Captured 12 July 2020, both planets near the meridian, elevation ~14°. One of the UK astro gear suppliers has been having a clear-out out older Celestron camera models. I took advantage to acquire a Celestron Skyris 618M USB3 lunar/planetary mono CCD camera capable of delivering 120fps @ 640x480. The camera cost £130 and is actually a Celestron badged Imaging Source DMK 23U618. Review here
https://s3.amazonaws.com/celestron-site ... ams_AN.pdf. Poor conditions but an opportunity to learn about the workflow for acquiring LRGB planetary images and processing using WinJupos (for derotation). WinJupos is used to reduce/elimate smearing of detail due to the fast rotation of these planets - around 10h in the case of Jupiter. The objective was to collect 5 videos of each filter within approximately 15 minutes.
- Saturn-Jupiter-LRGB.png (134.32 KiB) Viewed 1557 times
Equipment: Celestron C8, Celestron LRGB filters, Celestron manual filter wheel, Celestron Skyris 618M camera
Software: Sharpcap 3.2, Autostakkert3, Registax 6, WinJupos 11, GIMP 2.10.
Reference:
https://www.thelondonastronomer.com/it- ... ry-imaging
Capture:
- Set WinJupos file names in Sharpcap settings
- Focus using the G filter, check this focus against all 4 filters
- Set gain = 60% for Jupiter, 70% for Saturn
- Adjust exposure using log histogram so saturation (right hand side) = 70% for Jupiter (80% for Saturn)
- Capture 45s SER video at 120 fps for each of L, R, G, B filters
- Repeat to acquire 4 more sets of LRGB images, a total of 20 videos
I didn't re-focus between filters - with atmospheric wobble and the large number of frames acquired per video, the statistics were in my favour.
- Jupiter-Capture-B-filter.JPG (65.08 KiB) Viewed 1557 times
Processing:
- Stack all 20 SER videos using Autostakkert!3, best 20% of 5000 frames
- Using the AS!3 sharpened stacks, derotate 20 stacks using WinJupos
- Combine the 5 L stacks using WinJupos
- Combine the the 5 R, 5 G, 5 B stacks using WinJupos
- Mild sharpening of the 4 resultant L,R,G,B stacks using Registax 6
- Create an RGB image using WinJupos
- Combine the L & RGB images using layers in GIMP (not sure I have this one right yet)
- Final sharpen in Registax 6
To get better detail I need to be using my 2x Barlow. Unfortunately, the low elevation of the planets will be against me unless the seeing is excellent. I will soon have astronomical darkness back at my 53° latitude which will help. Mars might be a better option later in the year as it will be higher in the sky.
I am looking forward to capturing some lunar images with this 120fps (with 5.6um x 5.6um sensor) camera.
Some additional info.
- B-filter-video-playback.JPG (33.14 KiB) Viewed 1557 times
- SER-details.JPG (42.3 KiB) Viewed 1557 times
- L_R_G_B-stacks.PNG (81.82 KiB) Viewed 1557 times
- RGB-WinJupos-combine.PNG (67.43 KiB) Viewed 1557 times
Dave