Jupiter 02/27/04

Hi,

CSC had predicted good seeing for the morning of 02/27/04
here in Oklahoma , as it turned out the seeing was
poor .Three hours, 14 Gig and ten frozen fingers later I had only one two minute Avi that was worth keeping and to get anything halfway good out of that Avi I had to hand pick the frames, certainly not as good as I had hoped for .
Not my best image but the shadow and moon are interesting

The Moon Io and it's shadow are in transit.

Starmaster 14 1/2" @F/30 , 224 frames out of 1300 .


Thanks,

Wes Higgins

Attached Image:

Looks excellent to me Wes. A lot better than the one I took through my dewed up scope;-) I ordered a dew heater, so next time I will be ready. Nice job!
Ralph

Beautiful shot Wes!
Sweet detail!


Thanks!



Ivan

Wes,

A beautiful image of Jupiter showing the Great Red Spot (GRS) region. Io and it's shadow are very interesting. I hope that you enjoy better seeing in the future, but this was a nice image all the same.

Carlos

Hi Wes,

Finally cleared up down here but the seeing was so bad I didn't even bother taking the scope out.

I think the image is excellent especially if the seeing conditions were as you mentioned. The moon is just a tad elongated but barely so. The colors though are beautiful with very subtle variations. I also like the way you processed this image. There is no hint of overprocessing noise whatsoever. This makes the image look extremely natural - well done!

Best,

Jose Suro
Tierra verde, Florida

Wes,

Very sweet image, you got the colours spot-on! Reminds me of the colours I see in a very large dob in good seeing.

--Mike W

Wes -

The color rendition is excellent in your image. It really captures the red spot which to my eye has shifted from peach or salmon to apricot in this aparition. I imaged a very similar transit from Cedar Key - alas, also with a dewed corrector - and have been avoiding looking at the results. The best nights are yet to come.

clear skies,
Alan

Wes,

Great shot, THe view of Io transiting with the GRS makes for a great image. I must have had better luck with the seeing than you did. I did not have to resort to hand picking. The CSC is a great tool, but not 100% perfect.

George

Hi Eric,

Thanks

I will normally let Registax or K3CCDtools select the
best frames from the Avi that I decide has the best frames, the seeing was so bad this time that there was to many bad frames mixed in with the few good ones when I let
Registax pick the best ones so I manually selected the best ones.

I will usually take one two to three minute Avi after another until my hard drive fills (about 16 Gig) , while taking the Avi's I will watch the live feed on the monitor and make mental or sometimes written notes as to which Avi's look the best and examine those first when deciding which Avi to stack , I image at 10FPS .
Persistence is probably the best tool to have when imaging the planets.

Wes Higgins


Hi Wes,

I have been quite impressed with your photos. Some questions though- how do you go about picking your best AVIs? Do you just align and stack each AVI until you find one that shows the best results and then "fine tune" by hand picking frames, or some other method? If your capturing 1300 frames, at what fps? Do you just record one 1300 frame AVI after another, over a long period of time, and then pick the best one? This must take quite some time!

Thanks,
Eric

Beautiful job Wes. I love the color!

Jim Phillips