Still a far cry from someone who doesnt know what this planet imaging is all about, , apart from challenging
Though using a 12" Meade along with Firecapture and ASI 178MC-C is quite a move up from the ol' C8 and ol' LPI a couple yrs back !
So been experimenting with capturing under different conditions, mainly against the recent Jetstream over SE QLD.
On the 6th of June the Jet winds at the 200 Hpa levels were approx 280 kph - so why not try an avi or two to see what results are established - not much but worth the experience !
Result with not a great time spent in processing is shown in the 1st Mars Image below !
Tonight or should say morning of the 9th of june resulted in a much better image with the Jetstream traveling at only half speed, approx 130 kph shown in the 2nd Mars image :
Stats: 10% of 40,000 Frames,,, Frame Rate Ave 202 FPS.
12" Meade 2X Big Barlow, Res 0.07' per pixel <-- think thats right, whats said on txt doc ?
All said, its nothing brilliant, but there for the record mainly !
Hope worth the squizz ...
Last edited by astronobob; 13-06-2016 at 11:18 PM.
Reason: Correct last pic
Great work Bob-well done I had the roof rolled off observatory and had a good night of visual on Mars with a 4 inch refractor-I was amazed at detail that could be seen through the eye piece,a lot of the features in your second image I could see- best viewing of Mars I have had over last couple of weeks. I packed it in around midnight as you mentioned the jet stream started to make it a little harder viewing.
Great work Bob-well done I had the roof rolled off observatory and had a good night of visual on Mars with a 4 inch refractor-I was amazed at detail that could be seen through the eye piece,a lot of the features in your second image I could see- best viewing of Mars I have had over last couple of weeks. I packed it in around midnight as you mentioned the jet stream started to make it a little harder viewing.
Hey Thanx Chris, I believe the views could be betterra if the Jet moves on, been hanging around for weeks like they do Grrr but with only a half jet was a good improvement - just need to wait weeks or even months for a 'No Jet' night, Lol,
Tho there is a Northern Bend in the jet over West Aus at the moment, would like that to stay high into the Nth Territory as it moves east, may get a great night here (Jet gone would be fantastic) for a final test sooner than later, provinding the lower levels behave ???
Quote:
Originally Posted by Camelopardalis
Nice effort Bob
Cheers there Dunk I ran a couple of Saturn Avi's aswell, might go them later !
Rgrds
Interesting Dunk, I had seen others using SER file, never thought twice, so thanx for pointing it out, I will give that a go
Saturn was way under exposed the other night !
Always a next time,,,.
Yeah Saturn is a lot less bright than Mars at the moment
The only things you can do is dial up the gain (but remember if you increase the gain you amplify the noise also) or lengthen the exposure (and risk not freezing the good seeing during the length of the exposure)...or get a bigger scope maybe
Agree on all that thanx Dunk, I had exposures of 10ms, and adjusted gain and gamma to show saturn up to the extent of being able to see the cassini division rather sharp as relating to contrast - a nice thin black ring. if went higher on settings Cass div became washed out and thought not, tho maybe can go further and process the ring back ??
Trail and error !!
Thanx again for you input
mmm, bigger scope, I struggled to afford the 12 - very happy with it tho
Would love a 14 but then also need to upgrade the mount $$ & prob build a bigger caboose
Agree on all that thanx Dunk, I had exposures of 10ms, and adjusted gain and gamma to show saturn up to the extent of being able to see the cassini division rather sharp as relating to contrast - a nice thin black ring. if went higher on settings Cass div became washed out and thought not, tho maybe can go further and process the ring back ??
Trail and error !!
Thanx again for you input
mmm, bigger scope, I struggled to afford the 12 - very happy with it tho
Would love a 14 but then also need to upgrade the mount $$ & prob build a bigger caboose
Yeah know what you mean Bob I'd love a 14 but not sure my back would FWIW, I've been using 60fps/16.67ms with my C11, but obviously your 12" draws in more light. On my astro netbook it more or less halves my frame rate. YMMV depending on the oomph of your capture machine.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Stonius
Hey Dunk,
for those of us trying to understand more about what you guys do, could you please tell us why is a SER file better than AVI?
Google search just seems to say it's a serialised file? I don't understand why it allows faster framerates?
LOL yeah it's just a raw byte stream. Converting to AVI to save to disk has some CPU overhead, and there are no other advantages to using AVI (it's just a video container).
LOL yeah it's just a raw byte stream. Converting to AVI to save to disk has some CPU overhead, and there are no other advantages to using AVI (it's just a video container).
Ah right. So by not having to encode/compress on the fly you can get faster processor speeds (and therefore framerates) at the expense of larger files, right? I'm guessing it also has less compression artifacts too?
It's best not to use compression, for both speed and quality. There are lossless codecs but they still involve some CPU overhead. I've found - at least on my hardware - that SER runs as fast as it can, and at small ROI such as those for Mars, I can match the published specs over USB 2.0.
I'd love a 14 but not sure my back would 
FWIW, I've been using 60fps/16.67ms with my C11, but obviously your 12" draws in more light. On my astro netbook it more or less halves my frame rate. YMMV depending on the oomph of your capture machine.
