Saturn 15th Brisbane

[carlstronomy (Carl)]

After a week of poor weather and bad seeing I have 3 images of Saturn I would like to share.
I would also like to mention that none of these images would be possible without the genersoity of Poita who has kindly loaned me his DBK21 for a couple of weeks, thanks Poita
All 3 images are from the same AVI but processed 3 different ways with wavelets, I am trialing different methods.
As I am very new to this and have little if no experience I am very happy with the images (but there is always room for improvement).
So feedback both good and bad is requested as without it I can not improve.
I have 10 other AVI from tonight to process and will post more images if they are any better.

Seeing 7-8 (very stable)
No ground wind speed
Jet stream 60 knots
Collimation 90-95% (still learning)

Thanks
Carl

[Poita (Peter)]

Wow, what an improvement over the previous capture!
Nice detail in the bands.
It looks like seeing was good enough to be able to push the magnification an bit more with a barlow or powermate.
Well done.

[Shiraz (Ray)]

nice result - particularly like the processing on the third image. agree with peter that a bit more magnification may be useful. Regards ray

[Clayton]

Well done Carl

[asimov (John)]

Nice work Carl. The old version of the DBK was quite a nice camera but the 618 chipped version is just so much better again...If you get the chance...

Are you stacking in Autostakkert? if so you could try a 1.5X drizzle (& reduce before posting if necessary) to get some scale.

[carlstronomy (Carl)]

Thanks everyone for the feedback.

Poita, I used a 2x Barlow and yes perhaps now looking back I should have used my 3x also and have a go but it did no cross my mind at the time.

Ray, the first two images are Registax wavelet schemes by Peter Lloyd, the third is one I have messed around with myself and it does give a better effect on the rings but I thought I lost a little colour and definition on the planet surface as it leaves the image a little more grainy which I have to remove in PS with the denoise option, but it does come up well.

[carlstronomy (Carl)]

Thanks, I asume the 618 camera is only a little better than the original version but at present the original version is really the only one in my price range and its looking like the way I shall go (for now, as I have only just purchased the scope)

The images were completed in Registax from start to finish it used all 4000 frames at 60% saved and gave the results you can see.

Autostakkert has not done well for me. It sempt to work for my old Vesta Pro AVI's but the results with the DBK have not been as good at all. (or so I think)

When I loaded this AVI in AutoStakkert it only loaded 20% and fell to 0% quality and a red line saying it could not load the frame. I then used Castrator which dropped the frames to 1600 and then loaded into AutoStakkerat. The image seems to be okay but I am not sure as I lost so much data.

Some feed back on this image would be good it is the same AVI as the previous three done with the above process Castrator and AutoStakkert and I used the same wavelet scheme as the third of the first group.

I tried drizzle on Registax and that gave me a lower quality image which I was not happy with, drizzle on Autostakkert left a section of Saturn missing as if someone had cut it out with scissors very strange. Any advice on processing would be great as I seem to struggling a bit with this.

Thanks
Carl

Originally Posted by asimov

Nice work Carl. The old version of the DBK was quite a nice camera but the 618 chipped version is just so much better again...If you get the chance...

Are you stacking in Autostakkert? if so you could try a 1.5X drizzle (& reduce before posting if necessary) to get some scale.

[asimov (John)]

Well, I'd say the 618 is quite aways ahead of the old version. Even in relatively ordinary seeing I'm getting ok results whereas the old cam wouldn't have been up to the task. Depends on the type of seeing of course. I'd still be happy enough with the old cam had I not tried the new one naturally. Hindsight..

I've heard of others having similar problems with Autostakkert but I must say I've not experienced any such problems. It does have codec problems - I only shoot using Y800 + Y800 & leave debayering up to Autostakkert.

Last image posted is by far the best.

[Clayton]

Originally Posted by carlstronomy

Autostakkert has not done well for me. It sempt to work for my old Vesta Pro AVI's but the results with the DBK have not been as good at all. (or so I think)

When I loaded this AVI in AutoStakkert it only loaded 20% and fell to 0% quality and a red line saying it could not load the frame. I then used Castrator which dropped the frames to 1600 and then loaded into AutoStakkerat. The image seems to be okay but I am not sure as I lost so much data.

Some feed back on this image would be good it is the same AVI as the previous three done with the above process Castrator and AutoStakkert and I used the same wavelet scheme as the third of the first group.

I tried drizzle on Registax and that gave me a lower quality image which I was not happy with, drizzle on Autostakkert left a section of Saturn missing as if someone had cut it out with scissors very strange. Any advice on processing would be great as I seem to struggling a bit with this.

Thanks
Carl

Carl,
Castrator is an intergral part of AS!2, so in theory there is no advantage in using it as well. It sounds like there was another problem with the AVI??
Perhaps it would benefit from a run through Virtual Dub, to try to fix any problems and check that there are no planet excursions out of or partly out of the frame?

[carlstronomy (Carl)]

Asimov, thanks I will give that ago I have been using YUY2 - RGB24 so that could be my problems. I just had a try with Y800-Y800 settings in my lounge room, all seemed good but I notice you have to turn on DeBayering to set the histogram levels and then turn it off to record is this correct? I went away from Y800 as a had black and white images and no histogram to adjust, you learn from your mistakes
I also noticed there are 4 force debayer modes is Autostakkert does it matter which I use?

Clayton, thanks for the advice on the AVI, no excursions it was my best ever alignment. I think as Asimov pointed out it looks like it may be the codecs and contrainer choice I had used to attempt to get a histogram, not realising I could turn on and of DeBayering to achieve this so I did not need the RGB24 setting along with YUY2. I have attached an image of my AVI in AS!2 before castrator and as you can see most was an unusable red line and it would not proceed. The second is after castrator so using castrator can help although I lost 50% the AVI when it went into AS!2 it still gave a better result than the 100% of frames stacked throught registax.
Castrator may still be handy if AS!2 wont load the AVI.

[asimov (John)]

That's correct Carl; with Y800 + Y800 you would turn debayering on just to adjust the colour balance, making sure it's off before capturing. A mono AVI with be the result everytime if you don't.

The best colour codec to use if you have to, is YUY2 + unspecified but the limit is 30FPS which is ok for Saturn.