Rogerw

Thank you so much, yes it gives one a great feeling when you can capture these far distant objects, but oh heck it has taken me a long long time to get to this level. I just wish I had more money to further my interest , but I have taken it as far as I could go on my budget.

Don't recall that Kev, I did  have a 3 or 4 year break on  imaging Jupiter ,  as I was more into DSO deep sky Objects , but it was certainly there for the past 2 years, there is a small storm as well in Jupiter , maybe that's what you heard .

Difficult before , as they are in AVIs , I tried to put the video on but its to large and I don't know how to reduce the video, and I don't think that video anyway has the GRS on it , I have taken thousands of images Polly and I don't keep all of them

Thought you might like to see this one I done some time back , its the GRS in Jupiter ,when it comes into view and the seeing is right ,its nice to be able to capture this, Its a Huge storm twice as wide as earth and has been raging for well over 150 years , some say up to over 300 years, anyway  if anyone is interested , I can do a small tutorial in how I managed this and what equipment and experience is needed to capture Lunar and Planetary images .just let me know if anyone would like that.

This is M13 Globular Cluster , not an easy object to image and even harder to process, I found a way of getting good star separation through digital processing, even then its hard , the image as usual is in Mono,

M13 is a ball mass of about 300,000 stars ,most of all are 12 to `13 Billion years old, it is very dense in the core,

The globular  lies in the Constellation of Hercules,

In dark skies  with a really powerful pair of bins it can be seen as a small fuzzy blob

If you look to the top left  you can see a far distant Spiral Galaxy, many many light years away.

Thank you all once again , Brandy finished now lol

WOW  thanks so much, never thought I would get this , glad you all liked it , blimey have to have a Brandy now to celebrate ,

Smiles , yes close fly by , showing the large Crater Clavius , its the third largest crater on the moon and is about 140 Mls across, this area is full of craters and makes a nice picture.

Enjoy the fly by.

Rog

When imaging the Lunar face and wanting to get in really close like you see in this image , can be very demanding ,,the closer you go the more trouble you get into . boiling of the surface , turbulence at extreme. and worse of all  getting focus ,which in a way is like Macro imaging , certain phases of the moon give different views all the time , so you have to pick that time to get what you want .

The Alpine Valley bisects the Montes alps range  and is about 166km long, I have taken closer ones  but sometimes being to close does not give a nice composition.

So once again I would normally run 1000 frames off and pick the best for processing.

These Lunar ones print out rather nice , I have many in my Observatory.

LOL cool hand Rog , for sure , I wish I had my Astro forum running still ., many of my members are producing even better images than me , it does take a lot of dedication Polly, we don't give up  until we reach a standard we are happy with, But!!  don't forget it cost me over 50k , BUYING MANY SCOPES , SOFTWARE DOMES ETC  etc it goes on and on, the learning curve is really hard. if I came into money I would go back for sure , as I would need better equipment to reach beyond the stars,

 Just think , we look up to the stars and think how lovely , But remember what you see have taken thousands of light  years to reach us, and indeed may not even be there now, outside of our solar system I mean.

Lol I did Chris , it ain't easy 

Hi Korky , I know I do miss it , but it does rely on the weather so much ,and after 26 years and  weather getting worse year by year, I had enough and wanted something new to focus on , it won't always be spiders , I hope to move on soon  to things like you guys do , but thank you all so much for your kind words and if you want to see more , I can always show more with description.

Thanks James and thanks for the likes guys .

TICKET

Hi Pat , nice to have you with us .

If you had read my Jupiter section the set up applies the same, using my 8 inch Celestron HD Edge telescope, I placed the Astro camera into the prime Focus of the scope , this is done by removing the diagonal part of the scope . , the camera is then connected to the computer and Mount,

The Mount is fully computerised holding over 4000 object data base, so once I done a 3 star alignment, I could send it to any of those held in the data base,

So once I had connected all I needed to start an image , I just select Moon ,and off it would go and lock onto the moon.

When locked on , I would then have to set up the live image , get focus and set exposure ete etc, this can be very hard at time , as under such high power , the Tubulence can be really bad , the section of the moon I am imaging is boiling and holds no steady image, so one has to wait until the air remains steady, when it does you have to be quick and hit record and keep careful watch on the downloads.

I normally like to run a 1000 frames off  to make sure I get enough of the good steady returns.

When this is done I run it through the software that comes with the camera , and transfer to PS for final process.

That's it, but like all things , it can fail and you end up with nothing . , I always found imaging the Lunar and planets much harder than deep sky stuff, sometime  Saturn and Jupiter  is so bad that through the camera to computer live image it is just a fuzzy blob , so pack up and go indoors ,Game over lol.

Anyway here is the result.

I meant to say the Dark area to the left is the Division of the dark and light side of the Moon . called the Terminator,, and was also the landing site for the Apollo 15 Mission.

Thank you so much Polly, yes I am pleased with what I have achieved, it all started with a web cam all those years ago, just taking images of the planets, and Lunar, after a while someone in America spotted my images on line , and wanted to publish them in a book she was writing, I agreed ,and it all went from there , I started a few Forums off , helping people to learn imaging the night sky . then I started a Forum Progressiveastroimaging, this helped people all over the world , and has led to many becoming famous within Astronomy , its not so much what I have achieved , is what others have done , i am very proud of that .

But what I have shown here  in that image work . is a small breakdown ,learning all about  how the telescope works  can take a very long time , its a mine field , that's before you even start to take images

Rog

Thanks Colin

Thanks everyone , I do miss it , I could have kept my set up for planets , but even they are hard   like Saturn not good for 4 years ,so it can be a long wait for them, memories , but I done it and that's what counts , now where are those pesky Bugs

Well it is a long story,

So what did I need to capture this image ,

Well  I first needed a Pretty good telescope, the one I used was a Celestron  8 inch Edge HD, this of course was  bolted on to a very stable Mount , which had to be set up with the pole star.then  everything had to be balanced in RA and declination,

For taking the images I used 2 Astro camera's one Mono and one Colour, using the mono one gives a far better res, I would then send the Telescope to Jupiter , lock on to it, and then Focus , this could take a while as turbulence is pretty bad under high res.

I should say once locked on  Jupiter will say in my eyepiece for a very long time, without tracking ability it would run out of view in seconds.

I would first run off about 3000 images in mono , and if good conditions , run off another 3000 In colour.these images are AVIs., and are live on my computer

After that I then go to my computer which is handy beside the scope, and process each stack,

Software I use can be set up to collect the best of those 6000 Avi's.

when that is done I combine and stack the 3000 mono ones and process to one final image

The same is done to the colour Avi's

To make the final image I used PS  making a duplicate of the mono first , then upload the final colour, drag onto the mono , align it  by using the opacity to get it spot on then bring back the colour and flatten .

Fial process can be the done saturation etc etc , and we have this .I would like to say this is a brief  explanation of how its done , many problems happen all the time ,its never a smooth run.

Takes for ever don't it, lol

Thanks for that Polly .  I will have a go once I have mastered one subject IE Macro

Well done Phil and all concerned. as I know its not an easy job keeping things running, a lot of hard work at times, you have a lovely Forum here and should be proud

Cheers