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Old 02-09-2021, 02:45 PM
Dave882 (David)
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Imaging across the solar system: Saturn / Jupiter / Mercury / Neptune / Venus

Some good conditions on and off for the last few days and after spending some time with the usual subjects thought I'd have a crack at some targets that don't get much attention...

I always wondered how my ASI294mc pro would handle the lucky imaging stuff so just kept it on the rig after some other messing around to see how it went. Quite surprised actually how good it handled the fast frame rates and with the bigger sensor was much easier finding targets in the daylight. Was planning to do a comparison with the 224mc last night but yeah those clouds come through earlier than expected!

Neptune 2/9: (first time attempt so wasn't quite sure how to approach this!! Triton showed easily on my preview shot but could not catch it on the AVI for some stupid reason . Not confident those surface features are anything other than stacking artefacts...)
124sec
200ms
5fps
500 gain
best 20%

Jupiter 29/8:
60sec
9ms
96fps
300 gain
best 30%

Saturn 2/9: (Some weirdness in the rings going on maybe b/c too long a video..need to work out how to use winjupos i think!
180sec
15ms exp
66fps
400 gain
best 50%

Mercury 2/9 5.47pm: (First time attempt and had trouble trying to focus and got some ghosting the edges which reduced with contrast/brightness adjustment)
181sec
3ms
107fps (not bad for a DSO camera ay!)
300 gain
best 10%

Venus 1/9 5.54pm:
240sec
1ms
112fps ()
250gain
best 10%

All on the 10" LX50 + 1.8x Barlow
ASI294mc PRO (cooled to -10 for the daylight shots)
Baader UV/IR cut filter
AS!3
Registax6
PSexpress


Anyways here you go - would love your comments/advice for next time!!
Cheers
Dave
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Last edited by Dave882; 03-09-2021 at 07:39 PM.
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  #2  
Old 02-09-2021, 03:57 PM
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rustigsmed (Russell)
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excellent work David - neptune and Mercury are also on my list to do. these are great. Venus is excellent too btw.
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Old 02-09-2021, 03:59 PM
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multiweb (Marc)
ze frogginator

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Nice set of pics.
I really like your Mercury shot. Lots of details. I tried it last night and it was a write off. Lots of shimmering. Then I realised it's just above the neighbourg's roof.
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Old 02-09-2021, 04:03 PM
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Retrograde (Pete)
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Great collection of images David.

Detail on Mercury - woah!
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Old 02-09-2021, 08:30 PM
Dave882 (David)
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Cheers Marc- Mercury was extremely challenging as it was low over my roof too! I forgot to mention in the post that I had the zwo adc hooked up and did notice quite a difference with what was displayed on screen (big smudge vs slightly more defined smudge). Unfortunately I had to deal with some issues with the rig so couldn’t get it any earlier.

Thanks Pete- I really hope some more people take on the challenge because it’s hard to process it blindly with not much to gauge your results by. I was actually very very surprised when even that amount of detail popped out.

Thanks Russell- look forward to seeing what you can come up with. Neptune will be at opposition on 14th Sept. and Mercury at greatest separation from the sun about the same so best chances are just around the corner!!
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Old 02-09-2021, 09:46 PM
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Camelopardalis (Dunk)
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Nice shots Dave well done!
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Old 03-09-2021, 12:06 AM
Dave882 (David)
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Thanks Dunk! Been loving your work on the planets as well mate
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Old 03-09-2021, 06:17 AM
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leon
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Wow that is impressive David, such clarity, well done indeed.

Leon
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Old 03-09-2021, 09:35 AM
Saturnine (Jeff)
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That is a fine set of images though Mercury is a hard one , never far enough
from the horizon to capture in steadier air and Neptune is a small dot for us. Are Uranus and Mars are next ? Though realistically, Mars will have to wait until next year.
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Old 03-09-2021, 10:44 AM
Dave882 (David)
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Thanks Leon and Jeff.

Well I had a grand plan to try and get all 7 of them… actually had a go at Mars being careful not to approach via the sun (uv/ir cut filter in place). Bad idea. Well I could actually view it but then the camera sensor started going crazy and took about an hour to settle back down again. Thought I’d destroyed it but thank goodness it’s ok.

