Our Beautiful Universe - Photos and Videos

[chemisttree]

... And I did a quick approximate calculation to get a feel for the distance to the planet:

Jupiter distance from Sun: 778 570 000 km
Earth distance from Sun: 149 598 023 km
Distance from Earth to Jupiter (ca): (778 570 000 - 149 598 023 ) = 628 971 977 km
Earth circumference: 40 075 km
628 971 977 / 40 075 = 15 695

So the distance to Jupiter is approximately equal to the distance traveled around the Earth 15 695 times. And this is PF, so if I got it wrong I expect to be corrected.
(yes, I know it also depends on where the planets are at the moment, but it is an approximation )

Seems right to me but only when the Earth and Jupiter are at opposition. When at conjunction you would add the distances. Of course this doesn’t account for the two planet’s orbital eccentricities.
My calculation for the distance at conjunction:

778,570,000
+ 149,598,023
———————
928,168,023 (I’m ignoring significant digits here)

928,168,023 / 40,075 = 23,161

So the distance between Jupiter and Earth ranges from 15,695 and 23,161 times around the surface of the Earth.

 

[chemisttree]

Hi thank you.
I have still one eyepiece: Sky-Watcher SWA-58-3.2. mm Plossl. Do you think this one could fit..?

Thanks and lot of succes

It should fit. My UWA-58 degree 7mm fits it perfectly once I remove the rubber eyecup.

 

[chemisttree]

This type of eyepiece doesn’t work. The angled sides cause it to be crooked in the holder.

 

[bruha]

Thank you it looks very good , I will try get it

 

[Andy Resnick]

The great cluster in Hercules is in a good viewing position for me this time of year:

deets: 3.6 hrs at 400/2.8 ISO 2500

and I've gotten much better results now with my panoramas- this one features the North American Nebula, 4 different fields of view @ 400mm, image size 9.5k x 7.5k pixels. There are a lot of interesting objects to be found:

(IC 5076)

(NGC 7048)

 

[DennisN]

Beautiful photos!

I've gotten much better results now with my panoramas

Are you still using Hugin or have you found any new software for panoramas?

 

[Andy Resnick]

Beautiful photos!

Are you still using Hugin or have you found any new software for panoramas?

Thanks! For this one, I used the stacking software.

 

[DennisN]

Thanks! For this one, I used the stacking software.

Which software, I wonder? And do you have to manually/semi-manually align the images when making panoramas? I'm asking because I've been looking for a software that can automatically do this with star photos. I haven't had any luck so far.

 

[DennisN]

Saturn through my scope this night:
- it was also the very first time I observed the planet with rings, it was awesome...

 

[davenn]

well done :)

 

[bruha]

Hi , it is quite nice , which scope and camera you use?

 

[Andy Resnick]

Which software, I wonder? And do you have to manually/semi-manually align the images when making panoramas? I'm asking because I've been looking for a software that can automatically do this with star photos. I haven't had any luck so far.

I did not do an exhaustive trade study before purchase, but I am using AstroPixelProcessor and am quite pleased:

https://www.astropixelprocessor.com/

 

[DennisN]

Hi , it is quite nice , which scope and camera you use?

Thanks!
I used my cheap $35 Chinese scope, and the camera on my LG G4 phone (where the camera settings can be manually set), fitted to the scope with an adapter similar to the one @chemisttree posted a photo of above.
But his eyepiece look much more fancy than mine.

I first used an eyepiece that gave 15x magnification to locate Saturn, then I fitted an eyepiece that gave 50x magnification. I also used digital zoom on the camera to help with the focusing. The photo I posted above is done with RegiStax, which analyzed a 10 second film I shot of Saturn and produced a photo. I also did some postprocessing of the photo in Photoshop.

I have a couple of more films I shot of Saturn, and I will join them together and see if RegiStax can do an improvement with more film material.

