Capture and processing

astromad

Hi All,

I am used to DSLR astrophotography, but a novice to "webcam" type astrophotography, so please can experts amongst you help?

I got a ZWOASI178MC camera and got the chance to use it on Jupiter. Captured the images with FireCapture and processed in RegiStax (both up to date versions). Results were horrible -- Jupiter came out as a flat green circle in final image!

Any advise will be much appreciated, but importantly can you tell:

(1) Should the capture exposure tend to minimum or maximum milliseconds?

(2) What should the Gain be (Default is set as maximum)

(3) Should the Gamma be on (default is off), and if so what level?

(4) Which of the three file formats offered best -- SER, FITS, TIFF?

Many thanks in advance -- I am also new to this forum, and a little uncertain how to use it to best impact !! :

riklaunim

astromad wrote:
Results were horrible -- Jupiter came out as a flat green circle in final image!

Post a picture, maybe it wasn't debayered.

astromad wrote:

(1) Should the capture exposure tend to minimum or maximum milliseconds?

There are no fixed values. Usually 30 ms is around max for most imaging while bright planets can use much shorter.

astromad wrote:

(2) What should the Gain be (Default is set as maximum)

High, so that the exposure can be short enough and histogram fill high (>=80% in most cases)

astromad wrote:

(3) Should the Gamma be on (default is off), and if so what level?

Default, no change.

astromad wrote:

(4) Which of the three file formats offered best -- SER, FITS, TIFF?

AVI, use SER only if you need > 8-bit capture for some reason (sometimes solar/lunar, not planets).

wargrafix

I do deepsky with the camera and I am torn what I should use. PNG, SER or AVI.

I normally used 300 gain

riklaunim

PNG are bad. Best would be TIFS or TIFF, most compatible with DS stacking applications. But if you want to stack in Autostakkert2 then FITS, TIFF or SER. SER can be better if you want thousands of frames (so much files per directory is hard to handle for the OS while SER is a container so problem solved ;))

astromad

Hi riklaunim,

Thanks for full response -- very helpful! Yes, I had not debayered, and also out on 16bit which made it not possible to obtain AVI format. I have deleted the files, so will have to wait until next clear nite to try again.

Astromad

astromad

To all who answered my question, very many thanks indeed.