Planetary Imaging

[AdamButko]

I'm relatively new to Backyard EOS and astrophotography in general, so excuse me if this is silly. I've shot the moon numerous times and successfully captured Orion Nebula with 30 second exposures without trailing stars, so I'm becoming familiar with the equipment and terminology ... very slowly.

 

Now I have my sights set on shooting Jupiter. I'm fiddling around with Backyard EOS 1.0.3, trial edition, will likely purchase upon expiry if I can figure this out. I'm using a Nikon D300. Under the Planetary tab, I do not have a 5x zoom option (see attached image). I've also ran some video trials and all my images come out at 640x426 resolution, which is stated in the file name. Any idea how to access the 5x zoom feature, or increase the resolution?

 

Thanks, clear skies!
 

Adam

 

Double posted, my apologies, please remove one!

[Professoran@gmail.co]

Hey Guys:

 

Just going over Guys intro video of BY EOS.

 

I note that some of the planetary features of BYN are not the same.

 

But I note that they are being worked on after reading this 

 

So my question is what is being worked on?

 

And will it give the Nikon the 1 to 1 ratio needed for planetary imaging?

[admin]

The jury s still out to see if Nikon produces a 1:1 pixel resolution and any zoom level they offer.  I just do not know yet.

 

Regards,

[peje]

Sign me up for the beta!! Imaging Jupiter with my 10MP 40d while my 24MP (low noise) d7100 is sitting on the shelf hurts my soul LOL

[Professoran@gmail.co]

OK. Thanks for your input Guy.

 

But from your video you don't have an auto 1 to 1 for BYN and yet you are using Live View rather than the video settings of the Nikon for planetary imaging in BYN. 

 

So for Jupiter I'd decrease the JPEG size and not use RAW for planets on BYN, or would that even matter as you are using JPEGs from the Live View?

[astroman133]

It may very well be that the Nikon SDK does not support BYN to take in-camera videos.

 

LiveView frames are not raw images, they are JPEGs.

 

I am sure that Guylain and Chris will do their best to get the highest resolution planetary images that Nikon allows.

[Professoran@gmail.co]

On and before I get ready to freeze and lose a planetary imaging session, isn't BYN more responsive (in other words much FASTER) if you just save to the cameras SD card rather than download the images to the camera. I could use the "Preview" mode to see what it looks like and check focus and whatnot before I start a session. 

 

Or am I off on this?

[astroman133]

Still images can be saved to the camera's memory card.  This is not so with Planetary captures (LiveView frames), which are JPG images from LiveView downloads that are assembled into an AVI file by BYN and are only stored on the PC.

 

If your camera has a video mode, you will get a faster frame rate than using BYN's planetary mode because storing to a fast memory card in the camera is more efficient than downloading to the PC over USB.  I don't know about the resolution, however.  For Canon cameras, the downloaded 5X zoom/crop gives better resolution than the in-camera video, but I don't know about Nikons.

[admin]

You can not save live view images on sd card, the camera does not support it.  You can save videos but these are heavily processed by the camera as hey are meant for daytime movies.

 

Bottom line is this feature is, for now, mainly a Canon/BackyardEOS feature.  It is there as a convenience in BYN but until the live view zoom is implemented it is just a convenience feature.

[Professoran@gmail.co]

Hey Guy:

 

One more thing (sorry about running on). 

 

On the video, you do a good job of showing how well thought out BYE and thus BYN are.

 

A couple of times you could tell your live viewers were almost speechless on how well you addressed their concerns with your solutions in BYE.

[admin]

Hey Guy:

 

One more thing (sorry about running on). 

 

On the video, you do a good job of showing how well thought out BYE and thus BYN are.

 

A couple of times you could tell your live viewers were almost speechless on how well you addressed their concerns with your solutions in BYE.

 

Thank you.  The best way I can explain how BYE and BYN came about is simple.  It was a mistake!  wait, what?  

 

Yes, BYE was a mistake, I built it for myself to use only as I felt nothing out there was really how I felt it should be back in 2008.  After 2.5 years of development I showed it to a few friends and they said I should make a product out of... and 3 months later I started to sell it and I never looked back.

 

BYE was developed for my personal use and perhaps this is playing a huge role in how it is laid out. 

 

I'm always overwhelmed when complete strangers think and say it is the best thing since sliced bread.

 

Thank you.

[peje]

Staring a Juipter so thought I'd be a pest....do you have an idea of when you think this will be released? I realise Jupiter isn't going anywhere but I'm terrible impatient LOL

[jragsdale]

Haha, peje I'm the same way. I've been checking this thread like 5x a day. I got impatient and decided to image Jupiter anyway and crank up the focal length to 12,000mm to try to defeat as much of the 1080p downsampling in my D5300 as possible. Focusing and framing is tricky for a 3 minute video but the seeing was good!

[chrboult]

It's coming. Worked on it this week end. Will look to complete it this week.

[peje]

Happy days. 'Looking forward to it' is a massive understatement LOL

[peje]

Any word on this feature?

[chrboult]

Don't worry guys. It's coming.
I just got caught up in renovations that started a lot quicker than I thought, but as soon as I have my house back it's priority 1.
I have about 2 weeks still to go, or so says the contractor but he's been pretty good so far.

Well one thing is for sure is that it will get well tested once it's released :-)

-Christian.

[peje]

Haha, peje I'm the same way. I've been checking this thread like 5x a day. I got impatient and decided to image Jupiter anyway and crank up the focal length to 12,000mm to try to defeat as much of the 1080p downsampling in my D5300 as possible. Focusing and framing is tricky for a 3 minute video but the seeing was good!

 

That is my goal for an image of Jupiter for this year, wonderful shot. My new immediate goal is a really good moon photo for my sons wall as he has become obsessed with the 'bizz' as he calls it. Proud daddy LOL

 

Woke up at 3am to get a drink and noticed the sky was clear, couldn't get back to sleep so had to come out and quickly setup for some moon shots LOL. It's insanely bright tonight, running 1/2000!!

[chrboult]

So you have context :-)
This is what the inside of my house looked liked just 3 weeks ago.

 

[peje]

It's coming. Worked on it this week end. Will look to complete it this week.

 

Thanks, apologies for my impatience! on the plus side, at least you know you're feature is going to get alot of attention (and testing)

[peje]

Good lord

[Jim]

That must have been some party :^))