Another Mars and Saturn

Mickoid (Michael) · #1 16-08-2016, 11:22 PM

I took these last night with the 8 inch Newt and the 550d. Because these planets are losing magnitude and getting smaller I had to shoot them at f15 to gain some brightness, at the expense of a lower magnification but it's fun having a go while these planets still shine overhead.

wasyoungonce (Brendan) · #2 17-08-2016, 08:50 AM

Very nice Michael. Good detail. Its always a trade off between F number and surface brightness. The only way to improve is...a bigger light bucket. Which in itself is a whole new set of difficulties.

Mickoid (Michael) · #3 17-08-2016, 10:41 AM

Thanks Brendan, I agree, the planets now are best left to those with larger fast scopes and CCD cameras to match. They just look too tempting when you walk outside and see them up there begging in a clear night sky.

wasyoungonce (Brendan) · #4 17-08-2016, 11:23 AM

Traditionally most planetary images use of SCT is best for planets, because, of their wide aperture compact nature and usually native F10. A 2X Barlow (or powermates) giving you F20 native which is a nice sweet spot, and on real good nights....F30 and more. But they usually use 12" and up SCTs.

That said, the atmosphere dances around so much at this large F ratio and the SCT cool down time is an issue. Really they probably get very few nights at F30 or more. Depends where they image.

An 8" newt is a damn good all rounder trade off. Cools down quicker, and a good light bucket to boot. Yes I know the lure of the celestial bodies...I howl at the moon

. Keep it up your doing well and obviously enjoying it.

Oh meant to ask...did you take lots of shots and stack them or use the video function and how did you process? A lot of people get good ideas on the work of others. Its probably a good idea to mention.

Mickoid (Michael) · #5 17-08-2016, 01:16 PM

I've posted a few planetary shots up before and my steps to producing them is the same. I take several minutes video capture in movie crop mode, process and convert to AVI in Pipp, stack in AutoStakert then adjust the tif file with wavelets in Registax. As with most of the saved files from Registax, I invariably adjust contrast, colour, saturation, cropping/resizing and further denoising in Photoshop.
It's amazing the detail Registax can exude from such a soft image and also how different a result you can achieve by subtle adjustments to the sliders. You can reprocess the same file and come up with a completely different result - sometimes better, sometimes worse. Half the fun of astrophotography is the post processing on the computer, my wife does not agree!

wasyoungonce (Brendan) · #6 17-08-2016, 01:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mickoid

.....the planets now are best left to those with larger fast scopes and CCD cameras to match. ....

Noes...get on out and do. You are doing well and showing it doesn't take a million dollars.