Uranus for some reason I’ve found to be very challenging.. I’ve got about 4 different sets of data with different exposures and just tying to figure out if I can get one of them to work. Really messy. Will post later today hopefully.
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Old 03-09-2021, 07:47 PM
Dave882 (David)
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Just added Uranus with the same setup. Was up pretty late and got it at about 36degrees.

3.3fps
600sec
500 gain
Best 5%

Very poor data and was honestly happy just to come out with a result that was the right shape! Back to the drawing board on this one I think.

Cheers and thanks for looking
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Old 04-09-2021, 10:33 AM
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Tulloch (Andrew)
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You have some nice images there, especially Saturn. Don't worry about the "weirdness" in the rings, they are just sharpening effects, WinJupos won't/can't remove that. Is the blue dot on the Neptune image Triton? If not, it's pretty easy to extract from the stacked image of Neptune, the moons of Uranus are much harder .

Just a little advice for next time if you don't mind

Capture Jupiter for 3 minutes, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune for 5. Don't worry about planetary rotational blurring at those time periods, but you may see some field rotation when you are looking for the moons (which can be removed in Autostakkert if you want). I assume you are on an alt/az mount (like me).

The detail you are seeing in Neptune is just sharpened noise, but you should be able to easily bring up Triton in Photoshop.

I use following settings on my C9.25" SCT, 2.5x Powermate and ASI224MC camera which you might want to use as a guide for next time:

Jupiter: 6.66ms shutter, 280 gain, 150 fps, 3 min
Saturn: 10ms shutter, 380 gain, 100 fps, 5 min
Uranus: 50ms shutter , 400-450 gain, 20 fps, 5 min
Neptune: 50ms shutter, 500 gain, 20 fps, 5 min

I tried Mercury and Venus recently, for Mercury I captured over a quarter of a million frames over 10 minutes at 425 fps, Venus 230 fps, but didn't capture any details on either one.

Excellent job, keep up the good work!
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Old 04-09-2021, 04:23 PM
Dave882 (David)
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Hi Andrew thanks so much for taking the time to share some of your experience! I notice that your exposure times are significantly less than I’ve been using- which I can only imagine is an advantage to get clearer images. Only thing is that my live view seems extremely dim when I tried those kind of exposures which is why I went longer. Do you just boost the brightness during processing?

Also, I attached the single ‘preview shot’ displayed for Neptune which clearly shows Triton. But nowhere to be seen on the AVI. So it doesn’t get any attention during the stacking I guess. Not sure the reason for this. And yes, I’m sure you’re right about the sharpening artefacts!
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Old 04-09-2021, 06:48 PM
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Tulloch (Andrew)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Dave882 View Post
Hi Andrew thanks so much for taking the time to share some of your experience! I notice that your exposure times are significantly less than I’ve been using- which I can only imagine is an advantage to get clearer images. Only thing is that my live view seems extremely dim when I tried those kind of exposures which is why I went longer. Do you just boost the brightness during processing?

Also, I attached the single ‘preview shot’ displayed for Neptune which clearly shows Triton. But nowhere to be seen on the AVI. So it doesn’t get any attention during the stacking I guess. Not sure the reason for this. And yes, I’m sure you’re right about the sharpening artefacts!
No worries, note that these values are for the ASI224MC, not the the camera you were using. I aim for a 50% filled histogram for my captures (I use Firecapture) and these values work for me (at f/21).

If you have the original 16 bit stacked image from AS!3, you should be able to use the "levels" tool in Photoshop/Gimp/Registax to bring up Triton. Select it, add it as a separate layer to the well-exposed Neptune, and there you go! Here is a bit of a tutorial I gave for Uranus' moons which are more difficult than for Triton.
https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/7...21/?p=10827783

Andrew
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Old 04-09-2021, 08:01 PM
Dave882 (David)
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Actually that’s really helpful thanks Andrew. Really keen to get those moons Definitely will have a go using that workflow. Cheers
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