2 areas and reduced the curves to increase depth and contrast.

My usual setup, 10" dob on EQ platform, 5x powermate, DMK21AF04, Atik manual filter wheel + (new) astronomik RGB filters. Captured for 2 minutes (35 seconds each channel), plus 5 seconds in-between for changing filters and dampening.

Virtual dub followed by ppmcentre were used (as normal) on the BMP's before processing through registax.

Europa is the moon just starting to transit on the lower right hand side.

Very pleased to have finally got some better seeing with a break in the jetstream.. tonight looks like it'll back to usual 2/10

Comments/questions welcome, thanks for looking.

[Lester]

Hi Mike,

Smooth as a baby's bottom. Heaps of detail= that is a joy to look at.

[Lester]

Hi again Mike,

would like to see how the DMK performs in 1-2/10 seeing just to compare it to the neximage and 900nc. We have seen plenty of rubbish from them, and would be good just to see if the DMK can still pull out finer detail than the others when things are stacked against it.

[iceman (Mike)]

Will do Lester, on the next night of bad seeing i'll do a ToUcam run side by side with a DMK run.

I have to say though, the DMK does not make bad seeing go away. If the seeing is rotten, the image is still rotten. Whether the DMK rotten is any better than what you would've got with a ToUcam, I don't know. But in any case, when the seeing is that bad the image won't be worth posting so it doesn't matter what camera you use

[matt]

Beautiful image Mike.

Your pics are a reminder to only process to a certain point and don't overdo it. Very subtle and natural looking.

While it's tempting to really crank the wavelets... you have to process to the conditions.

Your nights sounds very similar to mine with the weather conditions and cloud. You've seen my images from the same night and how they impacted on the look of the frames.

Again, well done mate. Lovely work

[[1ponders] (Paul)]

Nice shot Mike

Would you describe your MAP process in a bit more detail. I know you've described it before but I can't seem to find it in a search.

[Lester]

Hi Mike,

Just did a bit on your Joop. With 2% and 4% less green. Sometimes its not until you see them side by side that the colour cast stands out. If you have time try it and let me know what you think.

Thanks.

[Robert_T]

Very very nice Mike, good to see the DMK can produce this sort of fine subtle detail and natural look like some of your good stuff with the Toucam.

Ditto for me on a run through MAP processing?

[iceman (Mike)]

Thanks for the feedback guys.

Lester, you're right, there's probably a tad too much green - I already changed the intensity of the green channel to 1.02 when recombining in AstraImage, could probably have reduced a bit more (1.05 or so).

Regarding MAP processing:
1. Open registax, drag red channel BMP's in.
2. I use a 128px alignment box and align on a feature in registax, for example Europa and its surrounds (the right hand side of the image)
3. Run through registax as normal (as per my tutorial), save as TIFF, something like "jup1-right.tif".
4. Close/Re-open registax, drag the SAME SET of BMP's in again
5. Choose 128px alignment window, and align on a different feature in registax, for example, the white ovals at the top (the top left of the image).
6. Run through registax as normal (as per my tutorial), save as TIFF, something like "jup1-top.tif".
7. Open the 2 files in photoshop. You can see that the sharpest part of each image is the area you set the alignment box in registax.
8. Use the rectangular marquee tool (with a 20px feather, for example), and select the sharp part of one of the images. Ctrl-C to copy it to clipboard.
9. Focus the other image, and press Ctrl-V to paste. You'll now have a new layer, with the sharp part of the other image as the new layer.
10. Use the Move tool to move that layer to line it up over the fuzzy part of the background layer. Use the "visible" eye, click on and off to work out when you're exactly aligned over the top.
11. Once it's aligned, flatten the image - so now you've got the sharpest parts of both images combined.
12. Save it as TIFF, and do whatever else you want to do to it (take it to astraimage, etc).

Hope that helps!

btw one thing I forgot to mention, I captured at 30fps, and stacked 450/1050 frames in each channel.

Thanks!

[hevelsky]

Hi Mike,
Great Image, good job

[asimov (John)]

Nice one Ice