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Jupiter and Saturn the other night.
Oct 24, 2021 16:42:30   #
Ballard Loc: Grass Valley, California
 
When the moon was becoming to bright for deep sky shots and just before the storms hit the other day I took a few planetary shots at 8000mm focal length with a Meade 16 inch Schmidt Cassigrain. The sky wasn't great (~2 arcsecond seeing) but it was a bit calmer the first night when Jupiter's red spot was visible. 24 hours later Jupiter had rotated ~ 2.4 times so you cold see the other side. I also got a shot of Saturn the second night. These images are stacks of Luminance, Red, Blue and Green images (Each stack was made from 1 minute videos and stacked with AutoSakkert). I used ~ 50% of the frames which was around 1 to 2K frames for each stack which varied due to the brightness which was adjusted for using frame rate and gain. Once the images where stacked, I ran each stack through Registax6 to improve clarity with wavelet processing. The images where combined into full color images with WinJUPOS which also de-rotated the images to compensate for the planets fast rate of rotation. (I probably should have kept Jupiter down to 30 second videos to prevent blurring from planetary rotation which isn't corrected before the stacking). All questions comments and suggestions are welcome.

In the next few years as Jupiter and Saturn get higher in the sky the images should improve a lot.
In the next few years as Jupiter and Saturn get hi...
(Download)

Jupiter 24 hours later (~2.4 rotations later) showing the other side.
Jupiter 24 hours later (~2.4 rotations later) show...
(Download)

Saturn image taken on the second night just before the storms moved in
Saturn image taken on the second night just before...
(Download)

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Oct 25, 2021 07:41:06   #
Marc G Loc: East Grinstead, West Sussex, England
 
very nice indeed

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Oct 25, 2021 08:58:43   #
MWojton Loc: Yardley, PA
 
Its amazing that you can get that much detail of objects millions of miles away.

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Oct 25, 2021 11:12:04   #
Ballard Loc: Grass Valley, California
 
MWojton wrote:
Its amazing that you can get that much detail of objects millions of miles away.


Hi MWojton
Thanks for viewing the images of Jupiter and Saturn and for the comment. I've still got a lot more to learn on how to best process these images but I'm slowly getting better. I expect that I'll be able to get better data to use in a few years when these planets get higher in the sky as continue in there orbit around the sun.

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Oct 25, 2021 11:50:25   #
gekko11 Loc: Las Cruces NM
 
VERY well done!

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Oct 25, 2021 12:18:57   #
Ballard Loc: Grass Valley, California
 
gekko11 wrote:
VERY well done!


Hi gekko11
Thanks for viewing the images of Saturn and Jupiter and for the comment.

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Oct 26, 2021 11:26:21   #
SonnyE Loc: Communist California, USA
 
Beautiful Images, Ballard!

HUGE telescope!

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Oct 26, 2021 11:33:19   #
Ballard Loc: Grass Valley, California
 
SonnyE wrote:
Beautiful Images, Ballard!

HUGE telescope!


Hi SonnyE
Thanks for checking out the images of Jupiter and Saturn. I'm still learning how to best process these images.

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Oct 26, 2021 12:05:56   #
SonnyE Loc: Communist California, USA
 
Ballard wrote:
Hi SonnyE
Thanks for checking out the images of Jupiter and Saturn. I'm still learning how to best process these images.


I'm still fighting the man made light pollution.
And still wondering about processing.


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Oct 26, 2021 12:19:03   #
Ballard Loc: Grass Valley, California
 
SonnyE wrote:
I'm still fighting the man made light pollution.
And still wondering about processing.



For deep sky the narrow band filters work well on deep sky but require many hours of exposure. The processing on all astrophotography is a continuous learning experience and a lot a trial and a error (heavy on the error side), but occasionally it works well.

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Nov 15, 2021 11:54:18   #
Ballard Loc: Grass Valley, California
 
Marc G wrote:
very nice indeed


Hi Marc G
Thanks for checking out the images of Jupiter and Saturn and for the comment.

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Nov 19, 2021 07:45:24   #
stepping beyond Loc: usa eastcoast
 
Ballard , looking good! Planetary imaging and processing is a real booger , your doing a lot better than my attempts. I shot 2000 frame avi's for each channel , I've got a small window before it gets over my house and into trees . I do enjoy looking at all the planetary images .

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Nov 19, 2021 12:42:33   #
Ballard Loc: Grass Valley, California
 
stepping beyond wrote:
Ballard , looking good! Planetary imaging and processing is a real booger , your doing a lot better than my attempts. I shot 2000 frame avi's for each channel , I've got a small window before it gets over my house and into trees . I do enjoy looking at all the planetary images .


Hi stepping beyond
Thanks for checking out the Planetary images and for the comment. It is definitely a challenge to get decent shots of the planets. The seeing hasn't been great lately, in a few years Jupiter and Saturn will get higher in the sky and should be better. I have found that Winjupos works well for de-rotation of the image but you need to do the planetary alignment very carefully to get the best results, which can be tricky particularly with the blue channel that is most affected by seeing.

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