Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => The O' Club => Topic started by: CptTrips on July 23, 2003, 08:49:07 PM
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http://webpages.charter.net/JasonIrby/astro_pics/07_19_2003/
Not great, but its a start. I still have a lot of learning to do. Trying to get the kinks worked out before end of Aug. Mars will be at its closest point in 2000 years. I want to get some decent footage.
Sharp DV ViewCam attatched to 12" Meade GPS.
Wab
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Cool shots Wabbit. I thought Mars is the closest it's been in 50,000 years. Is that not right? Not much of an astronomer here... :D.
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awesome!!!
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Great shots. How did you get them? Describe equipment if you don't mind.
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Whohoo wabbit!
I envy you!
I got my 6" Refractor with autostar and it works great!
Im waiting on my eyepieces and barlows and CCD camera to arrive!
:D
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Mark,
I stand corrected. Closest in 60,000 years according to Sky&Telescope.
Of course its gets pretty close every 2 years, but this pass its a little closer that usually. Its not going to be a dramatic difference but mars is so small every little bit helps. ;)
Mav,
I have a 12" Meade GPS SCT. I have a bracket that lets me mount my Sharp mini-dv cam in front of the eyepiece looking down into it like I would with my eyeball. I can film and take the tape home to later load onto the PC and pick out the best frames to try and process. Its not as light sensetive as a real CCD but it can capture a lot of frames faster so lets me grab in between air turbulence. Better for planets but not as good for deep sky galaxies and nebulas. But for me personally I'm more interested in planetary, solar, lunar than I am in dark fuzzies. ;)
OIO,
Hmmm sounds nice. I go out to a club dark sky site on the weekends and a guy had a $5,000 6" Takahashi refractor set up next to me. Man the views in that thing were razor sharp. But I still had him beat on pure light gathering power. ;) I expect some images from you!
Wab
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I've read a little bit on taking photos using telescopes and there's nothing that looks even remotely easy about it. Eventually you'll be going with the granite slab mounting unit wab... with some kind of shudderless (no moving part) capture system. But there'll always ben that damn atmosphere. Hehehehe.
It really makes one apreciate the capabilities of the Hubble Space Telescope.
MiniD
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Great shots - I like this one in particular.
(http://webpages.charter.net/JasonIrby/astro_pics/07_19_2003/moon.jpg)
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Damn Wab! Those are some amazing pictures!
How did you look at the sun to take those sunspot pictures? Doesn't the telescope magnify the sun's intensity, or did you view it through your camcoder?
-SW
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Nice photos!! Thanks for sharing :)
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Well the Takahashi's are apochromat refractors..thats like the highest quality glass optics you can get. Mine's just an achromat, i will have some color aberration in the edges
but then again, thats why god put photoshop on earth :D
Im scrambling now to borrow eyepieces, meade wont send me mine until past sept :( .
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Mini-D,
Yeah, its a money pit. I'm already looking at some rural land to build an observatory on. If it was easy, it wouldn't hardly be worth do'in. ;)
Swulfe,
I have a solar filter that fits on the front end of the optical system that eliminates the infrared and UV and reduces the visual frequencies to safe levels.
OIO,
I've seen techniques where the image is separated into RBG channels and the blue channel reduced in size and then recombined. Tends to compensate for achromatic aberation.
You might be burdened with some more pics monday. ;)
Wab
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THanks for sharing Wabbit, looks amazing.
:D
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Nice Pics Wabbit,
I have an 8" Celestron C-8 on a Polaris mount with an off axis guider.
I've taken a few stabs at astro-photography using hyper sensitized film (basically you chuck it in dry ice before you use it). I've gotten some decent shots of the Orion Nebula and the Andromeda Galaxy (I scanned the Orion one for ya), but it's a real pain in the arse sitting there for a 30 minute exposure making the corrections with the off axis guider.
CCD's are definitely the way to go, but man they cost a fortune for a good one.
Keep it up man! It's an awesome hobby.
(http://bellsouthpwp.net/h/o/hoffypb/orion.jpg)
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Pffft....and they mock me for building an R2-D2 :)
Very cool pics, how much did your scope cost, Weav? I could waste a lot of money at the Celestron or Meade websites...sigh
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Hey there LePaul,
Actually, the depending on the size telescope you are looking at, it's often the cheapest part. A good mount costs around $1500, and a decent 8 or 10" scope will cost around $800-$1000.
If you're not going to take pictures with it, I'd recommend a Dobsonian Scope. You can pick up a nice 10" one for about $700.
