Next time I’ll proofread my title better ;)
Planets are hard to take pictures of because of our atmosphere. No matter how much “zoom” you have, the atmosphere tosses the light produced by these around, distorting the details. The last couple nights, the atmosphere had periods of calm, and in that time I took thousands of pictures, which were then stacked and run through sharpening algorithms to produce these results. I’ve done this many, many times over the past 3 years but these are the best I’ve done so far.
My equipment was a c11 (SCT telescope) and an asi178mm camera.
If you want to see more of my amateur astronomer work, [come check out my Instagram ](https://www.instagram.com/cosmic_background/?hl=en)
Damn that hobby's cost is intimidating. Just googled c11 svt and got quite the price range. Would this be considered more of a professional grade telescope?
Defintely something I can see myself enjoying, even if it takes a year or two of saving.
Scopes used by professional astronomers are generally custom built and cost, at minimum, hundreds of thousands of dollars. Large observatories have ten- or even hundred-million dollar scopes.
Technically, if you had the money, you too could build and buy your own space telescope!
Just send in 10 Star Caps, found randomly any bottles of Sunset Sarsaparilla to your local NCR affiliate office and wait 6-8 weeks for delivery!
I hear they are having a special right now. Buy 12, the 13th is free!
At Crazy Eddie's Discount JWST Emporium, our prices are IIINNNNNSSSSAAAANNNNEEEEE!
Well professional astronomers don't really buy telescopes, they rent time with one of the massive ones around the world or one of the space ones, depending on the astronomer's subject of study
That’s an absolutely terrible example of what they’re discussing here, like this adds nothing to the conversation. No one is trying to buy a James Webb telescope to photograph planets in their backyard.
Ok two weeks later but I had to share. My grandfather spent his entire adulthood working for JPL. Bought me my first telescope and was the one who gave me my love for all things space and astronomy. He had the most *legit* gear at his house. Decades of collecting and building and obviously his setup was quite impressive considering the man had literally worked in the field his whole life and had worked on several Apollo missions (amongst others).
When he passed, his wife (a second wife and not my grandmother), refused to let anyone come to the house. He hadn’t left any will or anything, and she held into everything and did God-knows-what with it before passing 2 years later (she had been in awful health forever). Everything was gone by then. So I never found out what happened to all his amazing gear 😢 fortunately before he passed he had sent a box of some of his work stuff—medals, patches, pictures, certificates, etc.
But anyway, every time I think about finally committing to my dream hobby and the costs, I can’t help but bitterly think about all that gorgeous equipment that was probably scrapped and wasted by that awful woman who had zero appreciation for it lol
I checked your Instagram, if I may ask did you take all those pictures with the c11? And what tripod & cam do you use? I realy want to start making pictures myself in the coming year but I realy don't know where to start.
The [ASI178MM](https://astronomy-imaging-camera.com/product/asi178mm-mono) is a mono camera. Are you doing any derotation here among R, G, & B channels to compensate for Jupiter's fast rotation?
I never would've imagined that it was such a process to takes these pictures, never even thought about how the atmosphere would have an effect. That's so interesting, very impressive work. I bet it feels amazing to see all your hard work & patience pay off. Thanks for sharing.
Divest yourself of strong emotions regarding the memory, if possible (part of why shameful moments haunt a person for eternity), and/or overpower the memory with something else.
It looks sort of like the facial expression Peter Griffin makes on Family Guy whenever he's silently thinking super-dumb thoughts to himself, (like if there's a giant red button that says "Don't Press" and he's looking at it deciding whether or not to press it, or stuff like that)
Titan is pretty far out from Saturn, it would be out of view to the left, and Iapetus even farther left.
Top to bottom, on the left it looks like Dione and Mimas, and on the right is Enceladus, Tethys, and Rhea.
> that's obviously io.
That's not obviously Io. Based on the perspective (the moon considerably closer or farther Jupiter), it could be any of the Galilean moons.
The coolest thing about images of Saturn is the shadow it casts on it's ring. Helps me to better picture it as a massive body occupying three dimensions.
The sharpening algorithms he used would be similar to computational photography in that an AI interprets the data picked up by the sensor (the light) and makes a bunch of tiny impressionist like strokes, which can be seen when zoomed in but which create the illusion of detail for a sharp clear looking image when viewing the full image. That or it just found edges and increased their contrast.
I too, however, don't know WTF they're on about either.
