My first Jupiter

[Menno555]

At the moment Jupiter is nice and high here but from my location is hard to capture. It appears behind a roof and then I have a windows of around 20 minutes before it disappears behind a wall. Plus a lot of clouds the last weeks.
But finally clear a few days back at 4 in the morning and had my first go at Jupiter with my Meade LX200 8" f/10 ACF SCT

First with the Zwo ASI071MC Pro. And I was surprised with the result. Also because I could get it real sharp first on a focus star with a Bahtinov mask. And it was that good, that I could make it at 200% size in Photoshop. The moons Ganymede, Io and Europa are visible too.
5500 x 30ms / Gain 170 / Offset 4, stacked in PlanetarySystemStacker where I used the best 5%.

Jupiter-071MC.jpg (17.12 KiB) Viewed 982 times

After that a quick swap to my Zwo ASI482MC with a TeleVue PowerMate 4x. This was pure a first light test with that combination. I had to focus on sight because I didn't have enough time to find a focus star in the very narrow FOV of that combination. The result is just average but still, I know now that with the good preparation and good sky, I can get a lot sharper/better results
5800 x 11,5ms / Gain 400 / Offset 4, stacked in PlanetarySystemStacker where I used the best 5%.

Jupiter-482MC-4x.jpg (61.21 KiB) Viewed 982 times

Menno

[admin]

Hi Menno,

nice images for a first try (and given that you only have a very short time to get everything set up and captured!)

cheers,

Robin

[timh]

Very nice Menno, encouragingly good for a first effort and especially with the Barlow too. Did you get there purely by stacking the best 5% of frames or has it been wavelet sharpened too?

Tim

[Menno555]

Hi Menno,

nice images for a first try (and given that you only have a very short time to get everything set up and captured!)

cheers,
Robin

Thanks Robin. I hoped this week for some clear skies but I doubt that. Want to be fully prepared then (especially focus) with the 482 and PowerMate. Fingers crossed

Very nice Menno, encouragingly good for a first effort and especially with the Barlow too. Did you get there purely by stacking the best 5% of frames or has it been wavelet sharpened too?

Tim

Thanks Tim!
And forget to mention the processing indeed. For both I did use Photoshop. Sharpened with the tools inside the RAW Filter, white balance correction and color enhancement.
But encouraging is indeed the right phrase

Menno