Posts Made By: Jason Higley

Very nice Dan. I've taken the liberty of leaning on your beautiful image in a way that perhaps an original poster of such an image cannot (aesthetically speaking) so as to tweek a little more atmospheric details. Ignoring the stacking software's artifacts, I think there is perhaps some more interesting info there.

Regards, Jason H.

Dan Petersen said:

Hi:

Saturn is already 18 days past opposition, time is sure flying by quickly. I took this one last night in 5.5/10 seeing conditions, transparency wasn't the best either, but that didn't stop me. I used my 10" SCT at f/22, higher power resulted in less detail. Philips SPC900NC (no filters), 10fps, 1/10 s/s. Rv4 (400/1000). Notice the globe shadow is back and growing daily.

Have a good day, Dan

Hi Steve,
Great job resolving the disk of Titan!

You had mentioned that "I would guess that under perfect conditions, some surface details could be captured."

I don't believe that you will be able to capture surface details of Saturn's moon Titan in the visible spectrum. The Voyager spacecraft couldn't and it passed very close to Titan with cameras. The only reason that the Cassini Spacecraft can see anything is because after Voyager's failure, they figured out that they needed to use a near infra-red camera at 2 distinct frequencies (is it 0.94 microns and 1.08 microns?) to pierce the veil of Titan (and they use an active-radar too because even the IR camera is limited.) The near-infrared colors are 3 times redder than what the human eye can see. I believe the instrument they use for that is the Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer [VIMS-IR] which operates in the spectral range of 0.85 to 5.1 µm. VIMS takes shots in wavelengths between 300 nm and 5100 nm, but the visible spectrum that you are shooting within probably is closer to between 400 nm and 700 nm? So bottom-lining it, the wavelengths used to see Titan's surface are longer. Perhaps there are cameras used by amateurs that are IR sensitive enough in the the near-IR frequency domain that they might capture something with filters? But I sort of recall that the window is very limited to 2 IR frequencies, and I imagine that the Earth's atmosphere could be another impediment to using that effectively.

Regards and nice Titan disk! Jason Higley

Steve Fugardi said:

While waiting better seeing conditions, I went back and reprocessed my C11 DMK21 Titan RGB avis from the opposition, trying to hand pick the best ones from each channel. The result is a less blurry image but still no surface details. For Titan, the G channel proved to be the strongest. With clouds moving in, I was only able to take 4min of each channel. I would guess that under perfect conditions, some surface details could be captured.

Regards,
Steve

Dan, that's really cool at only 6.8"!

Regards, Jason H.

Dan Petersen said:

Hi all:

Mars is about 1/3 the size of Saturn's globe, yet there's still detail to image. Dia. = 6.8", CM = 17, seeing = 5.5/10, 10" SCT, F/40. This is getting interesting as Mars approaches 6", then 5" and finally 4"?

Cheers, Dan

Nice job Kevin (especially for your first Saturn!) Your shot shows that the rings have opened up a little bit since opposition. The color seems good too.

Here's one I posted right after opposition (using a 6" newtonian, shot afocally using a Canon A540 that I picked up for $50)

http://setisociety.org/MVI_0288MODTRIMREGPUSHFIFTYROX.jpg

when comparing to your very similar scale shot, one can see that the rings have opened a little (as they were predicted to do before resuming the march toward being edge-on next year.)

Good job, Jason



Jason Higley

Kevin Brennan said:

I am giving web cam and planetary imaging a try. Attached is first light with the SPC900 through my 5.5" refractor. It was taken at f30 with 4x powermate. The only adjustment I could find on the Vdub software was frame rate which I set to 5. It was a stack of about 400 frames from Registax. Background was darkened in PS as it was greyish from the stack. Small adjustment in layer 6 with wavelets but any more and it seemed to accentuate horizontal bands accross the frame. This was especially true at any frame rate other than 5. I don't know what that is.

Any comments or tips would be greatly appreciated. I guess I will need more focal length and aperture in the long run.

Clear skies,
Kevin

Nice cloud detail there. If you did other Saturn clips within an hour (or 2 or 3) of this shot, I bet you could do a really nice cloud animation.

Regards, Jason H.

Paul Maxson said:

Hi all,

Saturn from April 8 in decent conditions.

http://www.sunspot51.com/Saturn/Saturn040708-LRGB.jpg

Paul

Hi Phil, considering your report on the seeing, that's pretty nice. I've taken the liberty of polishing your diamond with my own cloth (see the attached).

Regards, Jason H.

Phillip Ostroff said:

G'day there,

Still working on imaging Saturn with the Philips SPC900NC camera. I'm realizing that because my scope is wide-field (LX200 8" Classic @ F6.3) it's probably not the best for planetary imaging. However, I managed to get some okay color and a bit of detail with my last shot.

The camera was behind an Antares 2X barlow. This was 893 frames stacked, from a 1,300 frame .AVI. Seeing was around 2/5 (the planet really danced in and out of focus). Also taken in AltAz mode using standard two-star alignment. Captured in K3CCD Tools and processed in Registax.

I know it's not brilliant! :-)

Thanks for looking,
Phil

That's a very nice montage Steve! And it's proof that a C11 is an effective planet machine, thanks for posting that. Can't wait for the next frame of that series (and a heads-up that Starry Night software seems to indicate that the cross-over and perfectly edge-on will occur before opposition, if you should want that frame too.)

Jason H.

Steve Thornton said:

I had a little time on my hand so I thought I'd put together this montage of Saturn in each of the past four oppositions. It really shows the changing aspects of the rings. The first two are a little closer to each other than the last two in terms of when I shot them. I used a Pro ToUcam with a 2X teleconverter on my C-11 with my G-11 mount. Processed in Registax. I have a feeling my next one is going to be close to edge on.

Steve Thornton

Although not as big as the first one I posted on this thread, I re-processed the same 4 frame stack in an attempt to bring out the Milky Way dust/star clouds that seemed hinted at in the original

http://setisociety.org/Cygnus4frameDust.jpg

Downscaling seemed to help bring that out too.

Jason H.

Ansuman Pal said:

Nice Image Jason I need a lesson on Registax from you

Thanks Ansuman and Steve, tee hee hee , a lesson on Registax from ME, LOL, I really don't know what I'm doing. I think I once called it "controlled chaos leading to random results" (or something similar.) All the credit goes to the programmers of Registax.

Since I record it on the camera (no PC present to record), I don't have the option to record it in raw video or other formats, so I convert the AVI later on in Quicktime Pro with the no compression option selected (Registax doesn't seem to like the Canon cameras video file, maybe because there's also sound in the movie?)

I open the file in Registax. I click on "Show Frame List" and use the up/down arrow keys to scroll through the frames and reject the bad frames by pressing the space bar (the bottom of the screen turns red for unselected frames.)

Then I select the alignment box size. If the planet is too big for one, I select the next size up. If the planet drifts during the video (due to poor polar alignment or wacky motor drive) I make sure the side of the alignment box is closest to the planet on the side where the planet is drifting off (that way Registax includes in in the frame alignment.)

I have "Automatic Processing" selected (by default) and then I cross my fingers and click align. That's when you see how bad things are from frame to frame. After it's stacked, I push the layer sliders one by one until the limb starts to look over processed or graininess shows up, then I back it off until I can't see it any longer. Sometimes I'll save several different files with 1, 2, 3 or more wavelets layers adjusted (that way I don't have to run the file in Registax again) and then look at them afterward to see which one looks best. To return the wavelets layer to it's original state when you started, just double-click the slider.

Then I open the file in Roxio PhotoSuite 5 (that came packaged with a PC I bought a few years ago.) It works better than Unsharp Mask in my ancient copy of Adobe PhotoDeluxe (from the 20th century), especially because you can fiddle with the exposure. There are 3 sliders in Roxio in the Exposure control (not "Contrast/Brightness" which I usually don't have to bother with any more for planets), one for "Dark Areas" one for "Midtones" and one for "Bright Areas". I fiddle with the sliders for some time to see which combination looks best. Although I can bring out much much more central cloud detail than you've seen in my images, I've been opting to not extinguish the limb at all costs, so I use that as the limit on
pushing the shot. The same is true in Registax, I've been taking care not to over-process the limbs (i.e. squeezing more detail out of the clouds but wrecking the limb), which really helps the overall quality a lot (but if you want to see even more cloud-detail [which you won't be posting for others to see because the limb dissappears], exposure pulling is very effective if you really push it).

That's about it.

That said, I really wonder what the better imagers do, maybe somebody here knows where their techniques are posted?

Regards, Jason H.

WOW!!! Dan, that's a nice one! (Yours is best composition in processing there is no doubt, but I've taken the liberty of doing what one often can't do with their own images (overprocessed it to squeeze some extra detail at the expense of smoothness and aesthetics, and enlarged to 110%.) Maybe some craters there on the terminator?

Way to go Dan!!!

Jason H.

Dan Petersen said:

Hi, I captured Mercury this morning directly on the meridian, at 16:22 UT. It's just past 'Max West Elongation' and perfectly placed for imaging. Some albedo features are visible. I used my 10" SCT at f/27, and an SPC900NC webcam with a #23 red filter attached, I rebalanced the colors later during post processing. South is up in this image. Have a good day, Dan