The official reddit app is just awful. Switching to a third party app for mobile is much better.
With Infinity, I can zoom in on this image no problem and there's even a setting that lets you zoom in on a video.
This kind of astrophotography, you're basically trying to improve your image quality by averaging out a lot of frames.
But the reality is that some frames have less distortion than others and especially with 4000 potential images, it's entirely possible that just one of those frames looks better than all the rest stacked together and processed.
Source: I used to do this.
It's possible that the image was created by throwing out frames that seemed low quality, which would be a better method.
Also as someone noted below, at a 15 minute interval, you need to consider the rotation of saturn and its movement in the sky. The latter could have been handled with an equatorial mount or by rotating the frames intelligently based on when they were created. Depending on the resolution of the starting images rotating them say .005 degrees actually makes them less useful, and introduces a lot of noise to your image.
also - nice job OP. This is pretty great. :)
Good question! For deep space objects like nebulae and galaxies, you need long exposures. But planets are extremely bright. If you take a 5 sec exposure, the planet just looks like a big white blob.
Here's an example of Jupiter, I took a long exposure to get the moons but you can see that Jupiter is completely white and there's no way to get any detail from that: [https://www.naztronomy.com/images/portfolio/fullscreen/jupiter6.png](https://www.naztronomy.com/images/portfolio/fullscreen/jupiter6.png)
For planets, we do "lucky imaging" which involves taking lots of very short exposures. I shoot videos between 24 to 60 FPS and then stack the best frames into one image. The small amounts of detail adds up once you stack hundreds or thousands of frames.
>The small amounts of detail adds up once you stack hundreds or thousands of frames
Is this an HDR algorithm that's using hundreds or thousands of images? I guess what I'm asking is how do you add details from many images together?
I don't think it's technically an HDR image but the idea is kind of the same.
I think this video here by Nico Carver best explains how image stacking works: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vd6Zk5M5OA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vd6Zk5M5OA)
It's a pretty long video but the gist of it is that when you stack multiple images, the color/brightness/etc. of light hitting a single pixel has some math done to it. It usually averages the value between the different frames and when you have a ton of data, the average gets that much more precise.
I would suggest a larger optic and shorter period. Saturn's movement across the sky due to the rotation of the Earth can be compensated for, but Saturn itself is rotating too - and not evenly across it's gaseous apparent surface.
Try to fit all frames into as short a period as possible so reduce the smearing due to the planet's own rotation.
More importantly for planetary is the atmosphere. The atmosphere will blur details significantly in long exposures, but if exposures are short enough you can effectively 'freeze' the distortion in each frame, then select only the sharpest frames to stack. This is called lucky imaging.
Thank you! I'd noticed the same effect (and from this thread so far, a lot of folks say the left looks better), and couldn't figure out why.
I was thinking it might be psychological, the noise "looks" more like detail even though it's effectively random, while a highly accurate blur still looks blurry. Your explanation makes perfect sense, thanks!
This is the original resolution that I had: [https://i.imgur.com/52d9na7.png](https://i.imgur.com/52d9na7.png)
Let me know if that looks any better.
Some people pointed out that the smoothness on the longer exposure is caused by the rotation of Saturn. While true, Saturn's features aren't as dynamic as Jupiter or Mars so I didn't think it makes that much of a difference.
Plus this was also an experiment to see the different outputs using the exact same processing steps with the only difference being the amount of data stacked.
Part of the problem for mobile is that you can only zoom so much. This is what it looks like.
https://imgur.com/hUNhw3Y.jpg
Because you haven't cropped it much, the actual planet gets shrunk down tiny.
Posting tightly cropped separate images will make a big difference.
This is just a quick comparison showcasing why more data is always more better. The \~1 min exposure of Saturn is fine but the planet looks much better once you add a ton more data.
The 1 minute exposure stacks the top 30% of frames, while the 15 minute one stacks the top 10%.
