Posts by hendric@astronomy.city
 (DIR) Post #ARLBvbI6aX3ejJT82y by hendric@astronomy.city
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       #IntroductionHello, my name is Rich Hendricks.  I'm a Space Enthusiast, with a particular love for uncrewed missions. My 15 mintues of fame was helping the New Horizons mission pick Kodak Moments during the Jupiter flyby, such as https://www.planetary.org/articles/0932 and https://europa.nasa.gov/resources/161/europa-rising/. For my day job, I am a 32 bit RF engineer, so I occasionally complain about #embedded programming. Line endings are still causing a problem, in 2022??
       
 (DIR) Post #ARLBvpX9dNPku2cLRo by hendric@astronomy.city
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       I've finally decided on my amateur astronomy upgrade plans.1. Mount: HEM44 - Hybrid Equatorial Mount from iOptron. This mount is just releasing now, and features a Harmonic Wave drive on RA. This allows for the mount to forgo counterweights and be much lighter than a normal worm or belt-driven mount. I'll probably get the EC version, since it has better periodic error and I want to avoid a guidescope for shorter focal lengths. That low weight and no need for counterweights is very alluring.
       
 (DIR) Post #Ar3fTyurfUmkvqH0eu by hendric@astronomy.city
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       😔 Guess I'll work on astrono-do's this week. _kicks rock_ #AmateurAstronomy #Astronomy
       
 (DIR) Post #Ar3fTz2JDojxIvkxGK by hendric@astronomy.city
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       Solar Processing NotesUse 20% stack from AutoStakkert!4, drizzle 1p5xUse waveSharp,You will need to adjust for your image scale, mine is: .12/40.5, .12/21, .12/11Save as 16 bit tiffimport to GIMPI used this video to work out this flow, in case you need a visual aid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRHwyLcutyEuse 1/
       
 (DIR) Post #Ar3fTz6CzJrLV1a4LA by hendric@astronomy.city
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       Doing some comparisons between my scopes. Just got a new AT72EDII. (FL 432mm) and it is a pretty capable scope for being a lightweight grab and go. Took Jupiter images through it, my workhorse AT90CFT (FL 540mm) and my planetary scope the AT125EDL (FL 975mm).The skies are just trash tonight, though with thin high clouds and just atrocious seeing (twinkling means unsteady skies). We'll see what the fancy software can do! #AmateurAstronomy #Jupiter
       
 (DIR) Post #Ar3fU0PO7UnNYnYtsG by hendric@astronomy.city
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       Okay, wow.  I am very surprised at how well this little AT72EDII telescope can perform!  This first picture is at its native focal length of 432mm. First is the raw image after stacking the video, second is after wavelet processing.  Nothing much, right?#AmateurAstronomy #Jupiter [ZWO ASI290MC (ASI290MC)]Capture Area Size = 320 * 240Capture Limit = 120 sColour Format = RAW8Exposure = 2msFrameCount = 41931Gain = 210
       
 (DIR) Post #Ar3fU1ctalC7KytCZE by hendric@astronomy.city
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       Select -> by Color Tool with Threshold set to ~30 to 60 to select outside the disk for prominences. Pick a black spot away from any data. Lower numbers means more of the disk will be unselected.  Higher numbers mean you will adjust the brightness deeper into the disk. When you select the spot, the selection crawlies will show up, they may show up in sunspots. Shift-Q to enter Quick Mask mode to use the brush to adjust the masked area. .  By default, the red area is what will be ignored.
       
 (DIR) Post #Ar3fU1ysH2m8R9AkpE by hendric@astronomy.city
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       I'll admit, when I saw the results with the 2.5x Barlow, I had some spicy words! So much detail is now visible on Jupiter. This would be an amazing starter scope or urban grab-n-go scope.#AmateurAstronomy #Jupiter
       
 (DIR) Post #Ar3fU2ddpTNwTaFJMu by hendric@astronomy.city
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       Now select the brush tool with 100 hardness, and a size ~25. You want the Foreground (top left) color in the swap widget to be black.  Initially you want to mark additional areas to ignore, so fill in sunspots and other areas that should be marked red. To help see the mask clearer, on the right hand side select Channels and disable the R/G/B channels by clicking on the eye next to each one and just leave the quick mask.
       
 (DIR) Post #Ar3fU312QU6He9Bzpw by hendric@astronomy.city
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       The AT90CFT is my favorite scope, a real workhorse. The slightly longer 540mm focal length and extra diameter shows more details in the clouds. #AmateurAstronomy #Jupiter
       
 (DIR) Post #Ar3fU3Tkhj4L5Ccvaq by hendric@astronomy.city
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       Now swap the foreground/background colors with the little angle arrow so that white is the foreground color. What you want to do now is erase the red outside the disk and on your proms, so that they can get adjusted. Zoom in and clean up the area so the prom is cleanly chosen.
       
 (DIR) Post #Ar3fU3p1Qe5C9AZukK by hendric@astronomy.city
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       The AT125EDL is my planetary scope, and shows nice details.  The seeing I would rate at 4/5, as in "it felt like you were looking up through 4 feet of water" so really terrible - plz don't hold that against the 'scope. By this point the Great Red Spot was starting to come around the corner, and the cool kissing tadpoles are rotating out of view. This are lots of fine details visible now. #AmateurAstronomy #Jupiter #WaveSharp
       
 (DIR) Post #Ar3fU4LHUht3lDfg1o by hendric@astronomy.city
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       You may want to experiment with changing the hardness to ~50% and the size to 15 and brush the edge of the sun's disk so that the mask isn't razor sharp. This will feather your adjustments in to the edge of the sun so that the edge doesn't "float" above the surface. Still trying to get a good method here.Reactivate the RGB channels and deactivate Quick Mask with Shift-Q or by clicking the little red square outline at the bottom left of the image window.
       
 (DIR) Post #Ar3fU4k60Rjj0BHUhs by hendric@astronomy.city
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       I decided to circle back to the AT72EDII to make sure any changes in seeing or Jupiter's altitude in the sky didn't make the test unfair. High thin clouds started to appear as well, skewing the color a little. Overall, quite impressed with the little scope's performance.
       
 (DIR) Post #Ar3fU57qa8jeBqOSjA by hendric@astronomy.city
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       Use Colors -> Curves to adjust the brightness of the proms. Here i usually grab the top right corner and drag it left to about the 60% position.Toggle the mask with CTRL-I. Use Colors->Curves to adjust the surface, adjust curves to give a bright plage area,lower white to 90 or 95? Don't raise black, it will make the edge darkening more obvious and separate the proms from the surface.
       
 (DIR) Post #Ar3fU5YQzI0DWIphAW by hendric@astronomy.city
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       Here is what the AT125EDL at 2440 mm video looks like.  This is _after_ PIPP processing to stabilize Jupiter in the center! (bubble sounds from being underwater) ETA: Figured out a way to do 120 frames per second, so this accurately represents what the scope and camera saw.
       
 (DIR) Post #Ar3fU5rvonbAUlxGYi by hendric@astronomy.city
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       For colorizing (I know you know how to do it, just including for completeness), use Colors ->Levels. Change channel to Green, and to the right of the Clamp Output box, change the 100% to 75 or 85%. Change the channel to Blue, and set that to 50%. This gives a nice pleasing yellow color. I think that looks better than the actual far-red of H-Alpha.File -> Export As, change the file extension to JPG.