A few more summerlike days, and a few more astronomical shots.
It was sunny, and with a very good seeing from Thursday to Saturday night, just in time for Jupiter's opposition, when it's closer to Earth, and then bigger and easier to capture.
But since I wasn't very happy with my previous Jupiter shots, the first of these three nights I mainly took pictures of the moon.
I began by using my newest camera, an ASI 1600mm: it's more of a deep sky camera, not very suitable for planets and moon: 3.8 µm pixel size instead of 2.4µm of my other camera, an ASI 178mm, and bigger pixels means lower resolution. It also has a much wider sensor, which slows down capturing (and fast framerates is a key element to get high resolution images), but this is also an advantage from another point of view: I was able to capture the whole moon disk in just a single shot, instead of the usual mosaic.
This is the result, in my opinion one of my best looking images ever:
Moon, 06/04/2017
This camera has bigger pixels and a larger sensor than my other camera, the ASI 178mm, so it's more suitable for deep sky imaging rather than planetary shots.
But with such large field of view I can get a picture of the moon without having to stich it.
Blog article: [url=http://blog.gulinux.net/blog/2017-04-08-jupiter-and-moon-06-04-2017]http://blog.gulinux.net/blog/2017-04-08-jupiter-and-moon-06-04-2017[/url]
Please click the "Original version" button to get the high resolution image.
But after a couple of full moon shots, I also wanted to see the difference in resolution with my ASI 178mm, so I swapped camera, and started capturing frames near the terminator.
After stacking and stitching everything, this is the result:
Moon - HD Mosaic, 06/04/2017
The smaller pixels allow to resolve much more details than the previous image, and the higher resulting speed also helps in getting more frames for stacking.
A few areas are a bit ruined due to the stiching process, I hope to be able to reprocess this in the future.
Blog article: [url=http://blog.gulinux.net/blog/2017-04-08-jupiter-and-moon-06-04-2017]http://blog.gulinux.net/blog/2017-04-08-jupiter-and-moon-06-04-2017[/url]
Of course, the previous image looks a bit better aestetically: having the full disk is surely more eye pleasing, and it's also a bit less grainy, due to the lower resolution.
But if you look at both at them at full size (again, open the "Original version", and zoom at 100%) this second image mosaic is clearly showing a lot more details.
Again, I am quite happy about the result. It surely might have been better if I had taken more images to cover the full disk, and there are some stiching issues here and there in the image (I'll try reprocessing it soon), but for such a small telescope (a 5" maksutov) I couldn't have hoped for better images.
Finally, when Jupiter raised a bit more, I decided to stay outside a little longer, despite having work the following day, and tried an RGB shooting, although it was still very low on the horizon (only 25°). While shooting the images didn't look bad at all, but I wasn't quite ready to the result I was gonna have after processing the RGB set:
Jupiter, 06/04/2017
Blog article: [url=http://blog.gulinux.net/blog/2017-04-08-jupiter-and-moon-06-04-2017]http://blog.gulinux.net/blog/2017-04-08-jupiter-and-moon-06-04-2017[/url]
Again, for such a small scope, and such a low object, the amout of details is impressive, particularly compared to my previous jupiter shot. It's almost as good as the images taken with my 8" telescope back in Milan, but with colour this time!
During the evening I also asked my neighbours, a pleasant young couple from New Zealand, to have a quick look through the eyepiece... It's always nice to see reactions of someone watching for the first time the moon through a telescope, sometimes you're able to feel their wonder and awe.
Happy about the results, I then decided to try a full weekend of imaging, weather permitting. And I was lucky. I took lots more pictures during Friday and Saturday nights.
But I still have to finish processing them, so stay tuned until the next post... :)