Even the Stills Get Better From GIMP

 This was 1/1000 sec. ISO 800:

A bit of fiddling in GIMP:

Playing With Registax and Some Other Videos From Last Week

If exposure is too high, there is nothing useful that Registax can do to clean them up.  But another video produces a decent image.

Enhanced That Image From the Video

 I ran this video through PIPP, Registax, and GIMP:

That produced this image:

I Was Actually Well Enough to Do Astrophotography a Few Nights Ago

Of course, once I was outside, I realized the two AAA batteries that power the clock drive were dead.  (The power switch is in a position that makes it easy to forget to turn it off.)  Nonetheless, short exposures (1/80th sec. ISO 800) still produce okay images.

Video is required to produce higher quality images and you can see the tracking issue and general atmospheric instability:

Adding to the fun is that my fast laptop (128GB RAM) cannot read the camera's SDXC memory cards through a USB adapter,  The travel laptop pretty obviously does.

UPDATE: The cable from the laptop to the USB hub was missing.  Duh!

Annular Eclipse

In just a few minutes, it dropped at least 10 degrees.  I took lots of pictures with the Pentax and a solar filter.  Those will need to be moved to my PC before I blog them.

Whew!  The Sun is coming back.  No need to sacrifice a chicken.  I can see why primitive people saw this as a problem.

The dragon finally disgorged the Sun.  I was worried about next year's crops!

Some of the best images came when partially obscured by clouds. Yes, I used an adjustable neutral filter but internal reflections produced garbage like this:

In Spite of the Hand Controller That Does Not Bounce Well

 

These were all shot on video at ISO 3200 with my recently improved 8" f/7 reflector with a 25mm eyepiece projection.

How Fast the Weather Changes

Just a month ago, the limiting factor on astrophotography was that sunset was so late that I could not stay up and still be up to see my wife off to work.  Now darkness falls early enough but at the price of cloudy nights and last night, heavy rain.

More than rain. 

The Scope Rolls Out, the Clouds Roll In...

I can almost write lyrics for the Amateur Astronomers' Lament.

The good things that happened:

1. The camera is still too heavy for the counterweight I put on the tail end.  I guess using a scale to check the weight of camera, eyepiece and projection holder is in order.  First step: wax the altitude bearings so that it is perfectly balanced with an eyepiece alone.

2. The power change I made seems not to be turning the motor.  Verify voltage at motor and trace back through wiring changes.

It turns out that the 12VDC->3VDC converter actually outputs 3.2V.  In this application, the rheostat used for speed adjustment either does not pass an overvoltage through, or it runs the motor too fast for accurate tracking, which through the eyepiece is hard to distinguish from not tracking at all.  I will just try to remember to turn it off at the end of the evening.

I Tried Again to Process That Jupiter Image

I shared a very ugly image of Jupiter a few days ago.  I tried again.

I have not tried imaging the Galilean satellites since 2014. (I forgot that I had done so because of a stroke a month or so later.) Anyway, I went out the other night to try again. I got a nice image of all four.

Of course, Jupiter at 1 second was grossly overexposed.

So I took 11 seconds of video, ran it through Registax, cropped the image and ended up with a very crude version of what I saw through the eyepiece. I am not sure what exposure time I used; EXIF does not provide that for video. Comparing the brightness to stills suggests 1/50th of a second.

Finally Dark Enough

I rolled Big Bertha out.  I took some one minute videos of the Moon.  1800 frames should stack some awesome images.

Jupiter never ceases to amaze me through this 17.5" f/4.5 scope rebuilt by DobStuff.  Not just the brown bands in the upper and lower temperate latitudes but all the subtle curlicues that are just on the edge of resolution at 222x.  It was getting late enough that I just wanted some still photos and video of Jupiter and satellites.  Unfortunately, eyepiece projection put too much weight at the front and in the dark I could not find the counterweights I hang on the back for this purpose.  Maybe tomorrow night.  But I will have pictures tomorrow morning!

Tomorrow morning: As fast as this new laptop is, Registax is still taking a while processing 1800 frames!

Registax alone on 1800 frames.  This was I think at 1/100th second exposure per frame.

Then with GIMP unsharp mask:

And here was a still image ISO-100 1/80th second unsharp masked with GIMP.

As you can see stacking 1800 frames produces a better image than even a very short exposure.

Jupiter's satellites.  Jupiter is washed out because I was using a long exposure time (1/100th second?  not included in the EXIF block) to get the satellites.  I will use a shorter exposure and eyepiece projection tonight to get details on the planet.  That long exposure time might be showing tracking errors, or more likely maybe the alignment to north was inadequate.  Jupiter is not that oblate and the satellites are a bit smeared.  

Okay, this was a shorter exposure per frame, 15 seconds.  It still needs eyepiece projection to get more detail.  I cropped it a bit to increase scale.

If you are considering buying an equatorial platform for your Dobsonian, you will not go wrong with the Crossbow.

I found the additional balancing weight for eyepiece projection.  All the way in the back of thhe shed.

I Added a Bunch of New Astrophotographs

http://claytoncramer.com/astrophotos/astrophotography.html

I Wondering Why I Never Took Any Pictures of Jupiter With Satellites

 The answer was BEFORE STROKE:

I did not have tracking yet, hence the movement:

Image Processing is An Art

 One that I am still learning.

Which of These is Most Esthetically Pleasing to You?

 

More Magnification

 This was 9mm eyepiece projection ISO-100 exposure video.  I played a little with the number of alignment points and wavelet controls in Registax.  I am not sure how much difference it made.

You can see rays coming off some of these craters.  These are ejecta that have not had enough millions of years to be faded to black by sunlight.

This is the video from which Registax and GIMP started.  Including crickets!

Where Did All My Disk Space Go?

 I have lived very comfortably in a 1TB SSD, and suddenly, I am running out.

The answer was simple.  Producing high quality astrophotos requires:

1. The AVI file produced by my Pentax.

2. Converting that AVI to a Codec recognized by Registax.

PIPP does that conversion, producing yet another AVI file in a temporary directory.  These files are only needed for a short while, so I need to delete them when done.  PIPP produces a less than clear error message when it runs out of disk space.

This is why I go through the extra steps.

This is 25mm eyepiece projection created from 720 frames stacked and unsharp masked.

Finally Got Outside Again

 2000mm f/4.5 ISO 100 1/100th sec. prime focus

2000mm 9mm eyepiece projection ISO 100 1/40th sec. 

The videos I will process tomorrow when I am not tired.  It still was not dark enough to make out Lyra.  M57 is my first deep sky target.

That Closeup I Posted a Day or Two Ago

 Was not so wonderful when printed.  I fiddled a little too hard on the wavelet processing.  Despeckle in GIMP helped.

This Lenovo P17 Gen. 2 just flies at this.  I am considering an upgrade from 32GB of RAM to 128GB.  There is apparently an asymptotic curve of RAM and speed with Windows.  (Yes, I know Windows is not a lightweight OS compared to Linux.)

Processed the Videos

 

These were taken with a 25mm eyepiece projection on an 8" f/7.  The camera lets me control frame exposure time but does not seem to preserve this in the EXIF data.

This was a single still ISO 100, 1/100th sec., prime focus.

I need to update the diagonal mirror holder to improve resolution.   That is a task that I have been dreading because I have remove the tube from the mount precisely locate four holes, drill them, remove the old spider, patch the old holes and then install the new spider.  Not a job for a hot day.

Too Late to Process the Videos Tonight

Some of the single exposures came out okay for a full and therefore non-contrasty Moon:

I need to remember the Citronella candles and Off!  Mosquitoes serve no ecological function that I can see except keeping human population down.