 

[bruha]

Hi and thank you for answer.
I have ordered mentioned adapter, so I hope I will make some improvement . Anyway I use Registax as well and have some results but up to now mainly just with moon image...
As sample I attach my Saturn image made by Compact camera adjusted by holder front of eyepiece Hyperion 8 mm... not enough satysfing

 

[DennisN]

The Moon, 7 June 2020, my first composite image made of 13 individual photos:

And another composite image made of 4 photos:

 

[bruha]

Hi, can I ask... is it first image saturated...?

 

[DennisN]

Hi, can I ask... is it first image saturated...?

Both images are edited, quite quickly and probably somewhat differently .
I didn't use saturation as such. If I remember correctly I increased contrast, decreased brightness and manually edited the color levels for the red, green and blue channel (RGB).

I don't know if this is a good way to do it, but the reason is that I can bring out more details by changing contrast and brightness, but afterwards the color/hue gets changed a bit. And that's why I tried to compensate by changing the RGB levels afterwards.

 

[bruha]

Hi and thank you for answer.
I understand, can I still ask how you choose individual levels for R, G, B ?

Thank you and lot of succes with editing ...

 

[DennisN]

Hi and thank you for answer.
I understand, can I still ask how you choose individual levels for R, G, B ?

Hi, it depends on which software you are using.

For instance,

In Photoshop:
Menu: Image -> Adjustments -> Levels and in the dialog select Channel (Red, Green or Blue)

In XnView:
Menu: Image -> Adjust Brightness/Constract/Gamma/Balance, and in the dialog you can adjust the colour balance individually for Red, Green and Blue

...and here is a video where Forrest Tanaka does the adjustment in the software DeepSkyStacker (which I use for star photos):

The entire video by Tanaka is excellent, by the way.

He has got a bunch of good videos about astrophotography, and his channel is here:
http://www.youtube.com/user/ForrestTanaka/videos

Thank you and lot of succes with editing ...

Thanks, and you too!

 

[DennisN]

FYI @davenn , @Andy Resnick , @bruha , @chemisttree etc. :

Oh, by the way, I wanted to mention that I have found an alternative to RegiStax.
Since I've had some issues with it (for some reason it freezes sometimes when it is stacking), I looked for an alternative to it, and some people suggested a software called AutoStakkert (which some preferred instead of RegiStax). I haven't tried the software yet, but it's free and here's the download page: http://www.autostakkert.com/wp/download/

 

[davenn]

suggested a software called AutoStakkert

yup it's a good one, been around for some time. I may have mentioned it long ago in my pinned solar thread.

But don't use either of those 2 for stacking deep space stuff !
just for sun, moon and planets Dave

 

[bruha]

Hi and thanks

 

[chemisttree]

Saturn through my scope this night:
- it was also the very first time I observed the planet with rings, it was awesome...

View attachment 264663

This looks very low in the sky. Was Saturn close to the horizon (~15-25 degrees)?

 

[DennisN]

This looks very low in the sky. Was Saturn close to the horizon (~15-25 degrees)?

Yes, about 14 degrees. I had to check with Stellarium, because I'm not used to estimating degrees in the sky...

 

[DennisN]

I just did a new stack of Saturn, using a longer movie (stacking about 350 images).
And since I suspected the color "weirdness" in my first stacked photo was due to chromatic abberation, I looked for some ways to help with that. I found this guide (for Photoshop) which used gaussian blur etc.:

http://fixthephoto.com/chromatic-aberration-photoshop.html

where I did only the first three steps (1-3) on the photo produced after stacking.

I think the new photo got much better:

First photo (stack: 228 photos):

New photo (stack: 349 photos & chromatic abberation fix on final photo):
(maybe it's a bit too bright, though? I don't know...)

Edit: Yes, I compared with the Cassini photos, and Saturn is not as bright as in my photo above...
...back to Photoshop I go...

Edit 2: We have reasonably clear skies here now, and if it continues I may try to take new photos/films of Jupiter and Saturn, hopefully better... yep, this hobby is addictive...

