OK,
managed 1 last throw of the dice last night trying to get all the factors right for a no stacking, no traking, handheld shot single shot.
The sky was crystal clear as I trolley'd the dob from under the back patio out to the backyard for it to cool. We had been having some cool evenings in Brisveags of late, but last night was comparitively warm - so the drop off in temp wasn't severe and I think my optics keep up to the ambient pretty well. Of course when I first vetured outside after 'processing' the kids for bed patches of cloud had rolled in.
I ventured outside every hour or so and managed to get some shots earlier, but the veiw through the eyepiece was a bit ordinary (seeing about 4-5/10) and this showed in the lack of detail visible in those shots. There was still a bit of cloud scattered around so I didn't expect much more than this.
Later I went outside to check on the GRS and the sucker holes had grown to be reasonablly large. The seeing had also settled down well to probably 7/10. I snapped off some shots of the GRS coming around. When I came out to get some shots of the GRS at the meridian the clouds were back and the seeing had gone right away in the sucker holes. When I later came out to check on things the seeing had improved again so I got a few more shots of the GRS in transit.
I stayed up and managed to get Europa's shadow on the planet and Europa about to start its transit. I didn't take as many shots then as I was up on a step ladder and with the dredded dob hole making it harder to move the scope such that the planet would be at the right part of the eyepiece. Anyway of the few shots I got there were two reasonable ones, and one of these appears below.
I have presented the original image that has been cropped and resized a little to fit inside the processing area of registax. Along with this is the final image after processing. The wavelet settings (for those playing at home) for these images are:
1) (GRS before meridian) 1,1,1,13.8,24.6,38.8
2) (GRS after meridian) 1,1,1,10.5,24.6,38.1
3) (Europa shadow enrty) 1,1,1,7.8,19.2,54.9
nothing really special about these wavelet settings accept I only play with the last three (4,5,& 6) and I have them incrementally get bigger.
I have also adjusted the gamma and that seems to help bring out the detail by adding 'weight' to the colours - especially as these are single shots. I have done a screen grab of the gamma setting I used in registax
Overall, I don't think these are any better that the other ones I have entered, just that they are different.
I must say that as a 'visual' guy I have certainly had fun with this comp - just keep that between us though....don't want to ruin my rep
Took me ages to get my act together and get my pics processed. I was a bit slow because I didn't really like my results. Gonna try again, but the jetstream doesn't want to agree with me.
. Considering how little light I'm collecting I'm surprised at the images I'm able to get.
Not the case! It's harder than I thought..