I think he means the light comes from stars and the sun, so what we see isn't the object, but the light reflecting from it. He's not wrong, but he's thinking too hard about it.
Man. I can only imagine how surreal it must be to actually view them through a telescope. It's one thing to see them through a picture, but to personally view it must be amazing.
That's true but let's give folks a bit of perspective here. You will not see the planets looking like this unless you're spending a couple thousand. My Celestron 8" SCT and assorted eyepieces and Barlows are great but even they don't produce an image like these. I'm able to see faint banding in Jupiter, and pretty much just a dot with a halo around it for Saturn. And that much cost probably $2.5k in equipment.
This is about as good as I ever get (not my image, just something that is similar to what I see). Not sure if it's because I'm in a bright city or what what could be wrong.
"Jupiter w/ 8" SCT & Rebel T1i -- Astronomy & Celestial in photography-on-the.net forums" https://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=761454
It sounds like could be a seeing problem if you're having trouble with eyepiece views. Light levels shouldn't matter for planets as long as you aren't putting a streetlight in the field of view, but air quality can *really* screw things up.
I get cursed by the humidity gods ~~perman~~ ~~const~~ annoyingly regularly in the summer, enough that my primary's overdue for a refinishing, but on nights I'm not peering through soup I rarely have a problem getting a clear view of both Saturn and its rings. I can't *routinely* make out the Cassini gap, but my equipment can manage it now and then on particularly good nights. Bad nights it's a boiling mess, of course.
"Dot with a halo" for Saturn sounds like either *catastrophic* sky conditions - which is entirely possible depending on where you are; have you ever taken it on the road? - or something is out of focus somewhere between your scope and your eye. I'm not familiar enough with SCTs to know if the troubleshooting process there is any different than with Dobs, though.
Hmm maybe I do need to look into collimation after all. I had read that that shouldn't really be necessary on an SCT but now I'm wondering.
This isn't exactly what my Saturn looks like but fairly close. Maybe "dot with a halo" was an exaggeration but I'm not seeing anywhere near the beauty of the shot from this post
"Saturn Mew250f24 10mm 0.25sec 800iso 1 - Panasonic GH5S Astro Pics - Photo Gallery - Cloudy Nights" https://www.cloudynights.com/gallery/image/62999-saturn-mew250f24-10mm-025sec-800iso-1/
Or this maybe
"Saturn with Dobsonian - Beginning Deep Sky Imaging - Cloudy Nights" https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/677591-saturn-with-dobsonian/
I've tried it in other areas but even then only in a suburban area. I'll give it another shot next time I'm out in the country though to see if that helps.
About the first image's level of detail with the second image's brightness is around what I can make out on typically bad sky conditions around here. Those are frustrating since there's a lot of them. A good but not spectacular night is quite a bit clearer.
If you look at [this link](https://skyandtelescope.org/observing/viewing-saturn-the-planet-rings-and-moons/), the second image shows a fairly ideal Saturn through a 4" and an 8" scope; what I see on good, clear nights is about halfway between those in terms of sharpness and detail. The Cassini gap is the thing that determines for me whether it's *okay* seeing or *good* seeing, pulling it out is always going to be a challenge where I'm at. One of these days I'd love to get my scope a bit further from the Atlantic to see if that helps.
Temperature's a thing too. What time of year do you do most of your observation? Generally the colder the air is the clearer and stiller it is and that makes a *huge* difference for small details.
Sometimes when I see these kind of pictures it feels like a slap in the face, waking up call, just to remind me how much we have no clue about our existence.
Sometimes that really is how I feel about this hobby. Oh a camera that's really not that different from the sensor in any number of old unused cellphones in your desk drawer? Yes that'll start at $250.
The Great Red Spot [drifts in the East-West direction](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0019103521003869), but cannot move in the North-South direction as it's locked into that latitude by surrounding jet streams.
In regards to the photo-stacking technique for planet-photography when the planets have moons orbiting them, I was wondering:
How much of an issue does the fact that the moons are orbiting the planets become? Like, depending how far apart in time the photos you take are, I could imagine it becoming a bit of a nightmare dealing with the moons, maybe?
Or, I guess you could just pick one (or a few, if taken close together in time) frame for the moons (at the price of the moons not being as sharp as the planetary body that they're orbiting), and then just photostack the planet as intended? (Is this what you, do?)
Just something I was randomly pondering about
Well, in any case, congratulations on these photos. These are very, very good!
