Planetary Imaging Jupiter with a Ritchey-Chrétien Telescope

Описание: In this video, I take on the challenge of imaging Jupiter using my RC telescope after earlier attempts didn’t go as planned.

I had previously tried this with a Touptek 2600C camera, hoping to capture Jupiter by selecting a smaller region of interest to achieve the necessary frame rate, but that never worked out. Tonight I'm using the RC because I've put my Takahashi Mewlon away—the mount is actually stored inside the observatory due to the weather. It should be overcast right now, but surprisingly it's clear, so I'm taking advantage of the opportunity.

I compared my two telescopes. The RC is faster at F8 with a larger 355mm primary mirror, but it has a massive 42% central obstruction that hurts planetary contrast. The mule on CDK has a 2500mm focal length at F10 with only 28% central obstruction. RCs are primarily imaging telescopes, whereas the mule on works well both for imaging and visual observing.

Weather plays a crucial role in planetary imaging—it's not enough for it to just be clear. I needed to check the position of the jet stream, because if it's directly overhead, Jupiter will jump around like a jackrabbit and imaging becomes fruitless. Looking at the forecast for the Netherlands, I was working with a small gap in the jet stream.

For my imaging setup, I used my Neptune 664 camera with a new GSO 2x Barlow. I then walked through my processing workflow using Astro Surface, demonstrating how to stack and align frames, apply wavelet sharpening (adjusting high and low frequency settings carefully), add deconvolution, apply noise reduction, and correct the colour balance by adjusting the RGB gains. The result was an acceptable image of Jupiter. I believe Astro Surface is the excellent replacement for Registax, which is no longer supported.

Clear Skies

Neil

Don't forget to google "astro surface" and extract it on your desktop.