Jupiter and moons

[devilgas]

Re: Jupiter and moons

not sure what happened with the colour in this, but this was from monday evening. the great red spot is a little drab



it's 500 frames of vga video stacked in registax. shot using a 1100mm telescope with a 4x barlow lens - this made it quite a challenge to find jupiter on the computer screen as a small movement of the scope results in the image flying across the screen.
quite pleased with the detail i've managed to get from the clouds, and it was also my first capture of the GRS (great red spot). just a shame i didn't capture the colours

[Ian]

Re: Jupiter and moons

I think my problem wit registax is aligning the layers?

Ian

[devilgas]

Re: Jupiter and moons

I think my problem wit registax is aligning the layers?

Ian

for the image above, i simply picked an align box size of 250px x 250px and plonked jupiter in the middle. it then aligned all the frames of the video perfectly, even getting rid of the dust on the webcam sensor / IR filter. as your images are smaller, then you can reduce the align box size accordingly.

processing individual images is the same. when you open the source file, simply select all of the relevant images and it imports each individual frame - i do this with the solar shots.

most settings you can leave on default. the only stuff i tend to fiddle with is the wavelets settings and the align box size.

hth!

[Ian]

Re: Jupiter and moons

Ah - OK, it probably means my images were not good enough to align automatically - which is no surprse!

Ian

[devilgas]

Re: Jupiter and moons

choose an align box size that is sufficient to get all of jupiter within it. on clicking, registax will then probably choose a specific point on jupiter. it will also reject poor quality frames.

file formats - the above image was produced from video. there were a fair amount of dust specs on the webcam sensor / ir filter, however as it was windy when i shot the video, there was a bit of wobble with the image. the aligning and stacking process did a brilliant job of getting rid of ALL of the dust mites.

so, as previously said, a super-high quality file isn't important, but the number of images is. the more frames you have, the better the end image will be. if i get chance, i'll take a single frame grab from the video and post that as a 1 v many example.
high ISO is not a problem as the stacking etc gets rid of most of the noise, however shooting a blurred image to begin with is a problem.
my latest jupiter above is lacking in sharpness as using the 4x barlow has softened the image a bit.

focus is also critical. you'd think you can dial in infinity and be done with it, but that's not necessarily the case. if i'm shooting through the 200 2.8L then getting the correct focus is still quite difficult. i make my life easy by using something called a bahtinov mask. i've got a 70mm one for the camera glass and a 200mm one for the scope. getting bang on focus then becomes simple.

finally, if you want to get a decent exposure of jupiter and see the moons, then combine 2 shots. 1 exposed for the moons (jupiter will be massively over-exposed) and the other for jupiter (moons probably hidden). the jupiter one needs to come from a stack though

[devilgas]

Re: Jupiter and moons

choose an align box size that is sufficient to get all of jupiter within it. on clicking, registax will then probably choose a specific point on jupiter. it will also reject poor quality frames.

if i get chance, i'll take a single frame grab from the video and post that as a 1 v many example.

here's a screen grab of what i use for the alignment process. the little green circle in the centre of jupiter is added by registax AFTER choosing the alignment area. the white box is the alignment area and corresponds to the alignbox size as per the left panel.

you can see how bad a single frame of video actually is. compare that to the image posted above and it becomes quite clear what reigstax does and why it needs LOTS of images to work with....