Saturn 9th Feb

[little legs]

Hi all,

A couple of Saturn images i took last night...2 clear nights on a row and they say the next 2 nights as well :eek: :woot:
Used my new 3x barlow, Celestron 4" se @F13 and my Toucam Pro. 900 frames from 1000.

Now, i have a couple of questions for yous. I'm seem to be suffering from a lot of noise, a number of my avi's are no good due to this. How can i get around this? Also what rate of fps should i be using and would that make a difference? I have the option of having 5-30fps. I'm personally not very happy with the results, to me not much detail or is this just me expecting too much from a 4" scope?!?

Thanks for any help

http://i171.photobucket.com/albums/u304/karah75/saturn1502.jpg

http://i171.photobucket.com/albums/u304/karah75/saturn150-1.jpg

[Radar]

Great work Karah.

Are you taking dark frames?

How clean are your optics?

As far as the FPS goes, this can change the final quality of an image, and the best way to determine this is to experiement and make written notes throughout. Start off with a low FPS and slowly increase it. Compare final images and you'll know what fps is perfect for your configuration. Because everyone's optical configs are different, what works for one may not work for you. This is where experimentation is the only solid way to find things out.


I'm personally not very happy with the results, to me not much detail or is this just me expecting too much from a 4" scope?!?


They are the best shots of Saturn I've ever seen through a 4 inch telescope. So be assured that your results are great. You seemed to pick planetary up quite quickly. Watching you and MattyP do planetary lately has motivated me to get into it. As soon as my obs is done, I'm on it.

Ray

[Tenacious Del]

very cool shots little legs. :bow: :bow:

[little legs]

Thanks Ray/Del:smile:

Ray...How do i take dark frames for avi's? I know roughly how to with long exp but didn't even know about taking them with avi's.
Everything is ok on the clean side :wink: Had a bash last night on the Moon as i couldn't get out later for Saturn, and tried 10fps and found that was alot better. Hoping to try tonight but not looking good. There's a fire a little way behind us and the smoke is everywhere:frown:

Thanks for that very nice comment as well Ray. I think i'm already getting itchy for a bigger scope, 4" just isn't enough!!!

[Radar]

If I was going to take a dark frame for an AVI, I would use the same technique for long exposure photography. Once the camera and scope is ready to image, I would cover either the scope or the camera (whichever way is best to blockout 100% of the light), I would then maybe do an avi of a few hundred frames. Then I would stack that avi like normal.

From doing this you should be able to see where hot pixels are and where noise is coming from on your chip.

Save the final dark frame avi, and then everytime you do an avi with the same fps, you would subtract this dark frame from your final image. I'm not familiar with the programs you are using but if they have a dark frame subtraction function just use that.

I'm not sure how much this will improve the noise in your image, but like most things, experimentation is the best way to learn your particular equipment.

If you try this post your dark frame result so we can see the noise. Also maybe post just a single dark frame, instead of the stacked dark frame avi. One single frame may hold handy information as well.

Ray

[Matty P]

Great work Karah! It is amazing you captured that with a 4" scope. Well Done. :bow:

Could let us know what settings you used to capture these AVIs? eg. Gain, Gamma etc.
What software are you using to capture and stack/process the AVIs with?

From what I know, when using a high frame rate with the Toucam. The images will be compressed resulting in noisy images/frames. I suggest you use either 5fps or 10fps (less compression) to and see how that goes.

Also, one of the big things is to make sure that the histogram is fully exposed when imaging.

Apart from that, always remember that "Seeing is King".

Hope this helps


Watching you and Matty P do planetary lately has motivated me to get into it. As soon as my obs is done, I'm on it.

Ray

Thanks Ray. :biggrin:

[welshboy]

keep them coming girl great captures.Mark