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Originally posted by LePaul
Pffft....and they mock me for building an R2-D2 :)
And we still do. Wab's geekiness might yield cool pics of our solar system. Your's might yield pics of something that (hopefully?) looks identical to a trash can we've seen in 5 movies.
Next thing you know, you'll be making light saber videos in your garage.
MiniD
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Hey Grim,
outstanding photo. I'm still debating about the ccd. You're right they are over priced it seems. Not sure I have the patience for film.
Le Paul,
Like Grim said, it all depends on what you're looking for. They'll let you spend as much money as you want.:cool:
Here is mine. (http://www.astronomics.com/main/product.asp?tog=1&n1=2&t1=1&styp=3&vid=1&product%5Ftype%5Fid=1&sku=12210G&bURL=tMeade%2Easp&mystype=Schmidt%2DCassegrains)
Wab
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Very cool.
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Wow Wabbit, nice photos:) I've been into astronomy for many years. I was vice-charman of our national astronomy club for a couple of years. I got a 16" Dobsonion reflector and a 12.5" reflector on a german equatorial mount. I've never been very good at astrophotography. My squaddie Grayarea was always much better at that, some of his photos are available at http://www.emprise.ie
I will post some of my meagre attempts tho a lil later:) Got some craking photos of comet hale-bopp.
Recently I read an article in S&T about using webcams to get reasonable quality astrophotos, by stacking individual frames, that got me thinkin and i though well if a crappy webcam can do it what about my 4megapixel digicam? So I set up poking the camera lens thru the eyepiece and got some lovely lunar photos. Later in the year i plan to upgrade my kit a bit and get a real astro ccd.
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Gremlin,
Those were nice pics on that site but the next time I went there I couldn't load the site.
The other weekend was rainy so I stayed home a tweaked some previous images. I was able to tease out a little more detail on Mars by stacking 30 frames.
a little better mars (http://webpages.charter.net/JasonIrby/astro_pics/07_25_2003/)
Not very good but still an improvement over the previous attempt.
I'm going out again this weekend to make another try. Trying to get things worked out before memorial day weekend when Mars is at its absolute closest.
There are a couple of technical issues I hope to solve:
1. I got vibration pads for the tripod feet. I was using such high magnification that just walking around the telescope on the concrete pad caused noticable image shake. I hope the pads damp this out a bit.
2. I learned how to properly collimate my system. I was worried about messing with it last time even though I suspected it was slightly off. I'm going to take plenty of time at the begining of this next session very carefully getting everything as perfectly aligned as I possibly can.
3. I don't think I was getting perfect focus. I purchased a kendrick kwik-focus hartman mask to assist me.
4. I've purchased a toucam pro and adapter for planetary imaging. Seems to be one of the favorites. I've also got a IR blocking filter.
5. I need to bite the bullet and wait up until Mars trasits at its highest point. When its lower on the horizon, I was fighting too much blurring atmospheric dispersion. Luckily Mars is transiting at about 2:30am now instead of 4:30am a couple of months about.
Anyway, I hope to get some better data tonight.
Wab
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Great Wabbit - carry on :)
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very nice,, i been lookin around for some good scopes,,and i think im pretty much sold on the discovery dobsonion 12.5 inch,,looks like a very nice scope and from all the experts i have talked to about scopes told me i would not be unhappy with discovery dob's,, guess there very well made,,over size barrings,,and very weather proof,,i heard cheap dobs will soak up moister and could ruin your tube,,im hoping to get mine by the end of the year,,long as everything goes great
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When I went through space moutain at disney.. My mind realy started to wander in the thoughts of other things out there..
Nice pics Wabbit, some of those pics might be good enough to..err..publish?
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Originally posted by AKWabbit
The other weekend was rainy so I stayed home a tweaked some previous images. I was able to tease out a little more detail on Mars by stacking 30 frames.
Not very good but still an improvement over the previous attempt.
Really nice Wab, I've seen some really great shots where images used for stacking (say 30 like in your case) were handpicked from hundreds actually taken and only the ones where the 'seeing' was just right were used. Some of Jack Newtons stuff is blinding.
Originally posted by AKWabbit
1. I got vibration pads for the tripod feet. I was using such high magnification that just walking around the telescope on the concrete pad caused noticable image shake. I hope the pads damp this out a bit.
Get yourself a felt mat to lay around your rig so that when you have to move about the felt mat will absorb most of the impact of your feet. You could try losing some weight too :D
Originally posted by AKWabbit
2. I learned how to properly collimate my system. I was worried about messing with it last time even though I suspected it was slightly off. I'm going to take plenty of time at the begining of this next session very carefully getting everything as perfectly aligned as I possibly can.
