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Captured 18th Jan 2024, very close (1°) to a 50% waxing moon.

Equipment: Celestron AVX mount, Celestron C8 SCT, Celestron 2X Barlow, ZWO ASI120MC USB2 camera, no filters, JMI motorised focuser.
Software: SharpCap 4.1 64-bit, Autostakkert 3, Registax 6.1.
Capture details: 2000 frames @ 90fps (22s total capture time), 640x480, SER, RAW8, exposure=8.3ms, gain=89/100, Brightness=0.
Post-process: AS3 stack best 50% of 2000, AP size =72, 28 APs. Registax see screenshot below for Wavelets, RGB balance, slight gamma applied





This was without the Barlow - exposure=2ms, gain=70/100, 2000 frames @ 90fps, stack best 50%:


Dave

Nice!

What would be cool next time is to proceed with the AS!3 (there is a AS!4 btw) registax route, and also use the planetary livestack feature in SC. I think you will be pleasantly surprised with the result of livestacking and processing adjustments on the fly.

Bob

Thanks Bob. A decent result for 22s of capture.

The Planetary LiveStack is on my to do list. I was thinking I can use the data for the above image and carry out some testing on the bench. I was hoping there might be some Gallery posts appearing which give details of capture/processing setting.

Dave

Hi Dave

Sounds like a plan. Borodog is the guru on the settings, etc and has a series of youtube videos that pretty much lay it out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FabGyvF ... ichaelOwen

and the previous videos

Bob

Bob

Thanks for the link.

Dave

On the night of the capture I had 5 videos captured in less than 3 minutes (5x22=110s). 110s satisfies the 3 minutes maximum capture for Jupiter recommended by imagers such as Damian Peach and Martin Lewis (https://skyinspector.co.uk/). I used WinJUPOS to process and combine the 5 images. This is the result:


A comparison with the image from a single video at the top of this post:


I think more features are visible on the right hand image.

To use WinJUPOS, I followed the steps outlined by Martin Lewis in
https://www.skyatnightmagazine.com/astr ... ary-images

These are the SER captures created using WINJUPOS filenames (a setting in SharpCap under File > SharpCap Settings > Filenames tab).

The processing steps were:

• Stack the 5 SER files in Autostakkert

• Sharpen and denoise (not aggressively) the 5 resultant stacks using Registax 6

• Process the 5 sharpened stacks using WinJUPOS (following the article in the link) to create a single file

• Final sharpening, saturation, contrast, gamma in Registax

Jupiter rotates quickly and long videos will result in smeared features. WinJUPOS can de-rotate the images and eliminate the smearing effect. Using WinJUPOS, the Great Red Spot does not become the Great Red Smear.

Next job is to capture 3m of data. While I wait for the weather to oblige, I will have a look at waveSharp (the 64-bit follow-on from Registax) which can be found via https://www.astronomie.be/registax/. The Denoise tool and Batch processing facility look to be of particular interest in the new waveSharp.

Dave

That's terrific Dave, thanks for all the useful detail and references, Tim

Thanks Tim.

Dave