A few more planetary shots
Oct 20, 2020 12:13:17 #
Ballard
Loc: Grass Valley, California
J-SPEIGHT wrote:
Outstanding set of images
Hi J-SPEIGHT
Thanks for the comment. I'm getting better, but I could still use some calmer skies. The videos looks like someone shaking jello really fast.
Oct 20, 2020 12:17:48 #
Ballard
Loc: Grass Valley, California
ad9mac wrote:
Back in the 1970s I had access to a 12 1/2" Newtonian. Took a lot of photos , on film of course.
Mars was making a close pass, 1976(?).
But these a waaay better than anything I took.
Very nice.
Mars was making a close pass, 1976(?).
But these a waaay better than anything I took.
Very nice.
Hi ad9mac.
Thanks for the comment. With today's digital cameras and software to stack 1000's of images it makes it a lot easier to get a decent image. The video used for stacking these images shows the planets wobbling like crazy due to the mediocre seeing. I expect if I get a really calm night the images would improve a far amount.
Oct 20, 2020 12:24:23 #
Ballard
Loc: Grass Valley, California
Moondoggie wrote:
Terrific images. Saturn is spectacular!
Hi Moondoggie
Thanks for the comment. It was better than the other day and you can almost make out the hexagonal cloud on the top of the Saturn. I expect that some calmer skies would really help. In a few years Jupiter and Saturn will be higher in the sky for folks in the northern Hemisphere and that will be a prime time for imaging. In the mean time I'm hoping for calmer skies that would also help a lot.
Oct 20, 2020 12:25:16 #
Ballard
Loc: Grass Valley, California
nimbushopper wrote:
Hi nimbushopper
Thanks for the Thumbs up on the images.
Oct 20, 2020 12:26:00 #
Oct 20, 2020 12:26:45 #
Ballard
Loc: Grass Valley, California
tcthome wrote:
Cool work.
Hi tcthome
Thanks for the comment and checking out the images.
Oct 20, 2020 13:25:51 #
Oct 20, 2020 13:31:13 #
Ballard
Loc: Grass Valley, California
Davoallen wrote:
Super shots.
Hi Davoallen
Thanks for checking out the shots and for the comment.
Oct 20, 2020 13:42:07 #
shangyrhee
Loc: Nashville TN to Sacramento CA
Technically & aesthetically admirable series !!! Thank you for sharing. Shang
Oct 20, 2020 13:43:53 #
Ballard
Loc: Grass Valley, California
shangyrhee wrote:
Technically & aesthetically admirable series !!! Thank you for sharing. Shang
Hi shangyrhee
Thanks for checking out the images.
Oct 20, 2020 14:19:04 #
Ballard wrote:
Last night the sky was slightly better (seeing 4 o... (show quote)
Looking at your excellent planetary photos I am going to sell my modest telescope because it is impossible to see someting like your shots.
Oct 20, 2020 15:06:44 #
Ballard
Loc: Grass Valley, California
I just tried an experiment to leave out the luminance image from mars and build the image from only using the RGB images. I think this gave a slightly better image.
Oct 20, 2020 15:15:09 #
Ballard
Loc: Grass Valley, California
reguli wrote:
Looking at your excellent planetary photos I am going to sell my modest telescope because it is impossible to see someting like your shots.
Hi reguli
Thanks for the comment. When looking through the telescope eyepiece it is a rare night that the images look as good as the photos. These images where created by stacking 1000's of frames from video I took through the telescope. The freeware program AutoStakkert along with PIPP and Registax6 allowed me to greatly improve the signal to noise ratio of the images captured. Calmer skies however would help get even better images.
Oct 20, 2020 15:22:19 #
Ballard wrote:
Hi reguli
Thanks for the comment. When looking through the telescope eyepiece it is a rare night that the images look as good as the photos. These images where created by stacking 1000's of frames from video I took through the telescope. The freeware program AutoStakkert along with PIPP and Registax6 allowed me to greatly improve the signal to noise ratio of the images captured. Calmer skies however would help get even better images.
Thanks for the comment. When looking through the telescope eyepiece it is a rare night that the images look as good as the photos. These images where created by stacking 1000's of frames from video I took through the telescope. The freeware program AutoStakkert along with PIPP and Registax6 allowed me to greatly improve the signal to noise ratio of the images captured. Calmer skies however would help get even better images.
Thank you for the info. I only know registax6. The other two are new for me.
Oct 20, 2020 15:47:02 #
Ballard
Loc: Grass Valley, California
reguli wrote:
Thank you for the info. I only know registax6. The other two are new for me.
PIPP is the Planetary Imaging PreProcessor that I use to stabilize the image and kept the best images. I then pass that to AutoStakkert for stacking the image and then use Registax6 wavelet processing and color alignment tools. I typically don't use Registax6 for stacking since it is a 32bit program and cannot handle large video files (runs out of memory), while PIPP and Autostakkert are 64bit programs and handle the large video files fine. The other freeware program I used is WinJUPOS. This program allows me to easily combine the separate color channels together and to slightly de-rotate planetary images which is very useful particularly for Jupiter which has a high rotation speed. Each individual color channel was taken as a 1 minute video and with Jupiter anything longer than 1 minute will start to smear out due to its rotation speed. WinJUPOS compensates for that rotation when combining the separate image. This is also true for Saturn and to a lesser extent for Mars where you have <4 minutes before the rotation would start to get noticeable.
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