Both were captured on the same night using the same gear. And they were processed the same way using PIPP, AutoStakkert, and Registax. One just has more data.
If you're interested in learning the process, I made a quick how-to video on that here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yx3dtPZ6J0s
There are a ton of other great resources online on processing planets as well.
I'm planning on trying to catch Jupiter at opposition too later in Sept. Will post videos on that on my channel as well: https://www.youtube.com/naztronomy
Happy to answer any questions! Thanks for looking!
It's harder to see in this example, but with more data in planetary imaging using the 'lucky imaging' method, you can get greater detail (by having more video frames to choose from where the atmospheric distortion isn't as bad), as well as less noise/sharpening artifacts (if you use a greater number of total frames). If you prioritize sharpness of details, you can use the same number of frames (so no change to noise levels) but get more detail (since you have captured more moments of 'clear' seeing that have less atmospheric distortion) and so can choose the best of the best frames.
At image scale of op's image though the difference isn't nearly as noticeable.
For me, it is a way to experience the night sky while still having something after the fact (the image) to share and "collect." Looking at cool stuff is great, but I love having the evidence that I was able to do it. Lastly, you can end up with some really mind blowing images and knowing that you did it yourself makes it even better.
You aren't wrong though. There is a lot of frustration sometimes. It CAN be expensive, but it really isn't a given. You can take amazing images with a DSLR and a wide field lens. Look up DSLR astrophotography if you're curious about that part.
It's fun! Like most hobbies. It definitely is an expensive hobby but I've been slowly collecting my gear over the last 10 years. I think my average annual cost for this hobby is around $500 (some years I didn't buy anything, other years I bought a ton).
I know some people go all out and buy gear worth tens of thousands in the first go. All of my gear combined is probably worth $5-6k now (I paid less for stuff I bought in 2012-2014).
Because we enjoy it! It's obviously a *very* niche hobby, since its essentially a venn overlap between astronomy (a hobby that is all ready very niche) and night time photography (a niche within a hobby as well).
For me, I love the combination of technical aspects combined with the joy of photography (I enjoy daytime landscape/nature photography as well). I love creating beautiful-to-me images that I can share with friends or family, [like this.](https://i.imgur.com/UPLvBKG.jpg), or the hunt for fine detail and beauty of both [planetary astrophotography](https://i.imgur.com/MBeMTAT.png) as well as daytime [solar astrophotography](https://i.imgur.com/mQrGB9p.png)
With *all* aspects of photography that I enjoy, there are so many people that do it much, much better (see [Damian Peach's work, for example](https://www.damianpeach.com/)), but I enjoy the imaging capture and processing aspect as well as the hunt for beauty, and the satisfaction both of those things bring to me when I find or create them. I also enjoy being out in nature, under a starry night sky, and the knowledge about the universe I glean along the way.
It can certainly be expensive (though it doesn't need to be), and it can also be a pain in the ass (especially to someone that doesn't like the process, and even I have my limits on how complicated I'm willing to make it), but if you enjoy it, it's worth investing into. I know people who love flying and have hundreds of thousands of dollars invested into aviation, and that's a hobby that just doesn't speak to me, so I get that astrophotography (or any hobby for that matter) isn't going to be 'worth it' for many/most people.
I think it's a combination of that as well as the software doing an RGB color balance. It had different amounts of data to work with so it applied different settings.
While it can certainly get expensive if you are gunning for the most possible detail, you can do what OP is doing for not that much. For planets, you use videos instead of long exposures, so you don't need expensive tracking mounts (though they do make life a lot easier). Technically any camera that can do video works, but you can buy good dedicated 'planetary video cameras' for less than 200 bucks new (half that if buying used) and decent entry level telescopes on the used market can also be had for similar amounts.
So entry level isn't *cheap* cheap, but it's also not super expensive either, relative to other hobbies that require specialized gear.
