Recent Lunar Images 10/03/2023

The following lunar images were taken of the waning gibbous Moon just after midnight. Optical configuration Celestron 8 + diagonal. ASI178MC was camera used at 800x600 RAW16 space at 60fps. Each image was averaged with Autostakkert!3 from the best 2500 of 5000 frames taken. Wavelet sharpening done in Paintshop Pro via script by this writer. In the future 800x600 RAW8 will be tested for a higher frame rate. Update: Images reprocessed to remove excessively warm image tone.

Cauchy, Lawrence, Da Vinci craters area

Cyrillus and Theophilus craters

Fracastorius crater area

Hercules & Atlas craters

Hommel crater area

Janssen crater area

Leaky crater area

Lyell & Franz craters area

Miraldi crater area

Montes & Pyrenaeus craters area

Moretus crater area

Posidonius crater area

Piccolomini crater area

Tarantius & Zahringer

Vitruvius & Gardner craters

Jupiter + satellite Io - 10/23/2020 from patio

I don't usually operate from my tree blocked, light polluted patio. However this particular evening there was a short clear sky window where Jupiter was clear of trees. Over a period of about 20 minutes I acquired eleven stills that I stitched into the Jupiter rotation video below. Celestron 8 and Meade 2X barlow were used for acquisition.  

NOTE: video has been removed but might be restored in the near future. 

Each still was averaged from 2000 frame videos processed with Autostakkert! and Paintshop Pro.  Seeing was mediocre. None the less details of Jupiter's dynamic atmosphere could be brought out using un-sharp mask scripts I have been experimenting with.  

Jupiter+Io  10/23/2020 @ 19:08 EDT

The skimpy postings to this blog prompted me to go back and review my past trove of lunar and planetary images of which there are many. It's embarrassing so few have been posted. Many of these are superior to images posted more recently.  

So, over the next few weeks I will post a few of the better images each day or two with a little commentary on how the images were acquired and processed in cases when  available. Perusal of my deep sky images suggests I should also do this for my Rick's Deep Sky Imaging blog which I plan to merge with this blog in the near future.

Multi-Unsharp Mask Sharpening

Until recently I stacked solar system images with Autostakkert!3 and sharpened using wavelet sharpening with Registax. I don't like depending on Registax since it's no longer supported. I decided to experiment with multiple application of un-sharp masks to wavelet sharpen. This approach was inspired by an article "How Unsharp Masking and Laplacian Sharpening Work" by Keith Wiley

A series of Paintshop Pro commands can be saved as an editable Python Script. I saved and modified such a script with a for loop that performs  un-sharp mask repetitions. Number of cycles, radius and strength are settable parameters. A medium denoise it applied after the un-sharp mask cycles. After the script I applied chromatic aberration correction. 

Before and after sharpening images of the Copernicus crater appear below. These images were acquired on a night with the moon just below the celestial equator and with average to below average seeing. 

Ten cycles of  un-sharp masking with radius 2.0 and strength 35 were applied followed by a median denoise with aperture 1.  Close examination of the post script image suggests using the PaintShop Pro built in chromatic aberration removal tool. 

Scripts have also been created for Jupiter and Saturn. More on these in the future as I'm still experimenting with settings. 

Unsharpened 

Wavelet Sharpened

Jupiter 08/09/2020

Back in MA from MD it sucks that I have to quarantine for 14 days but that's life in the era of the Covid-19 virus. I can't get to my favorite local park site with Jupiter and Saturn in prime time. At least I can catch a few imaging glimpses during the short window when the gas giants are between increasingly view blocking trees in front of my apartment terrace. Below is an image of Jupiter taken just after midnight 08/09/2020. 

Seeing was pretty mediocre and building tremors from air conditioners throughout this wood frame building contribute to the blurring and misshaping of Europa. It also didn't help that polar alignment was pretty rough compared to when at a site where Polaris is visible. 

The real value to this exercise was honing in on best settings for imaging the gas giants with the ASI178MC with the 2X Barlow lens. To the east I noticed the gibbous moon with Mars to its right looking quite bright giving me something to look forward to over the next few weeks of planetary imaging. 

Thankfully my quarantine ends right around new moon liberating to travel to my favorite darkish sites for DSO and gas giant imaging. Crossing fingers for clear skies then. 

Jupiter with Europa

Jupiter and Saturn 07/26/2020

Jupiter with Callisto's shadow and Europa to the right. 

Saturn

Recent Lunar Images 07/29/2020

These are my first lunar craters imaged with the new ASI178MC camera. Imaging format was 1600x1200. However, in the future, imaging format will likely be reduced, perhaps to 800x600 to focus in on specific craters and increase frames per second rate. A thousand frames were collected using SharpCap, 25% stacked in Autostakkert!3 and wavelet sharpened with Registax 6. 

Tycho Area

Plato Area

Copernicus Area

Clavius Area

Bullialdus Area

Jupiter and Saturn

It was July 19th. I finally got out with the new ASI178MC planetary imager. Actually, its the first night I got successful pictures. The previous July 15 was a total bust because I used the wrong imaging format and to short exposure times.

Anyway, this time I imaged in Raw16 and RGB24 paying attention to gain, exposure time and the histogram. For each image 1000 frames were acquired at 1600x1200 format.  Images were projected with a 2X Barlow. Back in Massachusetts, I'm in Maryland for July, I have a 3X Barlow I'll try in the future. I'll also consider a smaller imaging format to get a faster frame rate.

Jupiter 7/19/2020

Saturn 7/19/2020