October 5, 2020
Poor seeing this evening, but the Great Red Spot was visible so tried some imaging anyway. Seeing conditions should be a little better the next couple of nights, so will try to get more data if possible. ASI224MC camera, Televue 2.5x Powermate, Baader UV/IR block filter with my 8" EdgeHD SCT on a Celestron Evolution mount.
September 20, 2020
Images taken at 1:44 (left) and 1:59 (right) UTC on September 20, 2020 with my Celestron 8" EdgeHD, Televue 2.5x Powermate, Baader UV/IR cut filter and ZWO ASI224MC camera. It is getting harder to get good images of Jupiter as it gets lower in the sky and shrinks in apparent size.
August 20, 2020
The image to the right was taken at ~3:45 UTC with my Celestron 8" EdgeHD, Televue 2.5x Powermate, Baader UV/IR. I also took 6 captures at varying lengths from 30 to 240 seconds to see how long a video I could stack without smearing details in AutoStakkert. You can see that comparison below. You can read more about that comparison here:
August 15, 2020
Seeing was average and trended worse with time this evening. Here is one of the better stills along with a GIF animation below.
August 8, 2020
The image to the right was taken at 4:14 UTC with my Celestron 8" EdgeHD, Televue 2.5x Powermate, Baader UV/IR cut filter and ZWO ASI224MC camera. Image was created by stacking 90 seconds of video with a 10ms exposure an 260 gain setting. I took five sets of video over an 11 minute period and produced a short animation from the images as well.
August 1, 2020
My first attempt at imaging Jupiter in IR. I used my 8" EdgeHD with a Televue 2.5x Barlow, a Baader IR pass filter and a ZWO ASI190MM camera.
July 19, 2020 Part 2
I tried out WinJUPOS for the first time and de-rotated four of the images from the 19th and combined them to make the image at the right. You can compare that the image below. The image is slightly better overall, with less noise and some detail a bit more evident. I'll have to keep working with this software in the future. Edit: I didn't realize I had scaled Jupiter a bit larger than in the prior image when making this final version with titles. The larger size has nothing to do with WinJUPOS.
July 19, 2020
Below is a 16 image loop of Jupiter taken early on July 19, 2020, with my Celestron 8" EdgeHD telescope on a Nexstar Evolution mount. I used an ASI224MC camera with a Televue 2.5x Powermate and a Baader UV/IR cut filter to take the imagery. I took 1 minute 45 seconds of data per image, and each image is 3 minutes apart. The data was processed in Autostakkert for stacking, Registax for aligning the RGB layers and wavelet sharpening, denoise in Topaz Denoise, and a slight unsharp mask as well as image rotation in Pixelmator. Since I was using an Alt-Az mount, Jupiter rotated during the course of the hour I took video data. So, I had to manually rotate the 16 images in Pixelmator to keep things level. Some frames are off just a little so the image wobbles a bit.
The animated GIF below is of lower quality than the raw data, as the GIF compression kind of wrecks things. I'll have a higher quality video out later this week hopefully showing the animation and processing steps.
July 18, 2020
Best image from my first set of Jupiter data with my new 8" EdgeHD. Definitely more detail than I could capture with my C6, though seeing was mixed so I know the scope could do somewhat better than this given very good seeing.
July 7, 2020
No images today, but I just got my Celestron 8" EdgeHD on an Evolution mount. So, I hope to be able to collect my first data with the bigger and better telescope aided by a tracking mount soon!
June 26, 2020
I tried out my ASI224MC camera on my little Celestron C90. I made this an especially challenging imaging session by putting the C90 on a Manfrotto 190X photo tripod with a pan head. Since I was using the Televue 2.5x Powermate as well, the lack of slow-motion controls and tracking made this extremely challenging. But, I was still able to get a pretty good image of Jupiter out of the combination.
June 5, 2020
Image of Jupiter with Io and Io's shadow on June 5th. Imagery taken with the Celestron C6 and ZWO ASI224MC camera with Televue 2.5x Powermate. Processing done with my usual routine of PIPP --> AutoStakkert --> Rregistax --> Topaz Denoise --> Pixelmator.
Below is the same image as above, but without labels, as well as a six frame animation, with each frame about five minutes apart. I may try redoing the animation at some point to produce a higher quality GIF image. The single image looks far better than the GIF, so I'll need to try playing with ways to produce a higher quality GIF. I also apparently mucked up the colors in the images used to generate the GIF.
June 3, 2020
On June 3rd, I did a comparison between my Canon SL2 and ZWO ASI224MC, both using a C6 and 2.5x Televue Powermate. The images are very similar, though the ASI224MC image is a little less noisy since that camera is able to capture more frames in the same amount of time. That, of course, is the primary advantage of a dedicated planetary astronomy camera. Note that these images don't represent the best that is achievable with these cameras since Jupiter was low in the sky and still a ways away from opposition when the apparent size will be larger.
June 1, 2020
Here is my first Jupiter image of 2020 taken at 5:44 CDT on June 1st. This is also the first image taken with my ZWO ASI 224MC camera and Televue 2.5x Powermate instead of the Canon SL2 I used last year.
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