Making sure I'm shooting correclty...

[Astro Cat]

Hello,
Fairly new here and am excited to learn and shoot with SC. I have been recently shooting Jupiter and Saturn and am not sure I am getting the best results I can. My telescope is a Celestron Edge 8 HD mounted on a ZWO AM5. I am using a mini computer to run SC locally and connecting via Windows Remote Desktop. My imaging train is simple. I have the Celestron visual accessory with a ZWO 178 MC. I live in the high desert in Southern California at an altitude of 2500'. The seeing conditions are fairly good in the dry climate. I have include a link to my google drive that has 7 images with the associated SC camera settings file to help out. The images are merely processed with AutoStakkert and nothing more. I can upload any of the .avi or .ser files if you like to process them as well.

Welcoming any help,
Mike

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1j2R5bK ... sp=sharing

[admin]

Hi,

unfortunately the google drive link above seems to just link to another copy of the 'J1 Camera Settings.txt' file, rather than any images

Looking at the settings files though I have a couple of minor points

* Turbo USB is set to 50 - this will be reducing the maximum frame rate. In most cases this can be left on Auto and you can get a higher frame rate
* You are capturing in RGB - RAW8 is a better choice as it lets the processing software handle debayering via more advanced algorithms and also reduces capture file size by a factor of 3.
* 5ms exposures seem short for planetary - maybe forcing you to higher gain to get a well exposed image and leading to noisier frames than strictly necessary

None of these are going to have a massive impact on final image quality though, so it will be interesting to see your images to find out what else might need tweaking.

cheers,

Robin

[Astro Cat]

Hi Robin,
Good points and thanks for the feedback. I tried to share the link again below. It does have all the images and .txt docs there.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... drive_link


Thanks,
Mike

[admin]

Hi Mike,

as processed images, those are quite decent. To my eye, they happily take a bit more sharpening (Wavelets in Registax, or SharpCap's sharpening in planetary live stacking). A small tweak to the colour balance and increased saturation helps a bit too, but again that is personal taste.

Where you get stuck is that you can't add much more sharpening without noise showing - to get past that barrier you need to get less noise in the stacked image - either more frames or less noise in each frame (longer exposure and lower gain as previously mentioned).

cheers,

Robin

[Astro Cat]

Robin,
Thanks again for the additional input. I will try again over the next 2 weekends as the sky gets colder and with your suggestions. Will let you know how it goes.
Thanks,
Mike

[turfpit]

Mike

A good start with imaging/processing Jupiter.

Have a look at viewtopic.php?t=211 post #2, particularly the histogram (written 2017).

Move on to 2024 and viewtopic.php?t=7344, a big step up with capture/processing. Only 7 years of struggle.

A comment on your capture settings - try the brightness (offset) as zero. The planetary object is bright and you will not have to worry about faint data. The offset comes more into play when you are imaging deep sky objects which will contain faint data.

Also, if you reduce the capture area then the framerate will increase. The fps is king when it comes to planetary/lunar imaging.

Dave

[Astro Cat]

Dave,
Thanks for jumping in and providing this information. I will try and incorporate yours and Robin's inputs over the next 2 weeks.
Mike