Haven't posted anything for a while but with planet season in full swing took the opportunity to do some imaging. Only used the 127mm apo as I haven't re-assembled the newt since I moved lodgings. The seeing has been less than kind for weeks but last night despite the encroaching cloud, managed to take a few avis' in reasonable seeing.
Would have liked to do some more tonight as there is a double shadow transit, Europa and Ganymede but right on cue, it is raining but supposed to be clear for the rest of the week Great timing, not.
Anyway managed to catch the ingress of Io's shadow before the clouds moved in.
The gory details, Camera ZWO290MC, 2.5X Powermate. Scope - North Group 127mm Triplet , Mount - either an HEQ5 or EQ6 Pro . Probably doesn't need saying but an USB3 connection is important for camera to laptop.
Software, for capture - Sharpcap, Settings are in RAW8,
ROI - 400 X 400,
Exp , for Jupiter , about 5/6 ms , Gain 250. Frame Rate approx 200 f/s.
For Saturn, about 15ms. Gain 350. Frame Rate approx 100 f/s.
Depending on the Seeing, no of frames between 5,000 to 10,000.
Processed in PIPP for debayering to RGGB and frame centering then transferred to Registax. Sort through the avi to find a suitable reference frame, which is usually in the 1st 20 or 30 frames anyway then set how many frames to stack, usually about 25%, so 2,500 of 10,000 gets enough similar quality frames. Have gone to 33% when the seeing was very good (rarely)
When sorting through the video it is easy to see that a lot of frames have an warped, twisted blurry image and are unusable. Set Alignment points and let Registax do its thing before limiting the frames to stack.
Once it has finished stacking, a little play with Contrast and Brightness and Sharpen in the 6 channels by approx 25% and that's about all
