Jupiter from Kenley

[Roy Easto]

This week we used the Atik camera at Kenley to take images of Jupiter.

This is the first recent attempt to take a planetary image on the main
telescope with the 165mm refractor.

I'm posting here to share the results but also to ask for pointers to
improve the imaging as we are still someway off other amateur results.
If someone wants to reprocess the raw files the 232 images can be found
in a zip file here:

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/xdo8h33qp9rkye5cn6bku/JupiterTiffs.zip?rlkey=wwyd659so3ywg0hti5hz2oa8f&st=ejjzx8zu&dl=0

Visually the view was stunning, the moons were visible as tiny disks
with Ganymede being clearly identifiable as the largest of the moons.

Setup details: 165mm f7 with 2x barlow to give a focal length of
1155mm. Jupiter is around 42 arc seconds across so measuring 73 pixels
across gives a scale of 0.57 arc seconds per pixel. The telescope's
Dawes limit is 0.7 arc seconds so ideally the image scale should be 0.35
arc seconds per pixel we do have an additional barlow lens to increase
the focal length. The camera has 6.45 micron square pixels.

Processed with SharpCap the attached CameraSettings.txt file may contain
details about the stacking. Having little knowledge of the program I
just used default values.

Focus seems good as Io at the extreme left of the image seems pretty tiny.

Processed 232 frames with SharpCap (possibly with default settings):

We may be able to get a filter wheel to try colour images in the future.

Kind regards,

Roy Easto

[Casper Dyne]

I like these images. Thanks for sharing. 

Casper

Sent from Outlook for iOS

---

From: 'Roy Easto' via croydonastro <croydo...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Saturday, March 7, 2026 2:59:34 PM
To: croydo...@googlegroups.com <croydo...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: [croydonastro - 8207] Jupiter from Kenley

 

This week we used the Atik camera at Kenley to take images of Jupiter.

This is the first recent attempt to take a planetary image on the main
telescope with the 165mm refractor.

I'm posting here to share the results but also to ask for pointers to
improve the imaging as we are still someway off other amateur results.
If someone wants to reprocess the raw files the 232 images can be found
in a zip file here:

https://emea01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.dropbox.com%2Fscl%2Ffi%2Fxdo8h33qp9rkye5cn6bku%2FJupiterTiffs.zip%3Frlkey%3Dwwyd659so3ywg0hti5hz2oa8f%26st%3Dejjzx8zu%26dl%3D0&data=05%7C02%7C%7C181a6043262d4970cfac08de7c5a29b7%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C639084923843093689%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJFbXB0eU1hcGkiOnRydWUsIlYiOiIwLjAuMDAwMCIsIlAiOiJXaW4zMiIsIkFOIjoiTWFpbCIsIldUIjoyfQ%3D%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=K1gyJrU379vQxCkopwF50eeSr9zQmp6Sl0KxtZt7Zs4%3D&reserved=0

Visually the view was stunning, the moons were visible as tiny disks
with Ganymede being clearly identifiable as the largest of the moons.

Setup details: 165mm f7 with 2x barlow to give a focal length of
1155mm. Jupiter is around 42 arc seconds across so measuring 73 pixels
across gives a scale of 0.57 arc seconds per pixel. The telescope's
Dawes limit is 0.7 arc seconds so ideally the image scale should be 0.35
arc seconds per pixel we do have an additional barlow lens to increase
the focal length. The camera has 6.45 micron square pixels.

Processed with SharpCap the attached CameraSettings.txt file may contain
details about the stacking. Having little knowledge of the program I
just used default values.

Focus seems good as Io at the extreme left of the image seems pretty tiny.

Processed 232 frames with SharpCap (possibly with default settings):

We may be able to get a filter wheel to try colour images in the future.

Kind regards,

Roy Easto

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[Trev S]

This is the best I could do using LuckyStackWorker

[drja...@aol.com]

Roy

I don't think I can improve on Trev's version. I used Registax for stacking and wavelet sharpening, with a Photoshop brightness tweak. It looks best at postage stamp size of course.

What I did notice when stretching the image is that exactly half of what must be the nearest moon showed up clearly on the left hand edge. I tried masking but had no luck bringing it out without overblowing the planet.

James

Jpg version

[Trev S]

Regarding improvements, I am nowhere near the Damien Peach level but the following advice has helped me.

I have found that a focal length of f20 to f30 gives good results with Jupiter contained in a frame size of 400x400 giving an acceptable resolution.

A movie file (e.g. AVI or SER) and as fast a framerate as possible (e.g. 30fps or faster) gives better results than single frame images.

If the Atik camera allows a reduced capture frame size in Sharpcap, reducing the capture frame size so that Jupiter nearly fills the frame should increase the framerate.

A colour image is easier to process than separate RGB images as it is less complicated and easier to compensate for Jupiter rotation.

A video of less than one minute rather than separate frame images will  give a better framerate and  minimise problems with Jupiter rotation causing blurring.

A single video of, say, 1000 frames can be stacked to give a single stacked image. 

Stacking software such as Autostakkert can determine the best quality frames and only stack those to give best results.

Several consecutive stacked images can be derotated and combined in software to give a better quality final image.

I use Autostakkert to stack the images and now use LuckyStackWorker to derotate and sharpen but Registax and Winjupos are alternatives.

Hope this helps a bit.

[Roy Easto]

Trev and James,

Thank you so much, you have shown that I can get much more out of the data than my first efforts. I'll keep trying to match your results and remember the settings. The equatorial zone has so much more detail and far less noise.

I'll try the extra barlow for increased scale, increase the image count to 1000+. The Atik does have partial capture so it is good at capturing lots of images. Then perhaps I'll try to colourise the result.

Roy

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