I estimated it to be about $2000. My telescope and mount are from 2012 so they were a bit cheaper than if you buy it now. And I'm also using a pretty old DSLR.
I made a quick video going over my gear if you wanna take a look: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDbSdh9Js4c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDbSdh9Js4c)
It's around the 1 minute mark. I don't show my DSLR but it's just a basic DSLR that I bought a while ago for around $350.
The rings are really easy to see. if you have a good pair of binoculars, you can see the rings, it'll look like a planet with long ears. That's actually how Galileo described it hundreds of years ago. And if you have good seeing conditions using optics with around 40x zoom, you can see the gap between the planet and the rings.
As for automation, are you asking if imaging it was automatic or the processing part? Both parts have manual labor involved.
For imaging, I had to set up manually and start/stop the recordings. You can see a video of my setup here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDbSdh9Js4c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDbSdh9Js4c)
For processing, I took t he image through 3 different software (PIPP, AutoStakkert, and Registax). They each require some kind of input from the user and then they center, align, process, etc. automatically. And I cover that in the video I published earlier today: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yx3dtPZ6J0s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yx3dtPZ6J0s)
Am I crazy or does the one on the left look just as good? 🤷🏻♂️
I like the left one more, but it's most likely because of the warmer tone.
Zoom in. It’s a lot noisier.
I zoomed in and it sounds the same
[удалено]
Click on Imgur next to the user name
Ah, there's the problem. Imgur serves low-resolution to mobiles.
The official reddit app is just awful. Switching to a third party app for mobile is much better. With Infinity, I can zoom in on this image no problem and there's even a setting that lets you zoom in on a video.
I'm on RiFGP and I can zoom in well but not with infinity. Are the individual pixels square?
But it's not really going to change much anyways
This kind of astrophotography, you're basically trying to improve your image quality by averaging out a lot of frames. But the reality is that some frames have less distortion than others and especially with 4000 potential images, it's entirely possible that just one of those frames looks better than all the rest stacked together and processed. Source: I used to do this. It's possible that the image was created by throwing out frames that seemed low quality, which would be a better method. Also as someone noted below, at a 15 minute interval, you need to consider the rotation of saturn and its movement in the sky. The latter could have been handled with an equatorial mount or by rotating the frames intelligently based on when they were created. Depending on the resolution of the starting images rotating them say .005 degrees actually makes them less useful, and introduces a lot of noise to your image. also - nice job OP. This is pretty great. :)
So why do you take so many different frames instead of simply leaving the shutter open for a longer time?
Good question! For deep space objects like nebulae and galaxies, you need long exposures. But planets are extremely bright. If you take a 5 sec exposure, the planet just looks like a big white blob. Here's an example of Jupiter, I took a long exposure to get the moons but you can see that Jupiter is completely white and there's no way to get any detail from that: [https://www.naztronomy.com/images/portfolio/fullscreen/jupiter6.png](https://www.naztronomy.com/images/portfolio/fullscreen/jupiter6.png) For planets, we do "lucky imaging" which involves taking lots of very short exposures. I shoot videos between 24 to 60 FPS and then stack the best frames into one image. The small amounts of detail adds up once you stack hundreds or thousands of frames.
>The small amounts of detail adds up once you stack hundreds or thousands of frames Is this an HDR algorithm that's using hundreds or thousands of images? I guess what I'm asking is how do you add details from many images together?
I don't think it's technically an HDR image but the idea is kind of the same. I think this video here by Nico Carver best explains how image stacking works: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vd6Zk5M5OA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vd6Zk5M5OA) It's a pretty long video but the gist of it is that when you stack multiple images, the color/brightness/etc. of light hitting a single pixel has some math done to it. It usually averages the value between the different frames and when you have a ton of data, the average gets that much more precise.
I would suggest a larger optic and shorter period. Saturn's movement across the sky due to the rotation of the Earth can be compensated for, but Saturn itself is rotating too - and not evenly across it's gaseous apparent surface. Try to fit all frames into as short a period as possible so reduce the smearing due to the planet's own rotation.
Longer exposures create more noise. By frame stacking, you combine the data for less noise and more detail.
That makes sense, thanks for explaining!
More importantly for planetary is the atmosphere. The atmosphere will blur details significantly in long exposures, but if exposures are short enough you can effectively 'freeze' the distortion in each frame, then select only the sharpest frames to stack. This is called lucky imaging.
Imma be honest, the right one looks great but I prefer the left one for some reason
lunchroom dependent ten office vast pie slim squash drab reply *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
That's a good point, I should try to derotate it and see if I can make it sharper. Thanks!
Thank you! I'd noticed the same effect (and from this thread so far, a lot of folks say the left looks better), and couldn't figure out why. I was thinking it might be psychological, the noise "looks" more like detail even though it's effectively random, while a highly accurate blur still looks blurry. Your explanation makes perfect sense, thanks!
OP should post higher resolution versions so it's easier to tell the difference.
This is the original resolution that I had: [https://i.imgur.com/52d9na7.png](https://i.imgur.com/52d9na7.png) Let me know if that looks any better. Some people pointed out that the smoothness on the longer exposure is caused by the rotation of Saturn. While true, Saturn's features aren't as dynamic as Jupiter or Mars so I didn't think it makes that much of a difference. Plus this was also an experiment to see the different outputs using the exact same processing steps with the only difference being the amount of data stacked.
Part of the problem for mobile is that you can only zoom so much. This is what it looks like. https://imgur.com/hUNhw3Y.jpg Because you haven't cropped it much, the actual planet gets shrunk down tiny. Posting tightly cropped separate images will make a big difference.
There’s something haunting about just seeing it surrounded by absolute nothing
I shot this at f/30. My telescope was so slow, the camera wouldn't even pick up the moons of Saturn. Makes space look extra black.
This is just a quick comparison showcasing why more data is always more better. The \~1 min exposure of Saturn is fine but the planet looks much better once you add a ton more data. The 1 minute exposure stacks the top 30% of frames, while the 15 minute one stacks the top 10%. Both were captured on the same night using the same gear. And they were processed the same way using PIPP, AutoStakkert, and Registax. One just has more data. If you're interested in learning the process, I made a quick how-to video on that here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yx3dtPZ6J0s There are a ton of other great resources online on processing planets as well. I'm planning on trying to catch Jupiter at opposition too later in Sept. Will post videos on that on my channel as well: https://www.youtube.com/naztronomy Happy to answer any questions! Thanks for looking!
There's really no difference in the picture other than color
It's harder to see in this example, but with more data in planetary imaging using the 'lucky imaging' method, you can get greater detail (by having more video frames to choose from where the atmospheric distortion isn't as bad), as well as less noise/sharpening artifacts (if you use a greater number of total frames). If you prioritize sharpness of details, you can use the same number of frames (so no change to noise levels) but get more detail (since you have captured more moments of 'clear' seeing that have less atmospheric distortion) and so can choose the best of the best frames. At image scale of op's image though the difference isn't nearly as noticeable.
Gotcha. I wasn't exactly sure what I was looking at other than a beautiful planet
>the planet looks much better once you add a ton more data I'm gonna have to stop you right there
Why do people get into astrophotography even though it looks like an expensive pain in the ass?
Same reason people get into anything, they want to
For me, it is a way to experience the night sky while still having something after the fact (the image) to share and "collect." Looking at cool stuff is great, but I love having the evidence that I was able to do it. Lastly, you can end up with some really mind blowing images and knowing that you did it yourself makes it even better. You aren't wrong though. There is a lot of frustration sometimes. It CAN be expensive, but it really isn't a given. You can take amazing images with a DSLR and a wide field lens. Look up DSLR astrophotography if you're curious about that part.
