Jupiter + Io, 7th Aug 2010

[middy]

Last night I got the urge to setup the gear for an imaging session. I didn't really have a specific target in mind, but by the time I had set everything up, drift aligned, calibrated etc, etc., it was close to midnight and Jupiter was high enough (40 deg.); so Jupiter it was.

I used my Toucam and 2x barlow to capture the video.

Processing involved:

virtualdub to split the video frames.
RGBSplit to split the colour components.
Registax to stack each colour component.
GIMP to merge the colour components back to RGB, do curves processing and resample 1.5x.

The first image is the final result and shows Jupiter + Io. I am not 100% happy with it. I clearly have a lot to learn in the post-processing department. The second image shows the resulting RGB image after merging the colour components just before I started the post-processing. It is really hard to get the colours right and I think I can see some onion rings starting to appear.

Any hints or tips on how to adjust curves and colours etc. would be welcomed with open arms.

All up though it was good to hop back into the saddle again to get some planets.

[HCR32 (Peter)]

What scope and mount did you use.

I think the pics are nice you just need to ask yourself if the night had good seeing. That could make a huge improvement.

[middy]

Originally Posted by HCR32

What scope and mount did you use.

I think the pics are nice you just need to ask yourself if the night had good seeing. That could make a huge improvement.

It was a 200 mm Newt on a HEQ5Pro.

You are right, that is probably the best I can get at the moment. The seeing has been atrocious for a long time here in Brisbane