I'm a newbie at planetary imaging, here are some tries from this month on Jupiter and Saturn. Seeing doesn't seem to be great, at 5600mm no matter what Astrospheric says.
Using Astrostakkert and Registax wavelets.
I captured a couple of images tonight before clouds rolled in.. one of them of Saturn isn't too bad. Still lots to figure out.
Shot with Edge 1100HD scope, no barlow, ASI224MC camera.
Terri
I shot some images on 9/3, only this time I used the TEC140 with stacked extenders. I used a 2X Powermate stacked with a Televue 2x barlow to create an F28 scope. The seeing had it's moments. I'm seeing just how sensitive that seeing is to getting detail, I'm also seeing the affect of different focal lengths. I'm using a color camera, ASi224MC with 3.75um pixels, which isn't great. I'd do better with a mono camera and a filter wheel. When I shot at only 2X, my stacks look ok but trying to get fine detail was difficult. I was getting all kinds of false artifacts. I needed the 4X to just get the details large enough to record accurately on my 3.75um pixels. You can decide.
They look darn good to me! It apparently was a steady night over a fairly large area. You can compare them to my images taken the same night. Evening of 9/2/2022 and morning of 9/3/2022.
Yours are noticeably smoother than my and show more detail but then you are using an astro camera designed for this type of imaging. Hard to tell how much of the difference the equipment and how much may have been better seeing at your place or differences in processing. I also overprocessed my images a bit. One thing you may notice on your Saturn image is a bluish edge on top and reddish on bottom. Saturn is low enough that atmospheric dispersion is a factor, especially in images. Less so with visual observations. On my Saturn image I have shifted the RGB channels to undue this effect.
Even being retired I have been finding it hard to find the time to muck with the planetary and Moon images I have been taking.
Jupiter
2022-09-03
1:12 AM EDT
10 inch f/5.6 (1407mm fl) Newtonian (Homemade with Coulter Optics)
Camera- Canon Rebel T7i
Exp 1/80 sec
ISO 3200
North - down
48" (Jupiter dia.)
Eyepiece Projection with 15mm eyepiece and 3x digital zoom (24,330mm efl f/96.3) (17.3x prime) (Field 0.051 x 0.033 deg) (184" x 119")
Stack of 500 frames from a 56 second video
Stacking - Registax 6
Other - Picture Window Pro 7
Besides stacking Registax was used to adjust the color balance. Picture Window Pro was used for to adjust the color balance, a little noise reduction and a little additional sharpening using it's unsharp mask function.
2022-09-03
11:48 PM EDT
10 inch f/5.6 (1407mm fl) Newtonian
Camera- Canon Rebel T7i
Exp 1/60 sec
ISO 6400
North - down
Eyepiece Projection with 15mm eyepiece and 3x digital zoom (actually 3.6x in this case though I did not adjust the following numbers to match the increased magnification) (24,330mm efl f/96.3) (17.3x prime) (Field 0.051 x 0.033 deg) (184" x 119")
Stack of 300 frames from a 49 second video
Stacking - Registax 6
Other - Picture Window Pro 7
Besides stacking Registax was used to adjust the registration of the RGB channels (Saturn is so low that atmospheric refraction separates the colors a little). Picture Window Pro was used for a little bit of a histogram stretch and color curves to adjust the color balance.
They look darn good to me! It apparently was a steady night over a fairly large area. You can compare them to my images taken the same night. Evening of 9/2/2022 and morning of 9/3/2022.
Yours are noticeably smoother than my and show more detail but then you are using an astro camera designed for this type of imaging. Hard to tell how much of the difference the equipment and how much may have been better seeing at your place or differences in processing. I also overprocessed my images a bit. One thing you may notice on your Saturn image is a bluish edge on top and reddish on bottom. Saturn is low enough that atmospheric dispersion is a factor, especially in images. Less so with visual observations. On my Saturn image I have shifted the RGB channels to undue this effect.
Even being retired I have been finding it hard to find the time to muck with the planetary and Moon images I have been taking.
Jupiter
2022-09-03
1:12 AM EDT10 inch f/5.6 (1407mm fl) Newtonian (Homemade with Coulter Optics)
Camera- Canon Rebel T7iExp 1/80 sec
ISO 3200
North - down
48" (Jupiter dia.)
