Saturn was placed only a few degrees from the bright waning moon this morning, so I wasn't sure how the images would turn out.
The bright moon, combined with a cold air with some moisture in it, meant the transparency was bad as seems to be par for the course lately. It meant gain had to be high, producing grainy frames.
I managed to get 2 decent runs, and produced 3 images seen below:
Image 1 (top left):
- 2700/5000 frames stacked (combined from a few avis)
- 10fps
- Higher gain
- Used the new ppmcentre program to upscale 3/2 and reorder the images
- Resized down to close to original size in photoshop
Image 2 (middle):
- 1400/5000 frames stacked (combined from a few avis)
- 10fps
- Higher gain
- Used the new ppmcentre program to crop and reorder the images
Image 3:
- 1100/3000 frames (single avi)
- 10fps
- Lower gain
- Used the new ppmcentre program to crop and reorder the images
Processing with so many frames (through virtual dub, then ppmcentre, then registax) took AGES, but I think it produces a better final result.
Used AstraImage on all 3 images, with ME deconvolution.
The higher gain images allow the crepe ring to be seen, at the expense of a grainier image. Also it seems the upsize/downsize process didn't help much, and the image looks a bit softer. The CD is probably a better representation (not overly sharpened and wide) but the globe looks a bit soft for my liking.
can you do me a favour and post say the first two bmp's that ppmcentre sorted. or even email me say a zip file of a few bmps, so i can have a go at processing if you don't mind.
tonight the raw mode goes out he window!!!!! although it seemed to have great colour for jupiter straight away. i do not know!!!!
i am keen to see what your captured files look like in terms of colour.
i gave raw mode one more go last night as i thought i worked how to get it back to yellows. lots of clouds and not enough time. my powermate rocks though!!!
Nice image Mike - for me the middle one looks best on this screen.
For those people who feel "commandline challenged" (don't we all sometimes?) I'm working on a graphical interface for ppmcentre that should make it nice and easy for everyone.
This is my project over the end of year break, should have something by mid January to inflict...err...test.. on those brave souls :-)
Also in the pipeline is image morphing and stacking (otherwise known as multipoint alignment) to try and handle distorted images better than registax.
Mike- upsampling 2x is probably a better bet than 3/2, I read an article about that somewhere.
Thanks for the comments guys. I'm pretty happy with the middle one. The new ppmcentre works great, Anthony. The quality estimator is excellent! Works a treat.
Don't be put off by having to type "cmd" into your run prompt. It's very easy to use and you can save the commands to a text file and just copy/paste them.
Look forward to a GUI version too Anthony
I can't wait until you do the multipoint alignment! Will be great for lunar shots. I heard Keiths Image Stacker (for the Mac) now has this functionality.
I love seeing your pics and since taking up the scope bug so recently am excited that it gives me an excuse to resurrect my old photography hobby as well. I have been practising afocal with some results which impress the odd friend who has never looked down a scope but am needing to up the ante and would really love to produce work like yours. Hopefully, I can meet up with you at Kulnurra and gain a bit of advice on the best way to go to start astrophotography in ernest?
The shots are great and even the unprocessed images show great detail. Good work!
I'm happy to help you test new versions, Anthony.. I think me, you and DP are the only ones using ppmcentre at the moment anyway
But i'm sure it'll take off soon!
Quote:
Is Saturn really different to capture than Mars?
Do you find it more difficult?
Not really, the settings are mostly the same but because it's at least a magnitude dimmer than Mars, the gain has to be higher.
Both are subject to the seeing, but Saturn is always judged on the bandings and the CD because nothing else changes. If the seeing is bad, both of these suffer in the final image.
I don't think one is more difficult though.. except that Saturn is much wider and harder to keep in the FOV!
Quote:
Hopefully, I can meet up with you at Kulnurra and gain a bit of advice on the best way to go to start astrophotography in ernest?
Any time! Hope you can make it to Lostock as well?
Mike, how those images take me back to our first adventure out with my LX200! It is pretty awesome to see what you have now been able to achieve with the platform! Nice to start seeing some Saturn images again. Summer is coming!
Saturn, this morning 20/12/2005
I haven't tried ppm centre yet, the words "command line program" have a way on shutting my IT-challenged brain down...