You collimate manually or do you use one of those laser collimating devices. I always found that there is really no substitute for collimating with a high mag eyepiece and a mag 2 star.
Originally posted by AKWabbit
3. I don't think I was getting perfect focus. I purchased a kendrick kwik-focus hartman mask to assist me.
Although I;ve never done CCD work, from reading it seems that the 'knife edge' method of focussing seems to provide the best repeatable results.
Originally posted by AKWabbit
Anyway, I hope to get some better data tonight.
Ill be looking forward to seeing those results:) You've got me all excited about astronomy again. Think its time to dust the rig off and get to work:)
Grem.
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Originally posted by hyena426
very nice,, i been lookin around for some good scopes,,and i think im pretty much sold on the discovery dobsonion 12.5 inch,,looks like a very nice scope and from all the experts i have talked to about scopes told me i would not be unhappy with discovery dob's,, guess there very well made,,over size barrings,,and very weather proof,,i heard cheap dobs will soak up moister and could ruin your tube,,im hoping to get mine by the end of the year,,long as everything goes great
I always use scopes with pvc or aluminium tubing rather than that sonotube stuff. From what I understand the sonotube is usually just overpainted rather than soaked in resin to make it completely waterproof, so when the paintwork gets scratched as it inevitably will the it soaks up the moisture like a sponge. Saying that I know a guy who used sonotube and actually gave it the required treatment with resin and he never had any bother with it at all. I'd just double check that before you buy.
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ya,,i been checking on that,,,just the sono tube crap is so much cheaper,,for a reason i guess,,lol,,im sure with right treatments like you said it would get you along way with out soaking up,,,i heard the meade dobs were bad at doing that,,horrible water proofing,,but im sure its just how it was put together,,thanks for the input,,i will defenatly look for pvc or aluminuim tubes,,and if i get stuck with a sono tube,,i will defenatly take your advice about resin treament
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Hyena,
I think a good quality Dob is an excellent choice for a first scope. Just simple point and look. Very easy to set up, very easy to use. Forces you to learn a little bit of where things are in the sky. I'd say 8" minimum. I think 10" would be optimal. (warning...dobs are pretty much visual use only).
The cardboard sono-tube is a double edged sword. On one hand, I have heard that over time, if not maintained, and used in wet conditions can begin to absorb moisture and swell and blister.
On the other hand, its cheap enough that every couple of years the tube could be replaced and just transfer the hardware.
On the good side, its very very cheap, especially compared to an equally sized aluminium tube.
It has superior thermal qualities to an aluminium tube.
It has superiour vibration damping qualities to an aluminium tube.
I can't speak to a particular brand (I built my own dob including grinding the mirror), but I think a well made 10" dob would give you years of enoyment, a fairly serious instrument, and at a reasonable cost.
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Still on my quest for a descent Mars photo....
My first attempt:
(http://webpages.charter.net/JasonIrby/astro_pics/2003_07_19/mars1.jpg)
My second:
(http://webpages.charter.net/JasonIrby/astro_pics/2003_07_25/better_mars.jpg)
Last weekend:
(http://webpages.charter.net/JasonIrby/astro_pics/2003_08_16/mars2.jpg)
What you should take note here is what I hope increasing quality as I work this out, and also the noticably shrinking polar cap (frozen carbon dioxide - dry ice) over time as Mars come closer to the Sun.
Wab
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well lucky i live out in the country in a high desart in washington state,,there isnt much rain here,,and hardly any lights,,heck you can see the stars great with out a scope,,but i wanna see more,, and in the area im at i should be able to see some fantastic stuff.
thx for all your imput,,i can see the diffrences in sono tube,,i guess there is good and bad to it,,it is alot cheaper,,the discovery dobsonion i been looking at,,,12.5<~~mite as well get a big one,,lol looks like a great deal and very nice hardwear,,and from all the dealers i been talking too,,half of them own a discovery dob and the othere half who own meade's told me to get a discorvery if i wanted a good quality dob,, with fantastic mirror,and great over sized barrings in the base,,,i have talked to a ton of scope dealers this year and rote a few owners online about dobs,,they all seem to like discovery
after i own one and get the hang of it,,maybe ill make my own dob,,thx all,, ps akwabbit,,those are some cool pics you been taking,,keep it up,,,,hope to be able to share some of my own by the end of the year:)
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Hyena,
One of my scopes is a 12.5 inch reflector and it really is superb. What Wabbit says is spot on 8inch minimum, but if ya can afford the 12.5inch straight off, you wont regret it. You mentioned making a scope yerself, I've done it a couple of times and its a snip. I suggest you purchase the optics first time and then have a go at making the optics yourself later. IF you want the 'holy bible' on mirror making then get 'Telescope Making' By Jean Texereau. It really is the best available. A little dated but still right up there.
