Posts Made By: Chris Vinson

Here's an Io traversal of Jupiter I was lucky enough to witness on June 11th of this year. It's taken quite a few hours to process each of the two minute videos; there were 54 of them to go through!

My process was to take a 2 minute video and wait 2 minutes before taking the next video.

http://i96.photobucket.com/albums/l191/chrisvin/Jupiter-Moon-Traversal.gif

Seeing from the middle of hot and humid Pensacola, FL leaves something to be desired, but overall I'm very pleased with the results of my first attempt at something like this.

The equipment I used was a Meade 10" Classic SCT, Televue 3X barlow, and Phillips SPC900NC w/ Mogg adapter.

The processing software was 008soft's Open Video Converter (convert each mpg to avi), RegiStax4 (approx best 60 frames of each video), and Adobe ImageReady CS2 (create animated gif). BTW, I found a very helpful homemade tutorial on how to create an animated gif on the youtube site!

I would like to have tried to pull out more color from each frame used for the animation, but I have neither taken nor had time to learn Adobe CS2 yet.

And the hits keep coming....both a Mars and Jupiter image in the latest S&T!

Great shots and thanks for sharing them, Mike!

Took this last night under pretty bad seeing conditions (middle of the city, VERY damp air!). I used my Phillips SPC900NC Webcam and Registax. As soon as I'm more comfortable using the DMK31, I'll start posting more photos.

http://i96.photobucket.com/albums/l191/chrisvin/Mars-12-14-2007.gif

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,324800,00.html

Paul,

I know you've gotten plenty of info on the dewshield already, but the following is a description of the Astrozap Flexible Dewshield I have for my 10" Classic LX200:

The shield's overall dimensions are 39.5" X 15". It has a 2" strip of Velcro along one 15" edge and a 2" mating Velcro piece along the opposite edge (be sure the Velcro pieces are on opposing faces of course!) There's a 37.5" X 2" strip of seating foam (same kind of foam that's on the OTA cover) along the bottom edge of the interior face. Lastly, the interior face of the shield is covered with flocking wherever there isn't already Velcro or seating foam.

Hope that makes sense!

Chris

Evan,

A quick search found the following possible answer:

http://www.astronomy.com/ASY/CS/forums/277349/PrintPost.aspx

"You could uninstall and reinstall Registax and whatever camera software you use to download the AVI to your computer (but that's a big pain in the rear) and/or you could update your codecs (if you're good with computers). Some tell me you could download Virtual Dub. This is a freeware utility that will decompress your AVI and save it. Then you work with it in Registax."

This is the link to VirtualDub:

http://superb-west.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/virtualdub/VirtualDub-1.6.19.zip

Good luck,
Chris

I just received an email from John Berryman that says TIS is accepting pre-orders for the USB version of the Astro cameras. He added that they expect their first shipment of these cameras from Germany the third week in October. John's email is:

[email protected]

These cameras will only require a USB cable.

'Good things come to those who wait!'

Paul,

I just got a DMK31 and am trying to figure out how to use filters and combine R, G, B into an LRGB as you have done. I hope you don't mind answering a few questions or maybe can point me to a previous thread discussing how to do this.

I assume you take separate videos of the planet through each filter, much as you would with a color webcam, and then run each video through Registax to create single, separate composite R, G, and B images. Is the next step to stack these separate images with Registax? or Astroart? or Photoshop? and 'tweak' the colors as necessary?

Additional questions I have are:

- Do you change any of the DMK settings between the R, G, B videos? Depending on the filter I used, some of my filtered videos of Mars have left the planet almost invisible and, consequently, hard to align in Registax.

- You mention stacking 2 Red images, were any DMK settings altered between the shooting of those two videos? Do you recommend doing this? Are you thinking of other combinations (ie 3 R, 1 B, 2 G, etc)?

- Do you also use the IR image? Is this the L in LRGB or are you using a completely unfiltered video composite for the luminance image?

- Do you have a 'standard' length video or do you let seeing conditions dictate for you? Is the video length the same for each filtered and unfiltered video?

- What file format do you save each composite image in (FIT? RGB? something else?) prior to combining them?

I'm hoping to save myself some trial and error as well as produce images half as good as those I routinely find on this forum, so any help you (and anyone else!) can provide will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance,
Chris Vinson

Jim,

Georgeous!! What camera are you using?

Chris

Steve,

THANK YOU for posting the details of your process. I, for one, am learning from your methods! This whole LRGB thing is a bit like a shot in the dark for me. I'd never have enough time (and good conditions) to experiment to the extent necessary to feel like I was making progress. By you publishing your process and results, I feel like I'll be able to optimize my time when the conditions allow me to set up my gear and take pictures/movies. Eventually, I hope to provide some useful input, but for right now I remain a student!

Clear skies and THANKS again,
Chris