Eyepiece Projection with 15mm eyepiece and 3x digital zoom (24,330mm efl f/96.3) (17.3x prime) (Field 0.051 x 0.033 deg) (184" x 119")
Stack of 500 frames from a 56 second video
Stacking - Registax 6
Other - Picture Window Pro 7
Besides stacking Registax was used to adjust the color balance. Picture Window Pro was used for to adjust the color balance, a little noise reduction and a little additional sharpening using it's unsharp mask function.Saturn
2022-09-03
11:48 PM EDT
10 inch f/5.6 (1407mm fl) Newtonian
Camera- Canon Rebel T7i
Exp 1/60 sec
ISO 6400
North - down
Eyepiece Projection with 15mm eyepiece and 3x digital zoom (actually 3.6x in this case though I did not adjust the following numbers to match the increased magnification) (24,330mm efl f/96.3) (17.3x prime) (Field 0.051 x 0.033 deg) (184" x 119")Stack of 300 frames from a 49 second video
Stacking - Registax 6
Other - Picture Window Pro 7Besides stacking Registax was used to adjust the registration of the RGB channels (Saturn is so low that atmospheric refraction separates the colors a little). Picture Window Pro was used for a little bit of a histogram stretch and color curves to adjust the color balance.
Paul, I’d say yours look darn good as well! When the seeing is good it makes all he difference. On color channel alignment, you can post process it as well. I thought I did post process it out but I guess I have to do more. I admit that it's difficult for me to see it through the eyepiece or even figure out how to tune it with the camera. I purposely took the ADC off because it was causing me more magnification (I believe). I had the Televue Powermate plugged into the diagonal, and the barlow plugged into the powermate. But I think the barlow has a tendency to change magnification based on the distance of the image sensor from the back of the barlow, and putting the ADC in there puts the sensor quite a ways away and believe increases magnification more. This plus the fact that I wasn't able to tune it out those nights very well.
terri
Wow. Every time I think I'm getting a handle on these things, I see posts that raise the bar and challenge me to get up that learning curve faster.
All of these planet images are great. Not sure how much further I'll get with a 6" SCT and smartphone, but I never thought I'd get as far as I have with an entry level setup like that.
Keep on posting. It's an inspiration.
I really didn't think that a 6" SCT and a smart phone would lead to this level of planetary imaging.
60 second 4K video using a 6" SCT w/ 12mm Possl and 2x Barlow. Captured with clamped Pixel 3 phone.
Not too shabby Scott. I'm not going to try figuring out the effective f/ratio or focal length. A 6" aperture has a good resolving power but the image does get dimmer fast when magnifying it for planetary imaging requiring a longer exposure than a larger scope operated at the same focal length.
FYI- I recently read that Cassini's division is only 0.8" wide! So getting it in any shot is good. I was thinking it was wider.
The NexStar 6 has an f/ratio of 10
Took a quick swag at calculating the specs of my setup using https://skyandtelescope.org/observing/telescope-calculator/
Focal Length: 3000mm (You are using a 2x Barlow lens)
Magnification: 250x
True Field of View: 0.1° (Less than half of the full Moon's disc would fit into the field of view)
Exit Pupil: 0.6 mm
Theoretical Resolving Power: 0.77 arcseconds
Approximate Limiting Magnitude of Telescope: +13.7 (under dark, moonless skies)
That's for when the 12mm eyepiece is used. I've used 9mm, too, which pushes the magnification to 333x, but that's a stretch for this scope.
The dimming due to the Barlow works to my advantage for Jupiter and Saturn, as it keeps the camera on the phone from over exposing the planets. Without it I resorted to using a neutral filter to get the image brightness within the phone's video exposure range.
Gave Jupiter another go with my expanding bag-of-tricks. I think I'm bumping up against the limit of my scope and phone at this point.
One more pass at the Jupiter video data from Friday night. The same stacked data as the previous image, but with a different set of wavelets applied to pull out the two moons in the original raw data. Io and Ganymede? I have not un-mirrored the image so it's reversed from what an Orrery would show for that night for Jupiter. The more aggressive wavlets have made the image of Jupiter much harsher as the cost for pulling out the moons.
Nice. I was going to mention that you could pull out a little more detail in Jupiter (I tried it myself the other day). That's as much or more that one can see through a telescope on a typical night. Is the time stamp the date and time you took the video? I don't know what the seeing was at the time but you may find that with better seeing you can get even better results.
One more pass at the Jupiter video data from Friday night. The same stacked data as the previous image, but with a different set of wavelets applied to pull out the two moons in the original raw data. Io and Ganymede? I have not un-mirrored the image so it's reversed from what an Orrery would show for that night for Jupiter. The more aggressive wavlets have made the image of Jupiter much harsher as the cost for pulling out the moons.
Scott, nice shots. One thing you can do in post processing is align color channels, which is what an ADC will do for you while doing visual. If you're using registax, you can align RGB channels with one of the functions in the array of boxes to the right. You can also do white balance. I think you have more in this data than you think, it just takes a bit more coaxing to get it out. One more thing, you might try Astrosurface.. a new program out there. I really like it and am phasing out of using Registax. It's much more responsive to use, and some things like aligning RGB are much faster and easier to judge. Give it a shot if you have time.
Terri
I've been working with the color alignment. Didn't realize how off it had gotten until I got to the final with the moons looking technicolor. My computer is a bit anemic by today's standards and I was working with a process window showing the planet. Hadn't expected to get much for the moons, and so wasn't paying them much attention until the final pass.
