Thoughts from Starlight Cascade

A few issues came up this morning while imaging Jupiter around 04:30-05:15 EST

Of the 15 runs made, only 6 turned out. The rest had to be thrown out due to: usb noise on the way to the computer… slow it down a bit and things were better; pier shake.. looks like the floor has heaved a little and is now touching the telescope pier… must fix that this weekend.
Filename times have been changed from EST to UTC. Soon we will look at WinJupOs to see how it works and how it can help.

The animated GIF above is the result of only 5 images, as one of the others was a different size (pixel size) and would not merge with the rest.
Meade 20cm LX200 at f10, ZWO ASI120mc camera, 5ms exposures for 60 seconds. Processed with autostakkert and registax.
Seeing and transparency were poor-average, a large rain/cloud front had just moved through and cleared a few hours before. Humidity was high, around 71% but temps were not cold, at 0-1C

jupiter20151117-0950UTC
Best images to date!
Great morning. Outside at 04:30 EST, packed up before 05:30 EST

At the time it may not always seem like a good idea, but in reality, having another astronomer in the house to get oneself outside in the morning is a *very good idea*.

Kim did some visual observing of Jupiter, watched for Leonid meteors (not very many), and did some canon ELPH imaging of the waning planetary conjunction.

I did some more Jupiter imaging, this time a run of 9 (it was 10 but one was not very good), across 30 minutes… ie a new image every 3 minutes.
5ms exposures for 120 seconds, resulting in the 12000 frames + or – range.
then a 60 second wait and then another run.

This time I took the best 25% of the images for stacking and wavelet processing, then put the 9 images into an animated .GIF above.

Being so early in the morning, and the coffee was still perking… I forgot to turn on the debayer in the camera capture software (still not exactly sure how this affects the image).
The good news was, no condensation on the primary at all for the whole run!
Seeing was average-good as was transparency (average-good).
I judge seeing by how much the image bounces around my selected Region Of Interest (strictly qualitative) and transparency by the exposure needed to make the histogram hit 80%. The lower the better.

Just towards the end of the animation you can see the Great Red Spot appearing from the left hand side.
North is up, rotation is left to right.

Jup_2015_11_09_055109_g3_ap8registax

All of these modifications helped to image from around 05:13 EST until it got too bright from the sunrise twilight without any fogging of the corrector plate.
This encourage us to ramp up the exposure from 120 to 180 seconds.

The image above is the last of the morning, 14373 frames at 6ms exposure. Processed by autostakkert for the best 25% into a .tif then registax6 wavelets only. Jupiter was magnitude -1.85 with a diameter of 33.7″
The settings on registax are a little on the high side still, making this look too processed, too contrast enhanced. But it is a good three steps forward and one back for todays session. Future ones will only get better.

Also, there was an attempt to use firecaptures autorun feature, of 5 runs of 120sec each, but most of those failed due to poor tracking… Jupiter left the field of view.

Another nice morning… seeing average to good, transparency average to good.

The best image of Jupiter this morning as the corrector plate heater failed and it completely fogged over.
This was 6823 frames at 6ms each over the course of 120 seconds with a 20cm f10 Schmidt Cass style Meade LX200 with a ZWO ASI 120MC camera (usb2). It was processed with autostakkert! into a .TIF with no sharpening or drizzle for the best 50% of the images. It was then processed by Registax6 for wavelets only.

Tomorrow mornings weather is promising, especially now that we have a working heater on the corrector plate and a brand new dew shield to boot!
Flipped X, flipped y, debayered in Firecapture 2.4.12

Another great morning to be out before sunrise and imaging Jupiter.
This time was between 05:15 and 05:40 EST with the last quarter moon getting close.
This was a 60 second run using the best 10% of 1464 frames at 41ms each with a Celestron x2 barlow and the ZWO ASI 120MC camera on a 20cm Meade LX200GPS.

Barlows may get you a larger sized image, but at the cost of a software focus, lower contrast and a longer exposure time (x4 time for a x2 barlow).
This was processed with autostakkert! into a .tif with no drizzle, then imported into Registax 6 and wavelet processed with my “jupiter” settings. I’ve just started to use registax for wavelet processing and the results are so good I may give up on the old process of autostakkert directly to .png format with a x1.5 drizzle enlargement.