swsands wrote:
Awesome images Ballard!! Would you please tell us what equipment and processes you used to capture these?
Hi swsands
Hi swsands
Thanks for viewing the images of Jupiter and Saturn and for the comment. Below is a list of the equipment and the processes used.
Hardware
Telescope - Meade LX200 16 inch Schmidt Cassegrain Telescope (F10 for 4096 mm focal Length).
Mount - Astro-Physics 1600GTO with Hi Res Shaft encoders. (uses a Astro Physics version 4 GTO controller)
Camera - QHY 290M (2.9 micron Pixel size) with a 5 position Starlight express Filter wheel (USB 3 connections).
Filters used - Lumicon 370 nanometer UV filter (used for Luminance as I found this gave a sharper image than the Luminance filter. Also used Red, Green and Blue Optolong filters.
Focuser is an OPTEC TCF Leo for fine focusing.
Lenovo Think Pad Laptop to control everything
5 port Gigabit Ethernet switch to connect the Mount and Focuser to the Laptop and remote the laptop interface to my desktop. This allows me to run everything from my desktop and not get eaten by mosquitoes.
Software used
Astro-Physics Command Center Pro along with appropriate ASCOM drivers for interfaces to all the devices.
SKY-X Serious Astronomer Edition for initial positioning of the telescope and to plan the imaging session (e.g. were are the moons of the planets the height above the horizon, transit time, etc).
FireCapture for camera and filter wheel control also records the timing of the images for later derotation of the images. (FreeWare program).
Image processing
AutoStakkert (FreeWare program) for stacking the .ser video files captured with Firecapture.
WinJUPOS (FreeWare program) to derotate the planet images and combine the LRGB images (For Jupiter each video is 60 seconds long and so it takes at least 4 minutes for each image and Jupiter rotates so fast that it is necessary to derotate the image for alignment to keep the image from bluring due to the rotation. Same with Saturn it is just not quite as fast.
Pixinsight is used for sharpening, denoise tweaking the image color.
Picture window Pro version 7 is used for some minor cleanup and conversion to Jpegs.
I'm still learning how to do this stuff but getting better. My newest experiment with the UV in place of Luminance was my latest learning experience.
If you have any other questions, please let me know.
Note: Some of the equipment techniques and software used are different for my deep sky images.
I recently set up a website where I post many of my astronomical and other shots (Still a work in progress and I plan to add documentation to images haven't done so yet) Feel free to check it out at
https://ballardbare.smugmug.com/You can download any of the images there (The site provider has an option to have prints made, I haven't tried that service yet since it cost money and usually just print the images I want myself). If you have any suggestions for the site let me know.