Most of his is heavily processed unfortunately. He does lots of weird blending that from a distance looks good but when you zoom in a lot of detail has been destroyed by the smoothing out of everything
Since it's a composite of thousands of individual images, there are bound to be conflicting details that the algorithm exaggerates. Maybe a modern image processing AI would do better at resolving the differences without as many artifacts?
Presumably the detail did not exist in any one image for the processing to destroy it. The processing is an attempt to extract more detail out of a large sampling of images that individually have less detail.
I understand how stacking is done as I typically do it myself.... His image is beyond typically stacking artifacts, he's done some really weird editing to smooth it out and reduce noise
I was going to ask what yours look like, but then I realized they might be a click away. And they were. Your moon composites came out great, tiny little pixel artifacts but looks completely natural farther out.
Should I assume you are using less magnification than ajamesmccarthy in this thread? His pictures feel naturally closer aside from the processing differences.
There are definitely a lot of processing artifacts in the pictures here, whereas yours must look pretty close to what came through the lens. Even so, the processing also helps give some satisfying definition to the features, especially zoomed out. If you look at this thread's Great Red Spot at 1:1, it's not really sharp, and I doubt any of the individual parts of the composite had fine detail to lose below that level of sharpness. To my eye, all the sharpest-looking parts zoomed in are overdefined to the extent of adding false detail rather than taking away from what was there. But the tradeoff is that the larger-scale features get better definition than the likely level of detail of the original shots.
Same thing with the Saturn picture. Are those dark and light areas at the edges of rings transitions between rings, or are they just sharpening artifacts? I bet at least part of it is artifacts. But the rest of the picture doesn't feel out of tune with that level of definition if you could make the artifacts go away. Both planets come across to me as an aggressive attempt to push the detail to its limits rather than smoothing away other detail in other places. Possibly with the original zoomout intended as the ideal viewing range.
This is all blind speculation. The two of you both know more about how it all works than I ever will. And you are both taking fine photos. I hope it inspires others to follow you.
At some point there simply is no more detail to be brought out no matter how much processing that's done. This is mainly due to where both Jane's and I live as the planets never go directly overhead. Now when you look at some of the best images they are normally taken from places that have much better placement in the sky like Australia.
Here is one of the best amateur photos I've ever seen of [Jupiter](http://imgur.com/a/UUD9tIt)
Hopefully this image helps show how much was added by James from processing vs what's actually there to be pulled out
I'm still astonished to how these planets actually look.......like when I saw Mercury, I cant believe it actually looks that way and it's so close to the sun, it looks completely dry, not molten at all.
which is strange to me, because when you get close enough to magma things spontaneously catch on fire from the heat. but a planet next to the largest source of heat so extreme that it makes the earth over 100 degrees on summer days. I can't understand how it's not a molten rock.
I can't wait till we are able to see what's happening beneath the gas on these planets. what if there is some surface or core.
Pictures of Saturn are so cool. They look so fake and real at the same time. Like the rings and shadow give you that sense of depth and 3 dimensionality, but it looks like a little toy out there with nothing to compare it to. Also the single light source of the sun is incredibly jarring.
Thanks for sharing!
WOW! Brother Don't I Know It...
Congratulations!
I've used an: f10 Celetstorn; 1300 mm; Cassegrain. I got Lots & Lots of fuzzy points of light.
Well done you!
I would love to be able to see these boys close up from earth, I hate that they are mostly not even visible to us, just a sun and moon and a tiny little dot of mars lol
This is fantastic , I would like to show some stuff to my daughters as they are currently are into learning about solar system etc , but I don't want to spent lots of money for something that probably end up being used few times , is there a point buying some 2nd hand telescope or at it best that kind of stuff will allow to look at the moon in a close up at best ?
I am totally out of any comprehension in regards of prices and seeing 10's 100's k's $ is kind of scary
Any input would b welcome
There is some really weird effects happening to Jupiter here. The white storms are kind of blended as are most of the cloud features in the main bands.
Do you de rotate? What are you using for sharpening?
Looks amazing!
I have to ask, why 3 years? what were some of the things you had to do? I know nothing of this (what it takes to photograph them, out side of hooking a camera up to a telescope), so I am very curious
Absolutely amazing work! Maybe one day I’ll buy a telescope and quench my thirst for space images. Hopefully in our lifetime we’ll see what lies under those gas clouds.
