Jupiter and Animation

[gbeal]

A while since I have posted anything here so decided to sort this out.
Along with the less than ideal weather I have been experiencing some difficulty with getting what I wanted with Jupiter imaging. I think it is part technique, and part expectation. Jupiter IS difficult, but equally when I started three or four years ago there was no expectation, and certainly little to benchmark against. Now there is, and most is better than what the professionals were getting those three or four years ago.
So, with all this in mind I set about capturing a series of AVI's. As there was a transit and shadow transit occuring I decided to shoot a series starting at about 9:00 o'clock local time and finishing at about 11:30 local (2100 - 2330).
These AVI's were about 600 frames, and shot at 5 minute intervals. OK, I can hear you whinning "that's a lot of footage", and yes it was. The seeing came and went, mostly went. The idea behind capturing such a large amount was to produce an animation. This animation can be seen at my site, www.2fdesign.co.nz/zeissnut Once into the site, seek out the "Pictures" and then the "Animations". There is actually two animations, and the one from the other night (17th May) is "New Jupiter Animation".
You will now see how I mean "came and went".
I am reasonably happy with this latest string, but just wish the seeing had been better all the way through.

The second part of this posting is to show how a master at processing can change the finished result. In processing this heap of footage I selected a few of the better ones, and was happyish with the results. I decided to send a few of the raw AVI's across to Mike and see what he could extract. Two of these are below. I was blown away by the dfference. Mine is also attached. Mike has indicated he will be preparing a tutorial on how to, so I am eagerly looking forward to this.

Bottom line is get out there and capture, and then hope for decent seeing.
Gary

[strongmanmike (Michael)]

Wow! clearly a case of the carpenter not his tools huh?

Excellent!

Hmmm?..maybe I'll send some high res frames of say..?..Centaurus A? and see if Mike Salway can produce a good image of Jupiter for me too...?

...sheesh! he probably could!

Mike

[[1ponders] (Paul)]

Nice Animation Gary. Shame about the seeing earlier on but still, 'ay, you certainly made the best of it.

There are some great image processors here, but Mike is definately the man with the uncanny ability to tease out that last bit of detail from avies you would normally throw in the bin. I think I heard a rumour the other day that NASA was sending him some Hubble shots to sort out for them.

[Lester]

Good on ya Gary,

Nice detail and much better seeing conditions than we are getting on Eyre Peninsula.

[davidpretorius]

great to see you posting some pics mr beal!!!

i like em!

[Robert_T]

Gary these are beautiful, very fine indeed. I love the detail - is this taken with your 7inch Mak-Newt??

cheers,

[gbeal]

No, with the good old 10" f5 newt. It is the only scope at present, apart from the 80mm. So it is finding good use with lunar/planetary imaging,as well as DSO imaging. Can't fault it.
Gary

[iceman (Mike)]

Great iamge Gary, the animation is great and really shows the variability of the seeing even from one avi to the next.

Gary emailed me asking for some advice on Jupiter imaging because he wasn't happy with the results he'd been getting. After a few emails talking about capture settings, I asked to see one of his finished results. I could see from it that there was some good data there, so asked him to send me some avi's.

I got them on Wednesday and have processed a couple (the ones above), and it does prove that there's great data there. I will write a tutorial, I'll try and get started on it this week.

Gary's getting a DMK mono soon too so it'll be great to see what it can do with his nice equipment.

[gbeal]

Heck, the word's out. I am LOOKING at getting one, the corpulant female is not exercising her vocal cords quite yet though. Keen to see if I can better what we have been acheiving so far and this concept seems the next logical step.

[ving (David)]

good stuff gary