Wabbit, man that last photo is fabulous. Some guys try for years and dont get results like that. Have you processed the photo in any way? (apart from stacking). Have you used any MED (Maximum Entropy Deconvolution) algorithms? These can bring out details that you just wouldnt beleive possible. Problem is software like 'Maxim DL' which do this are rather expensive. As a computer programmer, I have often thought about writing such software but I really havent had the motivation so far. Hmmm perhaps I should do a bit of research and see If I can get hold of the algorithm on the net. I'll keep ya posted.
BTW would you object to your photo being published in a local Irish astronomy magazine? There wouldnt be any money involved but I could arrange for a copy to be sent to you.
Keep of the good work:)
Clear Skies,
Grem.
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Have you processed the photo in any way? (apart from stacking).
Thanks for the kind remarks. Oh yeah, its heavily processed. I've tried a couple of deconvolution algorithms on it but with varying results. Van Cittert , Richardson-Lucy, Maximum entropy, etc. I use Registax for the rough stacking but do all my processing in ImagesPlus.
I'm doing a little write up for a friend of mine of my step by step processing. If you can wait a few days I'll post it for you. Also I think I can improve the third image further by combining more than 1 AVI. This one was only a single 40 sec AVI. I should be able to combine up to about 5 min worth before the rotation smear outweighs the signal improvement.
Btw, if you haven't seen it,you might find this (http://www.astrosurf.com/cidadao/super.htm) interesting:
Wab
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Wab, my sons and I are interested in amateur star gazing, but have no equipment or experience, other than a very dark backyard in the wilderness with no city lights :) Whats a good starting point as far as telescopes go? I don't want to invest alot of money, but I don't want to go so cheap that binoculars would be better, if you know what I mean...
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Originally posted by Ripsnort
Wab, my sons and I are interested in amateur star gazing, but have no equipment or experience, other than a very dark backyard in the wilderness with no city lights :) Whats a good starting point as far as telescopes go? I don't want to invest alot of money, but I don't want to go so cheap that binoculars would be better, if you know what I mean...
Rip,
You have definitely got the right idea. Most scopes on the cheap end of the scale are just plastic 'toys' and are far surpassed by a good pair of binoculars. Actually you'd be amazed at what you can see in a clear dark sky with a pair of binoculars. After all binoculars are simply two telescopes strapped together!! If budget is an issue a good pair of 10x50 binoculars together with a book like, 'Exploring the night sky with binoculars' by Sir Patrick Moore (thats what got me started). The cheaper scopes are just so useless that they actually can cause a young person to lose interest in the subject. Thats the biggest shame of all. So the bino/book combo would be a wise starting point. If you have a few more bucks to play with proper telescopes start at around $350 for a 6 inch reflector but another $100 will get you an 8 inch scope and far better satisfaction. Of course the price tag keeps going up for bigger and better but the real nice thing about scopes is they hold their value if they are maintained properly. i.e. never wash the optics, only in a strictly controlled prescribed manner which you can find on many websites. I bought my first real telescope for 500 Irish Pounds and almost two years later sold it for 450 pounds.
I can assure you satisfaction if you follow the above. Even if you have to invest a bit more of the hard earned bucks than you hoped, you can be assured that you will be giving your son the gift of astronomy for life. Its something that gets into your blood and never goes away.
If you are considering a particular product please let us know here and i'm sure wab and/or me will be happy to look up the specs and give you our 2 cents worth.
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Thks Gremlin! Will keep in touch with you regarding this.
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Just so you can see waht post processing can do....
Here is a sample single average frame from my AVI.
(http://webpages.charter.net/JasonIrby/astro_pics/2003_08_16/sample.jpg)
So you can see there was quite a bit of post processing done to get this:
(http://webpages.charter.net/JasonIrby/astro_pics/2003_08_16/mars2.jpg)
Wab
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Originally posted by AKWabbit
Here is a sample single average frame from my AVI.
