First image

[spendrey]

Ok, here is my first ever image of anything other than the moon with my old scope. I'm quite pleased with it for a first attempt but reckon it would be a lot better if I knew what I was doing with Registax. Some of the originals seem to be clearer than the finished product I'll keep experimenting though.

[Ian]

Looking pretty good to me.

It looks like it was taken early in the evening, there appears to be hint of blue at the bottom and red at the top. If I'm right (not always happens that...) then the latest version of Registax has a tool to realign the colour layers. Alternatively, image when the object is higher up.

How big is the raw AVI that you took? and how many of those frames did you use?

With Jupiter particularly it's good to indicate time and date, it changes so quickly (check out Pauls animation in the Gallery for an illustration of just how quickly it rotates).

[JohnP]

Hi,

Looks excellent to me for a first image. My first was just a big white (totally overexposed) blob. Perhaps you could also post one of the best raws? Have you tried Saturn yet - there's still time before it gets too low in the evening.

Cheers & keep them coming - John

[spendrey]

Thanks Ian. I didn't track Jupiter as I didn't have time to try and polar align. By the time I had set everything up a lot of cloud started rolling in and I only had about 10 minutes to capture some images.
I created this paticular AVI at about 10.30 on Monday night. It was set to 5 frames per second and I recorded about 250 frames, about 170 of which were usable and I believe that picture was the result of the best 120, (I had the lowest quality in Registax set to 20% but have since learnt that I should have had it higher).
The only other settings I changed was to lower the Gain and Gamma. Not sure if I should have touched the Gamma now though?
I used my 8" Skywatcher Explorer and a Philips Toucam. I'm currently using the capture software that comes with the Toucam as I had some problems with K3CCD Tools hanging when I tried to use it but I think I'll reinstall and try it again as it seems to be what everyone else uses.

[spendrey]

Thanks John. Yes Saturn is my next goal!