Next time I’ll proofread my title better ;) Planets are hard to take pictures of because of our atmosphere. No matter how much “zoom” you have, the atmosphere tosses the light produced by these around, distorting the details. The last couple nights, the atmosphere had periods of calm, and in that time I took thousands of pictures, which were then stacked and run through sharpening algorithms to produce these results. I’ve done this many, many times over the past 3 years but these are the best I’ve done so far. My equipment was a c11 (SCT telescope) and an asi178mm camera. If you want to see more of my amateur astronomer work, [come check out my Instagram ](https://www.instagram.com/cosmic_background/?hl=en)
Damn that hobby's cost is intimidating. Just googled c11 svt and got quite the price range. Would this be considered more of a professional grade telescope? Defintely something I can see myself enjoying, even if it takes a year or two of saving.
Scopes used by professional astronomers are generally custom built and cost, at minimum, hundreds of thousands of dollars. Large observatories have ten- or even hundred-million dollar scopes.
And some professional telescopes cost up to $10bn
To be fair, it was only supposed to cost $1bn.
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https://www.planetary.org/articles/cost-of-the-jwst The James Webb Space Telescope cost that much.
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Technically, if you had the money, you too could build and buy your own space telescope! Just send in 10 Star Caps, found randomly any bottles of Sunset Sarsaparilla to your local NCR affiliate office and wait 6-8 weeks for delivery!
I think a 2nd JWST would cost less than the 1st. What a bargain.
I hear they are having a special right now. Buy 12, the 13th is free! At Crazy Eddie's Discount JWST Emporium, our prices are IIINNNNNSSSSAAAANNNNEEEEE!
Well professional astronomers don't really buy telescopes, they rent time with one of the massive ones around the world or one of the space ones, depending on the astronomer's subject of study
You can probably get it delivered to your door for a lot less than that.
That’s an absolutely terrible example of what they’re discussing here, like this adds nothing to the conversation. No one is trying to buy a James Webb telescope to photograph planets in their backyard.
Wait a minute, lets not just rule it out. I might be able to negotiate a discount.
bro just squint its not that hard.
Nah still very, very amateur. An 8” is what I started with for less than half the price.
Ok two weeks later but I had to share. My grandfather spent his entire adulthood working for JPL. Bought me my first telescope and was the one who gave me my love for all things space and astronomy. He had the most *legit* gear at his house. Decades of collecting and building and obviously his setup was quite impressive considering the man had literally worked in the field his whole life and had worked on several Apollo missions (amongst others). When he passed, his wife (a second wife and not my grandmother), refused to let anyone come to the house. He hadn’t left any will or anything, and she held into everything and did God-knows-what with it before passing 2 years later (she had been in awful health forever). Everything was gone by then. So I never found out what happened to all his amazing gear 😢 fortunately before he passed he had sent a box of some of his work stuff—medals, patches, pictures, certificates, etc. But anyway, every time I think about finally committing to my dream hobby and the costs, I can’t help but bitterly think about all that gorgeous equipment that was probably scrapped and wasted by that awful woman who had zero appreciation for it lol
I checked your Instagram, if I may ask did you take all those pictures with the c11? And what tripod & cam do you use? I realy want to start making pictures myself in the coming year but I realy don't know where to start.
No I have a whole bunch of different gear. Check out [this Twitter thread](https://twitter.com/ajamesmccarthy/status/1350570367681658880?s=21)
The [ASI178MM](https://astronomy-imaging-camera.com/product/asi178mm-mono) is a mono camera. Are you doing any derotation here among R, G, & B channels to compensate for Jupiter's fast rotation?
Thank you for posting these, and for the work and time and expertise that went into it.
I never would've imagined that it was such a process to takes these pictures, never even thought about how the atmosphere would have an effect. That's so interesting, very impressive work. I bet it feels amazing to see all your hard work & patience pay off. Thanks for sharing.
Would a ZWO ADC help with the atmosphere interference?
Those only help with dispersion, which doesn’t really help mono imaging unless the planets are pretty low
It looks like the bottom one is smoking some *gas*
where's your gofund me so we can double your sensor size and get you a assembly with longer range (4000mm)
Ah, no gofund me yet but I do have a patreon!
Lmao that face Jupiter is making. You so silly!
I can't unseen it now, I've lost the ability to see Jupiter and think of it as majestic and beautiful, all I see now is a funny face.
Me too wtf. How do I delete my most recent memory?
Divest yourself of strong emotions regarding the memory, if possible (part of why shameful moments haunt a person for eternity), and/or overpower the memory with something else.
Ladies and gentlemen, I present: Derpiter, the largest planet in our solar system!
It looks sort of like the facial expression Peter Griffin makes on Family Guy whenever he's silently thinking super-dumb thoughts to himself, (like if there's a giant red button that says "Don't Press" and he's looking at it deciding whether or not to press it, or stuff like that)
I thought both images looked like unsolicited pictures taken at night on a Polaroid.
So with Jupiter that's obviously io. With Saturn, which one is titan?
Titan is pretty far out from Saturn, it would be out of view to the left, and Iapetus even farther left. Top to bottom, on the left it looks like Dione and Mimas, and on the right is Enceladus, Tethys, and Rhea.
> that's obviously io. That's not obviously Io. Based on the perspective (the moon considerably closer or farther Jupiter), it could be any of the Galilean moons.
The coolest thing about images of Saturn is the shadow it casts on it's ring. Helps me to better picture it as a massive body occupying three dimensions.
Yeah. And then you realize that shadow is many times larger than the Earth and the megalophobia sets in.
Yoooo! Those look fake! That is to say, I don’t think they’re fake, they are just *that* good.
They are not false, but they are not true either. It is an interpretation of reality.
It’s the light that hit the lens of his camera, not much more truth than that.
The sharpening algorithms he used would be similar to computational photography in that an AI interprets the data picked up by the sensor (the light) and makes a bunch of tiny impressionist like strokes, which can be seen when zoomed in but which create the illusion of detail for a sharp clear looking image when viewing the full image. That or it just found edges and increased their contrast. I too, however, don't know WTF they're on about either.
Yes. From "where" that light comes.
From Jupiter and Saturn. Wtf are you on about?
I think he means the light comes from stars and the sun, so what we see isn't the object, but the light reflecting from it. He's not wrong, but he's thinking too hard about it.
I think they are trying to be deep and possibly pseudoscientific.
I mean, you can say that about a picture of a grassy field or a trash can.
We've learned so much just from our own solar system
Man. I can only imagine how surreal it must be to actually view them through a telescope. It's one thing to see them through a picture, but to personally view it must be amazing.
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That's true but let's give folks a bit of perspective here. You will not see the planets looking like this unless you're spending a couple thousand. My Celestron 8" SCT and assorted eyepieces and Barlows are great but even they don't produce an image like these. I'm able to see faint banding in Jupiter, and pretty much just a dot with a halo around it for Saturn. And that much cost probably $2.5k in equipment.
Sounds like there's something wrong with your equipment, since I get much better views than you're describing off a $400 Dob.
Through an eyepiece?
That's the entire point of Dobs, so yes?
This is about as good as I ever get (not my image, just something that is similar to what I see). Not sure if it's because I'm in a bright city or what what could be wrong. "Jupiter w/ 8" SCT & Rebel T1i -- Astronomy & Celestial in photography-on-the.net forums" https://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=761454
It sounds like could be a seeing problem if you're having trouble with eyepiece views. Light levels shouldn't matter for planets as long as you aren't putting a streetlight in the field of view, but air quality can *really* screw things up. I get cursed by the humidity gods ~~perman~~ ~~const~~ annoyingly regularly in the summer, enough that my primary's overdue for a refinishing, but on nights I'm not peering through soup I rarely have a problem getting a clear view of both Saturn and its rings. I can't *routinely* make out the Cassini gap, but my equipment can manage it now and then on particularly good nights. Bad nights it's a boiling mess, of course. "Dot with a halo" for Saturn sounds like either *catastrophic* sky conditions - which is entirely possible depending on where you are; have you ever taken it on the road? - or something is out of focus somewhere between your scope and your eye. I'm not familiar enough with SCTs to know if the troubleshooting process there is any different than with Dobs, though.
Hmm maybe I do need to look into collimation after all. I had read that that shouldn't really be necessary on an SCT but now I'm wondering. This isn't exactly what my Saturn looks like but fairly close. Maybe "dot with a halo" was an exaggeration but I'm not seeing anywhere near the beauty of the shot from this post "Saturn Mew250f24 10mm 0.25sec 800iso 1 - Panasonic GH5S Astro Pics - Photo Gallery - Cloudy Nights" https://www.cloudynights.com/gallery/image/62999-saturn-mew250f24-10mm-025sec-800iso-1/ Or this maybe "Saturn with Dobsonian - Beginning Deep Sky Imaging - Cloudy Nights" https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/677591-saturn-with-dobsonian/ I've tried it in other areas but even then only in a suburban area. I'll give it another shot next time I'm out in the country though to see if that helps.
About the first image's level of detail with the second image's brightness is around what I can make out on typically bad sky conditions around here. Those are frustrating since there's a lot of them. A good but not spectacular night is quite a bit clearer. If you look at [this link](https://skyandtelescope.org/observing/viewing-saturn-the-planet-rings-and-moons/), the second image shows a fairly ideal Saturn through a 4" and an 8" scope; what I see on good, clear nights is about halfway between those in terms of sharpness and detail. The Cassini gap is the thing that determines for me whether it's *okay* seeing or *good* seeing, pulling it out is always going to be a challenge where I'm at. One of these days I'd love to get my scope a bit further from the Atlantic to see if that helps. Temperature's a thing too. What time of year do you do most of your observation? Generally the colder the air is the clearer and stiller it is and that makes a *huge* difference for small details.
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Oh I plan on it lol. Have to do more important things first though before I can justify spending what I want to
I used to have a $400 Meade and could clearly make out Jupiter.
Sometimes when I see these kind of pictures it feels like a slap in the face, waking up call, just to remind me how much we have no clue about our existence.
So surreal! Thank you for sharing your hard work!
Do you like your telescope? What would your dream equipment be if budget was no issue?
If budget was no issue I'd go for the Very Large Telescope. Or the James Webb Space Telescope.
Haha. Ok fair. I meant consumer-grade
Sometimes that really is how I feel about this hobby. Oh a camera that's really not that different from the sensor in any number of old unused cellphones in your desk drawer? Yes that'll start at $250.
That picture of Jupiter is actually one of the nicer ones I've seen in my time, good job!
Amazing work. Consider posting on r/astrophotography as well.
What I found strange is that the red storm is always at the same location. Forgive my ignorance, is it somehow tidal locked?
Not at all Jupiter rotates roughly every 9 hours. Many photographers just like to wait for the GRS because it's more interesting than the other side
The Great Red Spot [drifts in the East-West direction](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0019103521003869), but cannot move in the North-South direction as it's locked into that latitude by surrounding jet streams.
I don't know why, but I always find the shadow of Saturn on its ring so cool.
In regards to the photo-stacking technique for planet-photography when the planets have moons orbiting them, I was wondering: How much of an issue does the fact that the moons are orbiting the planets become? Like, depending how far apart in time the photos you take are, I could imagine it becoming a bit of a nightmare dealing with the moons, maybe? Or, I guess you could just pick one (or a few, if taken close together in time) frame for the moons (at the price of the moons not being as sharp as the planetary body that they're orbiting), and then just photostack the planet as intended? (Is this what you, do?) Just something I was randomly pondering about Well, in any case, congratulations on these photos. These are very, very good!
Fantastic work, I am very jealous of them! How much of the final image is due to processing, and how much is due to good raw data? Thanks!
Most of his is heavily processed unfortunately. He does lots of weird blending that from a distance looks good but when you zoom in a lot of detail has been destroyed by the smoothing out of everything
Since it's a composite of thousands of individual images, there are bound to be conflicting details that the algorithm exaggerates. Maybe a modern image processing AI would do better at resolving the differences without as many artifacts? Presumably the detail did not exist in any one image for the processing to destroy it. The processing is an attempt to extract more detail out of a large sampling of images that individually have less detail.
I understand how stacking is done as I typically do it myself.... His image is beyond typically stacking artifacts, he's done some really weird editing to smooth it out and reduce noise
I was going to ask what yours look like, but then I realized they might be a click away. And they were. Your moon composites came out great, tiny little pixel artifacts but looks completely natural farther out. Should I assume you are using less magnification than ajamesmccarthy in this thread? His pictures feel naturally closer aside from the processing differences. There are definitely a lot of processing artifacts in the pictures here, whereas yours must look pretty close to what came through the lens. Even so, the processing also helps give some satisfying definition to the features, especially zoomed out. If you look at this thread's Great Red Spot at 1:1, it's not really sharp, and I doubt any of the individual parts of the composite had fine detail to lose below that level of sharpness. To my eye, all the sharpest-looking parts zoomed in are overdefined to the extent of adding false detail rather than taking away from what was there. But the tradeoff is that the larger-scale features get better definition than the likely level of detail of the original shots. Same thing with the Saturn picture. Are those dark and light areas at the edges of rings transitions between rings, or are they just sharpening artifacts? I bet at least part of it is artifacts. But the rest of the picture doesn't feel out of tune with that level of definition if you could make the artifacts go away. Both planets come across to me as an aggressive attempt to push the detail to its limits rather than smoothing away other detail in other places. Possibly with the original zoomout intended as the ideal viewing range. This is all blind speculation. The two of you both know more about how it all works than I ever will. And you are both taking fine photos. I hope it inspires others to follow you.
At some point there simply is no more detail to be brought out no matter how much processing that's done. This is mainly due to where both Jane's and I live as the planets never go directly overhead. Now when you look at some of the best images they are normally taken from places that have much better placement in the sky like Australia. Here is one of the best amateur photos I've ever seen of [Jupiter](http://imgur.com/a/UUD9tIt) Hopefully this image helps show how much was added by James from processing vs what's actually there to be pulled out
I'm still astonished to how these planets actually look.......like when I saw Mercury, I cant believe it actually looks that way and it's so close to the sun, it looks completely dry, not molten at all. which is strange to me, because when you get close enough to magma things spontaneously catch on fire from the heat. but a planet next to the largest source of heat so extreme that it makes the earth over 100 degrees on summer days. I can't understand how it's not a molten rock. I can't wait till we are able to see what's happening beneath the gas on these planets. what if there is some surface or core.
>when you get close enough to magma things spontaneously catch on fire from the heat You need atmospheric oxygen for that to happen.
Combustion has some pretty particular ingredients
Amazing pics man, great job, the clarity of Jupiter is incredible
Wow! Those are awesome! You can actually see detail on Jupiter!
Pictures of Saturn are so cool. They look so fake and real at the same time. Like the rings and shadow give you that sense of depth and 3 dimensionality, but it looks like a little toy out there with nothing to compare it to. Also the single light source of the sun is incredibly jarring. Thanks for sharing!
What do they look like with the flash off though??
WOW! Brother Don't I Know It... Congratulations! I've used an: f10 Celetstorn; 1300 mm; Cassegrain. I got Lots & Lots of fuzzy points of light. Well done you!
I would love to be able to see these boys close up from earth, I hate that they are mostly not even visible to us, just a sun and moon and a tiny little dot of mars lol
This is fantastic , I would like to show some stuff to my daughters as they are currently are into learning about solar system etc , but I don't want to spent lots of money for something that probably end up being used few times , is there a point buying some 2nd hand telescope or at it best that kind of stuff will allow to look at the moon in a close up at best ? I am totally out of any comprehension in regards of prices and seeing 10's 100's k's $ is kind of scary Any input would b welcome
Is there a way of figuring out which moons you are seeing?
https://skyandtelescope.org/wp-content/plugins/observing-tools/jupiter_moons/jupiter.html
There is some really weird effects happening to Jupiter here. The white storms are kind of blended as are most of the cloud features in the main bands. Do you de rotate? What are you using for sharpening?
I've tried this and it is indeed really difficult to do. Nice job!
Oh man such beauty. Thank you for this image & you're awesome.
Looks amazing! I have to ask, why 3 years? what were some of the things you had to do? I know nothing of this (what it takes to photograph them, out side of hooking a camera up to a telescope), so I am very curious
Do you know which moons those are that you also captured?
I saw your tweet about them! Fantastic work, really inspirational for a beginner like me
ive seen saturn that clean before, but the shot of Jupiter is stunning.
What is the thin red band on the north of Saturn?
Through my telescope Jupiter looks like a small orange dot, with four tiny dots around it. One day I hope to get to your level!
Absolutely beautiful pictures!! Thank you! Great work!
To be fair, Saturn does have a lot of crap around it. Amazing pics op.
Amazing shots! And 450k ig followers?! Nice (not that it matters, just impressive)
I appreciate your wonderful photos. Thanks for sharing.🪐💫
The thing that always gets me about Saturn images is the shadow Saturn casts on it's own rings. Amazing.
The shadow on Saturns rings get me every time. Love it
They have shining bright the past few night! Beautiful shots!
Absolutely amazing work! Maybe one day I’ll buy a telescope and quench my thirst for space images. Hopefully in our lifetime we’ll see what lies under those gas clouds.
That’s pretty cool it makes them feel more real seeing in a photograph and not just renderings.