Hmm, interesting. Im wondering it there isnt a whole pile of chromatic abberation in the original unprocessed image. That purplish halo looks a lot like it to me. Problem is even if it is there's SFA you can do about it short of removing the optics from your camcorder!! I've seen some pretty good photos taken by stacking from a simple webcam!! I gotta give that a go!! At least with a webcam taking a screwdriver and removing the optics is not such a big issue!!
Amazing work Wab!! Cant wait to see more
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I think this is the best I can do with this data set... (http://webpages.charter.net/JasonIrby/astro_pics/2003_08_16/Mars_2003_8_16.jpg)
Slightly less contrast but I think its pulling in a bit more structure.
Gremlin, Feel free to share these (which ever you prefer) with whom ever you like.
That raw frame, and these last two good Mars were taken with a modified toUcam/Televue 2.5 powermate combination with a IR blocking filter.
There was definitely some chromatic aberration. But not NEARLY as bad with the DV cam. I was able to handle the chromatic aberration by splitting the color channels and realigning them. THe overall pinkishness was a simple color balance issue (maybe from the IR filter?) I was able to fix by increasing the relative strength of the green channel when recombining the RGB.
Anyway, tonight I'll sit down and detail my capturing techniques, equipment and processing steps. Got too busy twiddling pixels last night. :D
regards,
Wab
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liquid shock granite support wab. Should be able to get something for around $10,000. Then build breeze shields around the scope. With a stable platform, any open space around optics will affect it.
I may not know much about astronomy, but I do know about keeping optics stable. ;)
MiniD
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It easy to spend a lot of money on telescopes...i wish id had the resources to go up to the $400~ish range for the motorized models....i beleive the scopes you are toying with are well over a grand? Impressive stuff
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Gremlin,
Here is some information and links I put together for a friend of mine. Some of it might interest you.
_____________________________ ______________________
Mars Notes
I. Equipment
12” Meade LX200 GPS
Toucam Pro w/adaptor (http://www.scopetronix.com)
Kendrick Kwik Focus Hartman Mask
Televue 2.5x PowerMate
IR blocking filter
II. Software
Registax 2.0 for rough stacking:
http://aberrator.astronomy.net/registax )
K3CCDTools for webcam capture: http://www.pk3.org/Astro/index.htm?software_k3ccdtools_2webcams.htm )
ImagesPlus for processing:
http://www.mlunsold.com
III. Capture:
1. Put in Webcam/adapter/PowerMate/IR filter in eyepiece holder.
2. Point to bright star near Mars.
3. Center in laptop screen.
4. Rough focus with Hartman mask.
5. Lock mirror.
6. Set display mode on K3CCDTools to 2x mode
7. Fine focus with motofocus until 3 star images exactly overlap.
8. Set display mode on K3CCDTools to 1x mode
9. Slew to Mars. Remove Hartman mask
10. Capture sequence of AVI’s up to 5 min in length.
11. Capture as near to transit as possible.
IV. Processing:
1. Stack AVI in Registax. AutoOptimize, Resample 2x, quality > 95%, etc.
2. Save result as BMP
3. Load into ImagePlus
4. Split into RGB channels
5. Realign and recombine channels
6. Ajust color balance if necessary
7. Resample 0.3-0.5x
8. Various other processing steps to increase constrast and sharpen (adjust to taste).
V. Misc Links
http://astrosurf.com/cidadao/super.htm
http://perso.club-internet.fr/legault/
http://www.astroimaging.com/tips.htm
http://www.ricksastro.com/Techniques.htm
http://www.cloudynights.com/astrophotography/toucam.htm
http://www.webcam-astrophotography.com/
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Hey thanks for those Wab, some look familiar others dont, I'll look forward to browsing those over the weekend.
Thx bud:)
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An interesting comparison......
http://webpages.charter.net/JasonIrby/astro_pics/2003_08_16/mars6.jpg
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Do they have pics of Mars from the hubble? Curious to see how well that scope does.
MiniD
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Yes, but I don't think its fair to hold me to quite the same standard. :D
http://imgsrc.hubblesite.org/hu/db/2001/24/images/a/formats/full_jpg.jpg
Wab
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Damn... the hubble is one thing Nasa did that was worth absolutely every penny. That picture is simply incredible.
Your's actually looks very similar. You've captured a bit of the atmosphere on the left side of the planet and all of the features match up the same.
The algorithims you use are independant of the original photo? They work strictly with what's imput and decipher features from them as opposed to trying to move stuff in direction of the planet being photo'd?
