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Noob planetary dreaming nervous noob questions :(

Canon EOS 600D / Rebel T3i / Kiss X5 Torsten Edelmann FireCapture Planetary Camera Processing Deep Sky
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TiffsAndAstro avatar
TiffsAndAstro avatar
Apologies, I thought I'd already posted my plea for assistance, or at least sanity check.

I've taken  some reasonably decent images of dso as a noob on a insanely tight budget (relatively lol) of ten months experience.

I've just bought a a "I can't believe it's a C6" dx 6. Plopped my canon 600d into the visual back on its horrible plastic mount a took a pic of Venus and jupiter. 
They are terrible, but I'm impressed and and encouraged, lol smile

So now I want to plug my 533 in the same way, test I can focus. So I should be able to try high ish FPS via firecapture and ROI

My plan is to use my guidescope in Nina with the solar app to at least point at planets then connect mount to firecapture use it to keep planet centered and do 2 maybe 3 minutes avi

Does this sound like a plan?

I'll only need a rough pa (how rough lol?) on my hem15 ?
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andrea tasselli avatar
andrea tasselli avatar
What's preventing you from following the time-honored way of putting an EP in the focuser and use THAT to center the planet? And you need better that rough PA for smooth sailing I'm afraid.
TiffsAndAstro avatar
TiffsAndAstro avatar
andrea tasselli:
What's preventing you from following the time-honored way of putting an EP in the focuser and use THAT to center the planet? And you need better that rough PA for smooth sailing I'm afraid.


just that doing it via the plastic manual mount  wasn't pleasant. not as bad as i feared, but i'd rather not do something similar   

was hoping my guide cam could plate solve and i'd do a last adjustment with hem15 hand controller? then disconnect the hem15 from nina, connect it to firecapture pro and use it to keep planet centered. take a few 2 or 3 min videos.
Tony Gondola avatar
Tony Gondola avatar
This should work. I use SharpCap so the following applies to that but I'm sure FireCapture is similar

The first thing I would do is get as good as polar alignment as you can. On the 533 you'll want to set your gain to 105 to minimize noise. You can shoot at prime focus but use a 2X barlow if you have one. Probably the hardest challenge, once you have the planet on the screen is focus. My suggestion is to don't even try. Before you point to the planet, use NINA to plate solve to a bright star cluster. Focus the best you can by watching the HFR measurement. You want to make this number as low as you can. This will be a challenge manually but it can be done. Once in focus, close down NINA and switch the FireCap. Have fireCap slew to thetarget planet. If you Sync the mount after plate solving in NINA, this slew should be bang on. Once centered set up object tracking in Sharpcap if it has it. 

For capture you are going to want to record a .ser or .avi video file. Set your exposure so that you don't have any clipping, around 60% histogram. I don't know what kind of a frame rate you can get out of a 533. Using a fairly tight ROI should help a lot. you want this to be as high as possible. Now start your capture. You'll want a lot of frames anywhere between a few hundred to a few thousand, depending in the frame rate your camera gives you. Jupiter rotates so fast that you can't capture more the a few min. without detail being wiped out due to rotation. I would repeat this process to better your chance of capturing during good seeing.

Fore processing I really like Astro Surface:
https://astrosurface.com/pageuk.html

This is hands down the best software I've tried for lucky imaging.

Good luck and don't give up. You will probably get really frustrated at first but just like anything, you have to build up a skill and knowledge set to get there!
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TiffsAndAstro avatar
TiffsAndAstro avatar
fantastic reply Tony, tysm.

will give it a go, hopefully not too much cloud after sunset. i'll treat this as a dialing it in sort of experiment smile

no barlow but will see how it goes
andrea tasselli avatar
andrea tasselli avatar
Focusing on a star IS A BAD IDEA. Don't. Use the planet's limb instead, get it as sharp as possible with at least 30 fps recording. The focusing must be done in video mode and acting on the focuser very very gently racking in and out until you're sure you got the best position possible.
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Tony Gondola avatar
Tony Gondola avatar
andrea tasselli:
Focusing on a star IS A BAD IDEA. Don't. Use the planet's limb instead, get it as sharp as possible with at least 30 fps recording. The focusing must be done in video mode and acting on the focuser very very gently racking in and out until you're sure you got the best position possible.

