I have made my first serious attempts to do imaging and am in need of some suggestions on processing.
I am using a polar mounted f/15 Meade ETX-125 EC with a SAC Imaging SAC7 webcam. I know, you're all going to laugh and tell me to switch to a dob or something else with greater aperture, but that's the equipment I have and an upgrade is not forseen in the near future.
Here is an image of Jupiter that I took on May 20th. The seeing wasn't the best (maybe a 6, if I understand the system correctly) as the moon was very full and in close proximity to Jupiter, and it was pretty humid and hazy. I was imaging with the webcam at 20fps with a 1/40 sec shutter speed through a moon filter to cut down on the brightness. The 500 frame .avi was aligned and optimized through Registax 3.0 followed by some curve and leveling modifications in Photoshop 7.0. The processed Jupiter was inserted into a single-frame over-exposed image of the planet in order to get the dimmer moons into the picture, which is why they look so fuzzy. There is also a slight gradient originating from the bottom left of the picture, but I am not confident enough in my skills to try removing it yet.
I just finished Ron Wodaski's CCD Imaging book which I purchased after sitting through his presentation at NEAF, and was eager to try out some of the techniques he showed. In looking at the picture, I think I am overprocessing the planet itself a little too much. Can you guys make some suggestions on what I should do differently?
I am using a polar mounted f/15 Meade ETX-125 EC with a SAC Imaging SAC7 webcam. I know, you're all going to laugh and tell me to switch to a dob or something else with greater aperture, but that's the equipment I have and an upgrade is not forseen in the near future.
Here is an image of Jupiter that I took on May 20th. The seeing wasn't the best (maybe a 6, if I understand the system correctly) as the moon was very full and in close proximity to Jupiter, and it was pretty humid and hazy. I was imaging with the webcam at 20fps with a 1/40 sec shutter speed through a moon filter to cut down on the brightness. The 500 frame .avi was aligned and optimized through Registax 3.0 followed by some curve and leveling modifications in Photoshop 7.0. The processed Jupiter was inserted into a single-frame over-exposed image of the planet in order to get the dimmer moons into the picture, which is why they look so fuzzy. There is also a slight gradient originating from the bottom left of the picture, but I am not confident enough in my skills to try removing it yet.
I just finished Ron Wodaski's CCD Imaging book which I purchased after sitting through his presentation at NEAF, and was eager to try out some of the techniques he showed. In looking at the picture, I think I am overprocessing the planet itself a little too much. Can you guys make some suggestions on what I should do differently?
Attached Image:
