As I only do imaging from my balcony, due laziness and lack of trust in my power tank - so this was a great opportunity to test my Skywatcher 127/1500 maksutov scope.
I recorded 6751 frames, histogram at 52%, gain 79 and shutter 17.36 ms. I must admit that mostly I stick with a value around 40%, but yesterday I was in an experimental mood... did not regret it at all.
The best 3500 frames, because seeing was quite okey and the quality of the frames seemed good too. I have tried stacking the best 1500, 2500 and 3500 frames. The third option turned out to be the way forward.
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| After stacking in Autostakkert 2 |
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| Final result |
Still lots to do with the photo. In Registax I used Wavelets to get the right sharpness, getting rid of the false colour and align the RGB channels. Bit of gamma modification and save.
Then in Photoshop it only needed a final touch to fine tune the details.
Io was getting closer to Jupiter and the actual occultation happened at 22:20, 20 mins after this shot was taken.
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| Jupiter in motion - 4 frame animation |
Overall conclusion:
Skywatcher 127/1500 mak is a stunningly good scope under good seeing conditions (seeing was 4 and 2 according to meteoblue - that website gives two values for seeing, max is 5 in both categories).
Hard to find the exactly good settings, but once you do it does miracles - mind this is still a fairly small scope.
It does embarrass bigger scopes for sure :)
Location
London - Northolt
Equipment used
Skywatcher 127/1500 MC
Zwo ASI 120 MC colours camera
Celestron 2x X-Cel barlow lens
Software used for processing:
Autostakkert 2
Registax 6
Photoshop
Update
One stacked frame has probably slightly more details, but in the same time noise is a bit too much. Versus the derotated version - less details but probably more pleasing to look at it.
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