The GRS was transitting at 8pm last night, nice and convenient time so I had to try imaging it. The sky was clear but very moist. Dew formed quickly and by the end the scope was literally dripping.
Seeing was "ok" to "good". While capturing the avi's, I thought it was only "ok" but the images still turned out pretty good, some of my best Jupiter's so far I think. There's some detail in the GRS, a nice swirling in the wake of the GRS, and a blue festoon in the Equatorial Zone.
I tried some different settings than normal, in particular with more exposure.. I'd usually been using 1/33s because 1/25s seemed too bright on the laptop screen, but when plugged into the monitor they sometimes turned out a bit underexposed and I'd have to do a histostretch on them.
So this time I used the k3ccdtools black/white point graph and made sure the graph extended up over 200. I'm not sure if it helped, the images are ok and I didnt need to histostretch. I captured at 1/25s exposure for all of these, some had varying levels of gain and gamma to experiment. So I just have to get used to the fact that if it looks bright on the laptop screen, it's only normal on a monitor.
Settings:
- 10" undriven dob with ToUcam
- 2.4x barlow pulled out a bit (~3050mm FL)
- Each image is approx 50-100 stacked frames out of ~300
- Each avi group joined in virtualdub and centered in ppmcentre
- Top row processed in registax only
- Bottom row processed in registax and then AstraImage
Looking good Mike. Amazing what can be done these days. I must try my hand at the LPI. Only tried it once but it kept crashing the lappy and I'm still way down on the learning curve with stacking etc.
I think I prefer the first row (Registax only). The second row looks a little "over-processed" to me... too much unsharp mask (or whatever algorithm AstraImage uses) but that's just me! Although I prefer the colour of the second row
Still amazes me Mike what you can do with that dob of yours. Wait til you get it on a tracking mount. There'll be no stopping you. I prefer the one on the lower left though its a hard choice.
I agree, what self abuse. The sooner that platform arrives the better. Not sure which I like best, but you get 10/10 for the simple fact you did it.
Gary
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Wait til you get it on a tracking mount. There'll be no stopping you. I prefer the one on the lower left though its a hard choice.
