Big night for Jovian followers

[janoskiss (Steve H)]

Nice one Paul! I saw that through the EP too.

[davidpretorius]

Originally Posted by [1ponders]

I'm going to be busy today and tomorrow and the day after. Good thing rain is forecast for the next couple of evenings. I've got something like 36 or 37 avie (total about 10 Gig) to go through new and I think some of them look better than that last on I posted

Right now I need a refresher on how to use PPM Center, Astra Image and the other deconvolutin' image splittin' maximum entropyin' R L stuff. I'm open to suggestions, bird, Mike, DP, Robert_T, Dennis .........Anyone?????? How's that tutorial goin' DP?

I shall start tonight on the tutorial.

Re ppmcentre, how much does the planet move on the screen during capture. Your setup should eat mine for breakfast re stability. The reason I ask is that if the planet gets near the edge of the screen and the moon is further away from the planet than the edge of the screen it get cropped out with ppmcentre. Unless i am using the width and cut parameters wrong (bird???)

I find that converting your avi to bmp's and loading straight in is the best for moon work. Having them bmp also seems to stop it crashing it you push the wavelet stage in create reference.

[edosaurus_rex]

WOW,

I hope some of you guys are planning to photo the Jupe 1,2,3,4 with GRS on the night of the 17TH! It would make a nice APOD and you IIS guys are on a roll right now. Excellent shot!

Ed

[Chrissyo (Chris)]

Well, I only just finished my animation of jupiter from the night. I am very pleased with it, as I didnt think it would work! I am in a hurry to write this as we have to go out for dinner, so I can't explain what I did for it. But as you can notice the egg effect has occured I have no idea why all my jupiters turn out really wonky and egg shaped, but they do. Any ideas why? Anyway, enjoy!

Sorry, I had to put it in a zip file because it was 300kb. Does anyone know a program that will make the file of a gif smaller without loosing too much quality or size?

EDIT: I have a little time to spare, so I thought I would upload one of the individual frames. There are about 13 in the animation, and this one has the most detail, though the others look fairly similar.

[[1ponders] (Paul)]

Way to go Chrissyo. That is great detail you are getting there. Are you still using that handicam?

I have no idea why your Jupiters are eggshaped but I reacon you had better get a couple of your entries into DPs ToUcam contest.

[Chrissyo (Chris)]

Yup, still using the old video camera and home made bracket with the dob. I think I have a rough idea what causing egg shaped shots - as I move the dob to keep the planet in the fov, it becomes kinda skewed, with the direction of movement being expanded. Tracking (or a steadier hand) would fix this more. Until then, i'll have to stick to reshaping in photoshop

[[1ponders] (Paul)]

Have a chat to Mike, DP and bird about using ppm center. Bird developed it and Mike was using it when he first started his madness of imaging with a dob and no tracking.

Using it as part of your processing allows you, when you imaging, to leave the planet to move across the field of view while you image, stop imaging when the planet get to the edge, qickly realign (there is a knack to it apparently) and start imaging again (keep imaging for a total of 90 sec). When you finish your imaging ppm center will then crop and center all your avies into bmp images prior to registax. And then you process the bmps. Did that make sense?

[Chrissyo (Chris)]

I actually tried using ppmcentre for the first time on the frames of this animation thursday morning before I left for easter holiday. (took me way to long to work out how to start it ). I didn't give it much of a go because of time pressure, and it gave me an error saying the planet was too close to the edge of the picture. I might try it again when I go back to the computer where the avis are saved.

I know what you are describing for imaging. I used to use the 'leave planet to float across fov' technique, but when I started using greater magnifications this was impossible to do because it could get to the point on a good night were the image would cross the fov in 2-3 seconds. I've taken to constantly moving the scope by hand to track the planet. It results in much less detail per minute of filming due to much jiggling around of the planet, but the nice crisp frames still pop up, and you can still manage to get a pretty good image. It sucks for jupiter though because of its fast rotation. Found it quite good for saturn though.

[[1ponders] (Paul)]

That's a shame, I hoped it might give you longer, cleaner images to work with. I guess the only thing to do now is to start saving up for a tracking platform

[astroron (Ron)]

I had a few hours observing with the 8" SCT tonight Saturn and Jupiter where quite crisp, heaps of detail on both Planets, I also spent a fair bit of time looking for Comet 73p/ Schassmann-Wachmann to no avail,due to some cloud as well as the brightening sky from the moon and it being low down.
I just hope the weather doesn't deteriat as the week goes on from the efects of the Cyclone up north.
The Moon was great to look at with the wrinckle wridges in Mare Serenitatis very sharp, in my opinion they stack up pretty well against the great wall as a must feature to observe on the moon.