Through the Cirrus

[Mickoid (Michael)]

Not much on TV, not much to do from home in lock down so I set the scope up under a blanket of patchy cirrus clouds tonight. These clouds have been hanging around Melbourne for the past few nights, making imagining pointless actually. On occasions you look up and the sky looks clear, then you notice a slight haze even in the clear sections. I got a few minutes through these 'clear' windows before the blanket of high cloud thickened and I called it quits.

Certainly not the best seeing or transparency conditions but it filled in some time. 8 inch Newt on an old EQ5 with RA motor, Canon 550d, best 3000 frames of 12000 captured, 1600iso.

[LostInSp_ce]

The weather hasn't been good at all the past week or so. Good to see that you're still having a go despite the conditions. You've still managed to pick up some good detail in the blue clouds. Nice one!

[PKay (Peter)]

Still a great result Mic

I haven't even come close to matching that...

[xa-coupe (Jeff)]

Nice work on it's own, even better given the conditions. The clouds around here are quite a problem. I spent the night working on some technical issues because I couldn't get enough clear sky to do anything useful.

[Mickoid (Michael)]

Originally Posted by xa-coupe

Nice work on it's own, even better given the conditions. The clouds around here are quite a problem. I spent the night working on some technical issues because I couldn't get enough clear sky to do anything useful.

Thanks Jeff, I guess it's an opportunity to do things like that and at least you'll be better prepared for when the skies clear. By the way, my first car was an XA Falcon.

Originally Posted by PKay

Still a great result Mic

I haven't even come close to matching that...

Thanks Peter, keep working on it, once you find the best eyepiece, Barlow or tele-extender to create the best focal length for your scope, the rest is pretty easy. I always find Jupiter a challenge because of it's fast rotation, Saturn because of it's lower brightness and Mars because of it's unpredictability. Processing the video grabs is fun, especially watching the details appear when using Registax wavelets.

Originally Posted by LostInSp_ce

The weather hasn't been good at all the past week or so. Good to see that you're still having a go despite the conditions. You've still managed to pick up some good detail in the blue clouds. Nice one!

Thanks LIS, not sure where you're located but pretty much the whole of SE Australia had been cloudy for weeks now. You only have to look in the Solar System imaging section to see very few of the usual posters with their large aperture OTA's submitting their images. That in itself, tells the story.

[LostInSp_ce]

Originally Posted by Mickoid

Thanks LIS, not sure where you're located but pretty much the whole of SE Australia had been cloudy for weeks now. You only have to look in the Solar System imaging section to see very few of the usual posters with their large aperture OTA's submitting their images. That in itself, tells the story.

So true. I missed Saturn at opposition because of this.

[brettd (Brett)]

Nice capture!

I feel your pain looking through Melbourne's clouds this week!

A question if I may... when you say best 3000 frames from 12000 captured ... how can you capture and stack so many frames? I thought a minute or 2 was the max to prevent Jupiters rotation blurring the final result?

Brett