Hi guys.

Took some Saturn and Jupiter avi's this morning, and I processed the Jupiter ones first, so here it is!

This was my first time imaging the gas giant since last years apparition, so I was excited to see what she'd look like - I now had a 5x powermate whereas last year I only had a 2.4x or 3x barlow.

After capturing Saturn at 1:00am, I left the scope setup and left the ToUcam and Powermate in the focuser, so I didn't need to refocus. When I got up at 4:15am, i just plugged the laptop in, centered the planet in the finderscope and whallah it was on the screen already focused!

This image shows Jupiter's GRS and the moon Callisto to the lower right. I took 3 avi's with different settings, and this one had a higher gain and gamma, and brought the moon out where the other 2 didn't capture it.

The avi's were captured at 10fps for 90 seconds, giving only 900 frames to work with. I stacked about 500-600 for this result, as the seeing was above average at 6.5/10. One thing that i'm sure we'll notice during this Jupiter season, is that the guys with the LU and Firewire high-frame rate cameras will most likely end up with a much smoother result, able to capture many more frames in that 90 seconds.

Jupiter was 30° altitude when this was captured.

I'm quite pleased with my first Jupiter for the year, and am really looking forward to imaging this beauty when it's bigger and higher!

Comments welcome.

Attached Images

20060111-jup.jpg (50.7 KB, 124 views)

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Mike
. mikesalway.com.au - Astronomy and Photography by Mike Salway
. IceInSpace - The Australian Amateur Astronomy Community
. My Bio | My Jupiter 2007 Gallery | My Image Gallery

Sweet! Nice detail.

Very good project!!!

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George Tarsoudis
Alexandroupolis, Greece
http://www.flickr.com/photos/80161946@N00/?saved=1

Very nice!.......






Titana.

That is amazing. I'm just getting into astrophotography and I've only so-far taken panoramas of the moon at various phases (I've got 5 nights' worth ... need at least another 7) with our school's 16" 'scope. I'm completely unfamiliar with your technique of taking hundreds of frames in a brief period; why do you use that, what are the advantages?

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"Why do something now when you can put it off 'til later?" -- me :)

Blimey, imagine the pics you'll get at opposition! Superb.

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Of all the things I've ever lost, I miss my mind the most!

Really very good shot.
Great work Mike.

Absolutely - very nice image, very detailled without unnatural contrast.

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Non sunt multiplicanda entia praeter necessitatem.

Wow- Great image! Brillient So much detail!

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If this writing is blue you're going too fast!

Beautiful!

Did you use Registax? If so, how much wavelet sharpening did you do?

Hi All.

Thanks very much for your nice comments.

Andy, yes I used registax. I use wavelets 3-6, and I process layer 6 the hardest (usually around 50), down to layer 3 which is set to around 5 or 10.

I then used AstraImage to do some deconvolution.

Thanks again for your comments, I hope to get many more Jupiter images over the next few months.

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Mike
. mikesalway.com.au - Astronomy and Photography by Mike Salway
. IceInSpace - The Australian Amateur Astronomy Community
. My Bio | My Jupiter 2007 Gallery | My Image Gallery

Lots of fine details in Jupiter.........Keep up the good work!


Best Regards,
John

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Best Regards,
John Chumack
The Chumack Observatories
MPC 838 Dayton Research Station
MPC H66 Yellow Springs Research Station
www.galacticimages.com

Wow, that looks great..

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WOW! Thats friggin awesome!

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-The Wolf
http://www.ryanmercer.com
http://www.youtube.com/user/ryanmercer317
http://www.pleasegodhelpme.org

oooooh-lala!!

good image
GoodLuck