MiniD
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Yeah. Hubble has a couple advantages over me. Aside from a couple of hundred time more light gathering power than mine, it doesn’t have to look through atmosphere. Its sorta like trying to read a newspaper that is on the bottom of a pool, through binoculars, while standing at the edge of the 3 meter board, while some fat kid at the other end is splashing around making waves. :D
The processing I do is basically divided into 2 broad categories. Restoration and enhancement.
Restoration:
1. Atmospheric Dispertion- If you look a a raw frame from one of my AVI’s http://webpages.charter.net/JasonIrby/astro_pics/2003_08_16/BestFrame.jpg you can see a red halo on the upper edge and a blue halo on the lower edge of the planetary disk. When a bright object like Mars is less than straight overhead, it is hitting the surface of the atmosohere at an angle. Essientially, its having to pass through a wedge of refractive air. That spead the light of the image out a tad like a prism spread light out into a spectrum (red at one end, blue at the other). I can fix that to a large extent by splitting my raw image into its RGB channels then aligning those channels back into registration.
2. Atmospheric Distortion- The air is constantly boiling as cells of warmer air float up from the surface of the earth like bubbles from a pan of boiling water. On some nights its less, on some nights its more. These cells of warm air have a slightly different refractive index than the surrounding air. That causes the image of Mars to shift and warp and distrort its shape. However, one of the advantages of using one of these little webcams on planets is that I can take a much high frequency of images (5,10,15,30 frames per sec) Ideally, I’d capture a 1500 frames or so per AVI. Then I can sift through the frames and find ones that by luck captured the image in between distorting waves. http://webpages.charter.net/JasonIrby/astro_pics/2003_08_16/BestFrame.jpg is a sample of the best frame from a 250 frame AVI, http://webpages.charter.net/JasonIrby/astro_pics/2003_08_16/WorstFrame.jpg is the worst frame from that same dataset.
3. Signal to Noise Ratio- One of the drawbacks to taking a bunch of very quick frames is that each frame tends to contain a lot of noise. The main problem with this is that it limits the degree I can enhance the real image without also enhancing the noise. However, by taking say the best 200 frames out of 1500 and averaging their corresponding pixel values (after careful alignment), the noise, which is random in nature, should tend to cancel out and the signal (the true image underneath) should tend to be strengthened. The result should be an image that I can enhance much more aggressively before artifacts due to noise reaches an unacceptable level.
4. Color balance- Hey, your eyes can play tricks with you at 3am. ;) The eye is much less sensitive to red light. Also I have all the windows styles on my laptop set to red so the image of mars didn’t look nearly so er…pinkish at the time. But color balance is really the least of my worries. That can easily be re-adjusted later when I’m re-combining the aligned RGB channels. In this dataset, I just needed to increase the relative strength of the green channel to get back to a hue closer to what I was seeing in the eyepiece.
5. There are all kinds of fancy restoration algorithms for sharpening an image. Some of them work better on stellar subjects than extended objects like a planet surface. Examples: http://www.mlunsold.com/examples/party.html , http://www.mlunsold.com/examples/comparele.html . I had less than expected benefit from these. I think there were two main causes. I was only working with about 250 frames instead of 1000-1500. I couldn’t get enough good frames to stack to get my S/N ratio high enough to support these operations without creating artifacts. Also, I believe my focus was off. For some reason these algorithms work better on blurring due to atmosphere better than due to poor focus. There realy is no substitute for perfect focus. For my data, just a couple of iterations of mild unsharp masking worked as good as anything. If I had better raw frames, thing might be different.
Enhancement:
6. My enhancements mainly involves contrast streching, non-linear histrogram modification to tease out the most detail. I consider this enhancement instead of restoration because I’m generally increasing the constrast beyond what I was seeing at the eyepiece.
Wab
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geek
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Hey, you were warned in the topic title. :D
Wab
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Dot worry Wab, I appreciate your write ups:)
d. Bog Off :D (kiddin bro;) )
BTW Wabbit were you the same AKWabbit who used to fly in Flying Circus a few years back? I remember wabbit, seawulfe and yer man;) TDFKADV (The dweeb formerly known as Deja Vu). A yes they were the good ol days. If I remember right you were a bit of a Fokker DR1 fan?
:)
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Yep. That was me. Wasted many an hour in that game. :)
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For those interested...
I wasn't able to get out the weekend closest to the Mars opposition. It was pouring rain all weekend.
I did get out this last weekend and got some pretty good moon and mars shots.
I spent some time learning to polar align. I plan to do some galaxy/nebula type stuff later this winter.
enjoy:
http://webpages.charter.net/JasonIrby/astro_pics/2003_09_07/
Wab