I very much disagree with this. Both objects are at infinity as far as our optics are concerned. Focusing on a star is the most accurate way to do it. Focusing on the limb can work with electronic focusing but the problem is, if you are focusing manually and looking for a sharp limb line with your eye it's going to be a real hit or miss thing because of vibration. You will never really know if you've nailed it. At least by using the stars to can make an adjustment, left the vibrations settle out, take an image and note the HFR.
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TiffsAndAstro avatar
TiffsAndAstro avatar
andrea tasselli:
Focusing on a star IS A BAD IDEA. Don't. Use the planet's limb instead, get it as sharp as possible with at least 30 fps recording. The focusing must be done in video mode and acting on the focuser very very gently racking in and out until you're sure you got the best position possible.


so my scoped dewed up quick, which is was warned about ill sort a dew shield out for next try but everything else seemed good. use nina orbitals to find the moon with my guide scope plate solving.
just need get more familiar with firecapture pro though it worked ok in daylight with some setting tweaks,  and some practice focusing. not on a star   i can over expose and focus until i see jupiter's moons and go from there. 

thanks for the help
TiffsAndAstro avatar
TiffsAndAstro avatar
Tony Gondola:
andrea tasselli:
Focusing on a star IS A BAD IDEA. Don't. Use the planet's limb instead, get it as sharp as possible with at least 30 fps recording. The focusing must be done in video mode and acting on the focuser very very gently racking in and out until you're sure you got the best position possible.

I very much disagree with this. Both objects are at infinity as far as our optics are concerned. Focusing on a star is the most accurate way to do it. Focusing on the limb can work with electronic focusing but the problem is, if you are focusing manually and looking for a sharp limb line with your eye it's going to be a real hit or miss thing because of vibration. You will never really know if you've nailed it. At least by using the stars to can make an adjustment, left the vibrations settle out, take an image and note the HFR.


im very new and i can try both methods. ill need to focus it on stars at some point if i want to use it on dsos.
compared to my previous efforts focusing via my dslr live view on the plastic mount the scope came with, i was very impressed. moon barely moved as i turned the focuser  

using star hfr is how i currently focus my 72ed so might as well use that. if i can see stars at f10 of course
andrea tasselli avatar
andrea tasselli avatar
Tony Gondola:
I very much disagree with this. Both objects are at infinity as far as our optics are concerned. Focusing on a star is the most accurate way to do it. Focusing on the limb can work with electronic focusing but the problem is, if you are focusing manually and looking for a sharp limb line with your eye it's going to be a real hit or miss thing because of vibration. You will never really know if you've nailed it. At least by using the stars to can make an adjustment, left the vibrations settle out, take an image and note the HFR.


I have been doing this for close to 30 years and seen no reason to change. HFR is a bad way to assess focus if sampling is at anything like what is needed for meaningful planetary imaging. The eye cannot fail to pick up when the critical focus (or rather, the brief moments when it is steady enough to be critically assessed) is reached.
Tony Gondola avatar
Tony Gondola avatar
With respect, I have been doing lucky imaging since the 90's. With the changes we have enjoyed in the tech involved there are many things we don't do that we did 30 years ago. You could certainly focus with very shot exposure times on a very bright star and get meaningful HFR measurement points. It's something we could discuss but that's getting into the weeds for this thread.

My point about focusing was to suggest the easiest way, given the fact that he is beginning with planetary imaging and will be focusing manually. Yes, the eye can pick out the short moments when the seeing settles and you can adjust, observe and wait, adjust, observe and wait. But, I think that unless you have a huge amount of experience, that method will be difficult and uncertain. The poster is free to try both methods of course and see what he prefers.
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TiffsAndAstro avatar
TiffsAndAstro avatar
Just want to say Ty all. I think I might have got results except for dew.
Got a few shield ordered, but will try and make a temporary cardboard one for Wednesday night ;)
Tony Gondola avatar
Tony Gondola avatar
Great!
TiffsAndAstro avatar
TiffsAndAstro avatar
Tony Gondola:
Great!


I'm not sure you'd say that if you saw my temporary dew shield