Sunday, February 08, 2015

Jupiter and Europa


After a long run of bad weather I finally managed to get outside this evening and do a little imaging with my new scope - the Altair Astro Wave Series 115 ED F7 Triplet refractor.
After an initial alignment using Astrotortilla, I swapped the main camera for my QHY IMG132E planetary imaging camera together with a Tele Vue 2x Powermate and slew the scope to Jupiter. After focussing as best as I could I was quite impressed with how much detail I could see on my laptop screen and how little atmospheric distortion there was - a particularly rare still night. I then set about capturing several 89 second AVI files, averaging 20fps, which although significantly less than than the camera is capable of is about as much as my system will allow.
Once back inside (it was -2 outside) I set about processing the files. Firstly I stacked them using AutoStakkert 2 - taking the best 50% of the frames to make a single image. I then loaded it in RegiStax 6 and auto aligned and balanced the colour to get rid of a slight blue tinge on one side of the planet. I then adjusted the wavelets, which is a process that pulls out the finer detail in the planet's surface - I don't know how it works, but it does the job!
Jupiter and Europa - 8 Feb 15

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