Neptune and Uranus 8 Nov 2014

[Sebbie (Sebastian)]

Good evening everyone,

I thought I will have another go at the outer giants, this time with the ASI colour cam. Conditions were pretty good last night with steady seeing and not too much wind. It was a warm evening here in Canberra ( which was nice apart from occasional mosquito or two ).

As always focusing proved a challenge on targets that small.. even with the assistance of Meade microfocuser I found it hard to get the optimum sharpness for these <4" disks. There was also some high level cloud around which made things even more difficult. I've used TeleVue 3x Barlow and following FireCapture settings: FPS: 1, Gain: 87, Gamma: 50, Window Size: 320x240.

Both are drizzle stacks of best 100 frames - Neptune was a 30 minute avi taken between 9:00 and 9:30 pm LT, Uranus a 15 minute capture between 10:22 and 10:38 pm. Debayered in AS!2 (using colour auto detect), RGB Aligned in Registax and Deconvolved / Gamma adjusted in AstraImage. Final touches in ACDsee / Photoshop CS6.

Full res images:
http://astrob.in/full/135054/0/
http://astrob.in/full/135056/0/
http://astrob.in/full/135057/0/

Thanks for having a look.

Rgds, Sebastian

[lepton3 (Ivan)]

Excellent result. Your technique is very good to be able to make the most of a good seeing opportunity.

-Ivan

[kkara4 (Krishan)]

Sebastian, these are fantastic! I know how hard it is to image these planets after my first attempt on the same night as you lol.

When you selected the "best" 100 frames, did you do this manually or let Registax decide on the best 100? I'm not sure I trust Registax and my processing method at the moment, but that is im sure due to my lack of understanding how the program works in regards to limiting frames to stack!

[Rod771 (Rod)]

Wow! Really nice work. Well done!

[John Hothersall]

That is a decent set, always wanted to get Neptune but not had the window of good seeing. Long fl means fewer fps especially for Neptune, my limit would be at 10 meters for both U+N - but at least WJupos lets you get more frames.

Well Done Sebbie.

[Sebbie (Sebastian)]

Originally Posted by lepton3

Your technique is very good to be able to make the most of a good seeing opportunity.
-Ivan

Thanks for kind words Ivan. It's always great to hear your efforts appreciated. Planetary imaging is always challenging and very dependant on seeing conditions.

Originally Posted by kkara4

Sebastian, these are fantastic! I know how hard it is to image these planets after my first attempt on the same night as you lol.
When you selected the "best" 100 frames, did you do this manually or let Registax decide on the best 100?

Thanks, I tend to use AutoStakkert rather than Registax for colour decoding and image stacking. Analyse function automatically orders exposures based on quality, in this case best 100 frames have the rating of 75% or higher.

Originally Posted by Rod771

Wow! Really nice work. Well done!

Thanks Rod.

Originally Posted by John Hothersall

Long fl means fewer fps especially for Neptune, my limit would be at 10 meters for both U+N - but at least WJupos lets you get more frames.
Well Done Sebbie.

Thanks John, I think you mean 10 minutes ( ie. 600 frames )? Haven't tried WinJupos here but may experiment by splitting the respective avis into shorter intervals and derotating.

[kkara4 (Krishan)]

Originally Posted by Sebbie

Thanks, I tend to use AutoStakkert rather than Registax for colour decoding and image stacking. Analyse function automatically orders exposures based on quality, in this case best 100 frames have the rating of 75% or higher.

Ah thankyou Sebastian. I can never get AutoStakkert to work properly, so ill stick with Registax!