Stacked approx 2151 out of 14320 frames. Although it is a little noisy, I think it's my best Saturn image in B&W. This one does seem to hint at Enke's Gap.
Data recorded 11:23 pm on 7/28. Was I using the IR685 filter? I believe so.
And as another data point, here's a partial screenshot showing low number of alignment points...
If I only had been shooting RGB from the get-go...
Friends, it's not boring if you're cool. (And Venus is not cool at an average temp of 462 deg C.)
Stacked 1,409 frames out of 28,188. QHY 290 mono with IR685 (I think) through the C11 with TV 2x barlow.
Data collected here at 4:04 am on 7/29.
There is a slightly noticeable feature right above the center -- there is a hint of a dark square-ish area. In some of the original video frames it seems to be barely present. So there...
Oh, the more important point about all this...
So the reason why I haven't posted any Venus images is that I was getting artifacts in Registax. The artifacts looked like the outlines of the square alignment points. No matter how I re-arranged them, I would always see some remnant of the alignment points when I started sharpening. At first, I thought it was some defect in Registax, but I also saw them when I brought the images into Gimp.
Then I decided to try a lot fewer alignment points and that was the solution. But upon further research into alignment points, I stumbled upon this thread on Cloudynights:
https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/562976-autostakkert-alignment-points-question/?p=7644528
Now, I'm wondering if I've been doing this wrong all this time. Do fewer alignment points produce better stacked planet images?
(Later...)
Artifacts are back (no matter if I do less or more alignment points) and I'm getting weird "ringworm "on the planet. They look like either dust motes OR reflections from the optical system. I was using a cheap violet filter here and yeah... It's possible that the "detail" on the lowest part of the planet is real cloud structure.
I've got a bunch of this footage and I think the verdict is NO on my crappy violet filter.
It looks like I've got to pick up a proper UV pass-through filter if I want cloudy details on Venus.
Just including the last mono stack that I took with the QHY 290 with Violet filter.
This is the best 5% of approx. 48,000 frames. Data massaged in Autostakkert, Registax, Gimp, and even Topaz sharpen (then back to Gimp).
Video was captured at 4:48 am on 7/31.
There are some differently contrasted areas to the top and bottom, but they seem too symmetrical to be real. In the planet disc itself, there are hints of different densities but nothing that stands out. I did have to play around with alignment points AGAIN to get it to stack properly and so I'm including another screen shot. This time I didn't really put down alignment points near the edge of the planet.
I was reading that barlow optics may have a deleterious effect on UV light transmission. So, some people are advising against a barlow. That really means you need a C14 and camera with 2.4 micron pixels. What you need is completely reflective optics like a traditional newt OR a quartz-based lens. Link.
Considering the title, I couldn't help but include this link.
My goal here was to get Rupes Recta and Rima Birt, and although I was able to get 33000+ frames and stack around 3,000 frames, it just doesn't look great. I tried stacking 30 percent, 9 percent (this image) and 1 percent. And they look out of focus. I looked at the raw video and it looked fine. But I guess it was just barely out of focus. I only collected one video of this target and in retrospect, I should have planned for 4-5 videos where I refocused for each one.
Video was captured on 7/29 at 10:02 pm. This is a 10 day old moon, illuminated at 78%.
(This is through the QHY 290 mono cam, C11, TV 2x barlow..... Now that I think about it, this was the first night of shooting with the new camera and I know that I forgot to use the UV/IR filter on some of my first footage. This is probably the reason for the focus issue.)
1,242 frames out of 13,807 frames (9%) stacked in Autostakkert; and processed in Registax and Gimp.
Data taken at approx. 2:36 am on 8/8. (19 day moon, 80% illuminated.)
C11, 2x TV barlow, Astromania ADC, QHY 462C. The original video is green. So I had to do some channel mixing in Gimp to get it to B&W.
You can definitely see 6 craterlets and mostly 1 more. There are about another 7-8 "maybe" craterlets which tells me the resolution here is around 1.5 - 2 km.
The blurry parts in the lower left, upper left and a little bit of lower-mid right were problems in Autostakkert.
Best 2,115 frames out of 7052 (30%). Taken with the same equipment except for the QHY 462C camera.
Data collected at 12:41 am on 8/8.
Why is the background blue? >sigh<
Did some color correction in Gimp, but the result became noisier. 😖
