Jupiter: C8, 2X barlow, ASI120MC

[turfpit]

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

2024-01-18-1810_6-Jupiter_lapl5_ap28-gamma.png (878.49 KiB) Viewed 2367 times

autostakkert.JPG (124.61 KiB) Viewed 2367 times

registax.JPG (62.89 KiB) Viewed 2367 times

2024-01-18-1810_6-Jupiter.CameraSettings.txt

(1.32 KiB) Downloaded 178 times

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

2024-01-18-1756_9-Jupiter_lapl5_ap8.jpg (8.91 KiB) Viewed 2367 times

Dave

[DrBobAZ]

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

[turfpit]

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

[DrBobAZ]

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

[turfpit]

Bob

Thanks for the link.

Dave

[turfpit]

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:

2024-01-18-1809_0-Jupiter_lapl5_ap37_WinJUPOS.png (100.58 KiB) Viewed 1660 times

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

comparison.PNG (333.46 KiB) Viewed 1660 times

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).

all-captures.PNG (11.92 KiB) Viewed 1660 times

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

[timh]

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

[turfpit]

Thanks Tim.

Dave