I must be doing something wrong

[Chrissyo (Chris)]

Well, my 2" Barlow arrived the other day, but clouds halted any viewing untill tonight (yesterday night now cause its 12.01am ).

Here is my very first attempt at Jupiter with the new barlow. I'm loving the image scale the new eyepiece gives . Not too much detail at all, but at least you can tell its Jupiter.

I think I am doing something wrong with my imaging... I'm not getting any colour in the planet. When it finishes stacking in Registax, it comes out greyish instead of the orangy/browny colour. This is probably because stacking neutralizes out the colour like it does the artifacts. Anyone got any suggestions on how I can get some good colour out of it?

[[1ponders] (Paul)]

Nice first shot chris. Make sure your gamma is set to zero and your saturation set to around 65 -75 percent when your taking your avie. What's your avie length in seconds?

I assume you are doing the AVI's in color and not greyscale??

[iceman (Mike)]

1. Ensure that k3ccdtools is set to capture in colour (make sure black&white is turned off)
2. Ensure that gamma is 0 and saturation is 90-95%
3. Ensure registax has the "Colour" box checked

How long was the avi? How many frames did you capture? Frame rate? Exposure? other settings etc?

[bird (Anthony Wesley)]

Have you ticked the "colour processing" checkbox on the first page in Registax?

regards, Bird

[Robby]

If your using a ToUCam turn on auto colour balance for about 10s while Jupiter is in frame. Then switch it off & leave it off. That helps for me anyway.
Cheers
Rob

[rumples riot]

Everyone has their own opinion, but you if follow most you will get the disired result. That said these are my settings. Took me 12 months to find the right ones for me, but here goes. You will no doubt find that settings are dependant upon your own scope.

Brightness 50%
Gamma 0
Saturation 100%
Frames per sec 5 on good night 10 on an avereage night of seeing.
1/25 of second exposure
Gain around 5%. (lower the better, this image should be nice and bright but no too much)

Your image is very grainy, and that says that your gain is set too high. I would suspect that you are also recording your AVI's in BW. See what the others have said.

Anyway best of luck.

Paul

[Chrissyo (Chris)]

I'm not using a ToUcam (though that might be a possiblity in the future ), I'm using my familys video camera with my home made bracket.

As for length of time, that shot there is only about 15secs worth. I usually use longer, but it was fairly cloudy at my house at the time, so I had to be quick and get inbetween the breaks.

My camera doesn't have a gamma or saturation control. Only brightness. Tonight when I was just out I had a bit of a play around with the controls to see what combinations bring out more colour. I guess I'll see how it went later on when I process it. (Also while I was out there was a shadow of one of the moons - first time I've been able to see it thanks to the barlow ).

I also checked that the colour option was turned on in Registax. (I don't use K3ccd tools (yet ) ).

[Astroman (Andrew Wall)]

Maybe Jupiter turned off it's colour the night you decided to try hehe

[[1ponders] (Paul)]

Chris, if you captured that with a home video camera attached with a home made bracket with a Dob, you deserve a medal and induction to the IceInSpace Hall of Persistance/Madness with your mate Iceman. In fact I think you'll have pride of place at the front. He at least used a ToUcam with the 1.25" eyepiece adapter.

For what you're working with that's fantastic. And your not happy with not getting colour

[Chrissyo (Chris)]

Haha, thanks for the kind words Paul, and thanks for the help everyone else!

I decided to have a real try at getting some colour into my pics. Using a very short (less than 5 secs) avi I took the other night, I tested playing around with many of the controls in Registax. I made a short animated GIF with the results. Its quite small, but you should get the idea.

Next, I'll have to try with a proper large sized, long AVI of Jupiter and get some colour into it.

EDIT: I have finally found where all the colour in my Jupiter pictures has been going to. In Registax, after the stacking, waveletting processes, I decrease the brightness a bit to get rid of any blurry halo around the disk. When doing this, it darkens Jupiters cloud bands from brown to grey. I just tested this theory and its true. This explains why Saturn never lost its colour when I did the same thing to it. The loss of colour is now easy to fix - increase saturation and put the hue to the reddish/orangish area. Good as new.