From: "k.logg" <k.logg@yahoo.com>
Date: July 31, 2006 1:15:53 PM MDT
To: Astro_IIDC@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: Transit of Io 16 June 2006
Hi Alan
Thank you for your kinds words and feedback, it's greatly appreciate
and immensely helpful.
I am really pleased with the image, all things considered. I wasn't
sure if that was oval BA, I spent the following couple of weeks
looking for images of Jupiter from the same day to confirm it. I never
did, so I'm glad you mentioned it.
With a lot more practice and a little bit of luck I may be able to
take images half as good as yours.
Cal
--- In Astro_IIDC@yahoogroups.com, Alan Friedman <alan@...> wrote:
Hi Cal -
That's a fine first image. Great to record the transit and you can just
make out oval BA (aka red jr) to the lower right of the GRS. Color is
very nice.
There is some debate on how to record the seeing quality - all of the
methods will become more meaningful with experience. I use a simple
"report card" method now - poor (would have been better to go back to
sleep), fair (4-5 Pickering), good (6-7 Pickering), excellent (pinch
myself to make sure it's not a dream). Needless to say fair/good covers
99% of the conditions at my location when it is worthwhile to image.
Gamma at 1.6 seems high to me - I usually use 1.0 to a max of 1.3 with
my B&W DMK camera (not sure if the settings have the same meaning with
your camera). But the image quality doesn't indicate a problem to my
eye and I think there may be an advantage to stacking to increase the
contrast in the frames. I usually use a lower pixel matching tolerance
too but it seems that most of the selected frames were stacked so it
doesn't seem to have been a problem at this image scale.
Look forward to seeing more of your images.
Alan
ps - no apologies needed, but thanks for the reference! 8^)
On Jul 31, 2006, at 11:50 AM, k.logg wrote:
Hi all
This is my first ever image. It was only meant to be an exercise in
familiarising myself with Astro IIDC. It was pure luck that I
captured
the transit of Io on the 16 June.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Astro_IIDC/files/Planetary/Transit of Io
16 June 2006.jpg
As I'm new to this I don't know how to quantify the seeing,
transparency. It was clear but not very dark this close to the
Solstice and the atmosphere was pretty turbulent, particular as
Jupiter was so low in the sky. Hence so few frames captured using a
Unibrain Fire-i colour webcam at f10 on a friend's 8" LX200 (altaz)
Below are the logs from Astro IIDC, any comments will be gratefully
received, as I really have no idea what I'm doing.
Settings for Astro IIDC image capture were as follows;
Gamma: 1.64
Saturation: 36
Blue Gain: 115
Red Gain: 69
Brightness: 102
Black Point: 248
Exposure: 133.33 ms
Settings for Astro IIDC stacking and processing:
Stacking : 8 Bit Movie
CI Cutoff: 60 %
Aligned Using:Luma Channel
Gross Alignment: Planetary
Pixel Alignment: Horizontal and Vertical Separate
Pixel Alignment Block Size: 32 x 32 pixels
Pixel Matching Tolerance : High
Scale Frames by: 1 x
Frame Sharpening: Medium
HighQuality Bayer: Off
Auto Clip Area: On
Averaging Images
Sharpness Statistics: Min 0.759031 , Max 0.833257 ,
STD0.013007 , Mean 0.795522 , Median 0.795564 , Mode
0.793824, CutOff Value 0.802748
Pixel Noise Percentage: 0.392157
Main Image Centroid X:243.7, Y:205.8
Pixel Area One Centroid X:270.7, Y:189.8
Pixel Area Two Centroid X:234.7, Y:227.8
Stacked 198 out of 680 frames
Final processing using Photoshop.
Best wishes
Cal
PS Apologies to Alan Friedman as I've pretty much copied your method
of presenting the image.