 

[Andy Resnick]

FYI @davenn , @Andy Resnick , @bruha , @chemisttree etc. :

Oh, by the way, I wanted to mention that I have found an alternative to RegiStax.
Since I've had some issues with it (for some reason it freezes sometimes when it is stacking), I looked for an alternative to it, and some people suggested a software called AutoStakkert (which some preferred instead of RegiStax). I haven't tried the software yet, but it's free and here's the download page: http://www.autostakkert.com/wp/download/

Thanks for the link! I use Lynkeos (also free) for planetary stacking b/c mac:

https://lynkeos.sourceforge.io/

Here's single shots of Saturn (@ 400%) and Jupiter (100%, composted from 2 single shots) I took on 6_20_20:

I claim I can see the ring's shadow.

Those small dots are the 4 Galilean moons.

 

[chemisttree]

Yes, about 14 degrees. I had to check with Stellarium, because I'm not used to estimating degrees in the sky...

I had a feeling. How high does Saturn get at your latitude? It might help to wait until its higher up. I suspect it is mostly atmospheric chromatism that low in the sky.
Atmospheric chromatism.

Hold a hand out at arms length aligned little finger horizontal with the horizon. Like you’re taking a selfie. That width is about 10 degrees. Don’t forget to include your thumb!

Clear skies!

 

[DennisN]

I had a feeling. How high does Saturn get at your latitude? It might help to wait until its higher up.

At this time it sadly only reaches about 14°13'52.9''...

I suspect it is mostly atmospheric chromatism that low in the sky.
Atmospheric chromatism.

Thanks for the info, and thanks for the link. The corrector looks very interesting!

Hold a hand out at arms length aligned little finger horizontal with the horizon. Like you’re taking a selfie. That width is about 10 degrees. Don’t forget to include your thumb!

Thanks for the info!

Clear skies!

You too. The sky got very cloudy yesterday, so my plans were postponed. But tonight it looks better, so hopefully the planets will appear in a few hours.

 

[DennisN]

FYI @davenn , @Andy Resnick , @bruha , @chemisttree etc. :

I wanted to mention that I found another VERY useful software, PIPP (Planetary Imaging PreProcessor). It basically crops/select the best frames of the original photos/movies, which then can be further processed in the stacking program of your choice. For me, it greatly reduced the processing time of stacking.

It's free to download here: http://sites.google.com/site/astropipp/downloads

I've tried it for Windows, and it works great. It seems it can be run on Linux and Mac too with some extra software.

I found it when I was looking for reasons for why RegiStax was going out of memory when using the drizzling option, and I found a discussion on a forum where the developer of RegiStax was replying:

Hi,
As the author of RegiStax I can tell that no updates will ever be released. The program was developed to process images up to 3000x2000 pixels, anything larger than that will not fit in memory. For the purpose of the applications (large volume image processing, often 1000s or 10000s of frames stacked) this was above the common format in those days. I am not sure how large (for large volume images, shot at high speed of more than 25 fps) images nowadays are. You can always pre-process your AVI using PIPP (freeware).
regards

Cor

 

[chemisttree]

The Moon tonight at ~9:00 pm CST, ~25 minutes after sunset. 80 mm Carton f15 achromat objective in a home made 4” PVC pipe telescope (GSO focuser, no way I’m making that!) taken afocally with a 15mm plossl using the iPhone camera with the Orion phone mount. It’s a bit blurry in part because of a gauzy sky tonight. ~80X

 

[chemisttree]

A day later... Still have gauzy skies.

 

[DennisN]

A day later... Still have gauzy skies.

If you keep it up, you could make a changing moon phase animation...

 

[Andy Resnick]

Jupiter and Saturn @ 105mm, DX frame:

At a more reasonable exposure, I can make out 3 of Jupiter's moons but not Saturn's rings.

 

[chemisttree]

Jupiter and Saturn @ 105mm, DX frame:

View attachment 265267
At a more reasonable exposure, I can make out 3 of Jupiter's moons but not Saturn's rings.

It almost looks like Jupiter has rings in this image! The moons are in just the right location. Is this lens a zoom or a prime?

 

[Andy Resnick]

It almost looks like Jupiter has rings in this image! The moons are in just the right location. Is this lens a zoom or a prime?

It's a prime lens- Nikon 105/1.4. Here are 400% blowups of each planet taken at (IIRC) f/2, 1 s exposure, ISO 64: