Posts Made By: Stephen Fugardi

Chris, Absolutely incredible! And jupiter has not reached opposition yet... Keep posting those images please

Regards,
Steve

Chris, Nice! With your excellent seeing and scope collimation, you should be able to image easily with a 5x barlow (or double stacking), have you ever tried it? Any chance of expanding the moon images from your last Jupiter avis to reveal more detail? Thanks for posting,

Regards,
Steve

Jim, fantastic shot! What frame rate, total time, number of frames stacked do you use? I have a chance Thurs morning in potentially 5/5 seeing and 4/5 transparency to catch Jupiter with my Toucam and would really appreciate any info on your details. Considering the altitude, your shot is incredibly sharp. Thanks for posting!

Regards,
Steve

Robert, thanks for the advice. Technically, I should be able to go into virtual dub and "hack" off the last 45sec and reprocess. I did try 10fps and thought 5fps was better, unfortunately I determined this by 2AM before the seeing improved. This imaging business is not easy...

Regards,
Steve

Jim, excellent detail! Looks like you took this approx 10min after Jupiter reached its max altitude. With Jupiter being so low, we need to take advantage of this peak time to get any decent shots. Luckily Jupiter is moving towards more reasonable viewing times. I still haven't recovered from Weds 3AM night...

Regards,
Steve

Thanks for your kind words on my latest Jupiter shot. Normally 90sec is the typical image time for Jupiter, but the excellent images taken by Jim at 180sec seem to contradict that rule. My last time out I "split the difference" and tried 135sec. Keep in mind my Toucam frame rate was too slow at 5fps, and it should have been 10fps, but for this experiment it should not matter.

I took the 135sec avi taken 3/30 right at the 2:30AM Jupiter transit and cut off 45sec from the beginning since the frame quality was worse at the start. Then I processed them in Registax with a 1.5x resample rate. I compared 135sec vs 90sec, and 100, 200, 412 frame stacks. Image processing was the same, except the 100s had to be sharpened a little less to avoid severe distortion. My conclusion is that the 135sec is BETTER than the 90sec, and 100 good frames are better than 412 mediocre ones. In this case, under severe seeing, the final image quality is more of a function of frame quality than the rotational degrade effect of Jupiter itself. So for the northern observers this season, we should be collecting longer than 90sec avis in attempt to capture more high quality frames.

I attached my comparison but the details may not be as clear as they are on my computer screen. Collecting 180sec avis (or longer) can easily be sliced into smaller segments using virtual dub if needed.

Regards,
Steve

Ed, Awesome shot! Just to get "above average" seeing this year seemed near impossible. Congradulations on being able to capture a rare perfect seeing for 5min

Regards,
Steve

Bob, excllent shot from that awesome scope! 5 years ago, I lived around the corner from you in Bristow. I remember those eastern skies never seemed very dark lit up by DC, but I did have my best views of the southern sky and will never forget seeing the lagoon nebula with my C11. Hope you get at least a few perfect nights this spring!

Regards,
Steve

Zach, For my C11 I used a 50um pinhole 100 feet away using a bright LED flashlight in a wooden box set on a camera tripod. After spending at least 10 hours understanding how the knobs affect my collimation, I achieved what I thought was the ultimate alignment. Sadly, moving to a real star over head resulted in a collimation shift. For my 20 year old scope, my best collimation is done on a nearby bright star EACH night. Sounds crazy, but a few tweaks can be done within 10 minutes now that I know how to do it. Hopefully your scopes will hold the collimation better than mine. Good luck!

Regards,
Steve

Brian, I have the same C11 scope, with a 2.5x powermate and ir blocking filter, and also struggle to achieve a sharp image with my toucam. As a focusing aid, last time out I tried to focus on a nearby moon and increase the gain so the moon is visible on the screen. Then using QC Focus, and the star focus option, I achieved the smallest FHM value. Then canceled out of the QC Focus, back to the Toucam software to try to image Jupiter. 10fps, 90sec seems "best"

In my case, my scope is 20years old and the coatings are blotchy and full of dust motes, so I am seriously considering spending the $600 to factory clean/recoat everything. A new DMK will cost approx the same and I can't afford both this year.

Before each session, I try to optimize my collimation on a nearby star. My last time out, thurs night, had below average seeing. Attached are my collimation images, on the left were my 50um artifical star images from Dec, and on the right a real 2.5mag star f10, f25 from thurs. The f25 was horrible and in hind site, I should have just imaged at f10. I am yet to see any seeing/transparency condition above average this Jupiter season here in CT.

Regards,
Steve