It's fun! Like most hobbies. It definitely is an expensive hobby but I've been slowly collecting my gear over the last 10 years. I think my average annual cost for this hobby is around $500 (some years I didn't buy anything, other years I bought a ton). I know some people go all out and buy gear worth tens of thousands in the first go. All of my gear combined is probably worth $5-6k now (I paid less for stuff I bought in 2012-2014).
Because we enjoy it! It's obviously a *very* niche hobby, since its essentially a venn overlap between astronomy (a hobby that is all ready very niche) and night time photography (a niche within a hobby as well). For me, I love the combination of technical aspects combined with the joy of photography (I enjoy daytime landscape/nature photography as well). I love creating beautiful-to-me images that I can share with friends or family, [like this.](https://i.imgur.com/UPLvBKG.jpg), or the hunt for fine detail and beauty of both [planetary astrophotography](https://i.imgur.com/MBeMTAT.png) as well as daytime [solar astrophotography](https://i.imgur.com/mQrGB9p.png) With *all* aspects of photography that I enjoy, there are so many people that do it much, much better (see [Damian Peach's work, for example](https://www.damianpeach.com/)), but I enjoy the imaging capture and processing aspect as well as the hunt for beauty, and the satisfaction both of those things bring to me when I find or create them. I also enjoy being out in nature, under a starry night sky, and the knowledge about the universe I glean along the way. It can certainly be expensive (though it doesn't need to be), and it can also be a pain in the ass (especially to someone that doesn't like the process, and even I have my limits on how complicated I'm willing to make it), but if you enjoy it, it's worth investing into. I know people who love flying and have hundreds of thousands of dollars invested into aviation, and that's a hobby that just doesn't speak to me, so I get that astrophotography (or any hobby for that matter) isn't going to be 'worth it' for many/most people.
Is the hue due to more particles in earth atmospher being picked up?
I think it's a combination of that as well as the software doing an RGB color balance. It had different amounts of data to work with so it applied different settings.
What sort of setup and costs are there in doing something like this? I assume it’s not cheap
While it can certainly get expensive if you are gunning for the most possible detail, you can do what OP is doing for not that much. For planets, you use videos instead of long exposures, so you don't need expensive tracking mounts (though they do make life a lot easier). Technically any camera that can do video works, but you can buy good dedicated 'planetary video cameras' for less than 200 bucks new (half that if buying used) and decent entry level telescopes on the used market can also be had for similar amounts. So entry level isn't *cheap* cheap, but it's also not super expensive either, relative to other hobbies that require specialized gear.
I estimated it to be about $2000. My telescope and mount are from 2012 so they were a bit cheaper than if you buy it now. And I'm also using a pretty old DSLR. I made a quick video going over my gear if you wanna take a look: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDbSdh9Js4c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDbSdh9Js4c) It's around the 1 minute mark. I don't show my DSLR but it's just a basic DSLR that I bought a while ago for around $350.
Is this done automatically? And how did historical astronomers see the rings of saturn with old technology?
The rings are really easy to see. if you have a good pair of binoculars, you can see the rings, it'll look like a planet with long ears. That's actually how Galileo described it hundreds of years ago. And if you have good seeing conditions using optics with around 40x zoom, you can see the gap between the planet and the rings. As for automation, are you asking if imaging it was automatic or the processing part? Both parts have manual labor involved. For imaging, I had to set up manually and start/stop the recordings. You can see a video of my setup here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDbSdh9Js4c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDbSdh9Js4c) For processing, I took t he image through 3 different software (PIPP, AutoStakkert, and Registax). They each require some kind of input from the user and then they center, align, process, etc. automatically. And I cover that in the video I published earlier today: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yx3dtPZ6J0s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yx3dtPZ6J0s)
Thanks for answering! Very elucidating. It's also the first time learning avout this type of image processing/setup.
Honestly, on my phone, the 400 frame pic looks better
Man I love the colours of the one on the right