What is Digg?50 Comments
- uzusan, on 10/12/2007, -1/+19did you read the article?
sure it might be photo stacking. but each of those photos stacked is one of 450 taken for each of the 3 images.
so he had to take 1350 images. pick the best ones, then combine them. just to get those 3 images.
guy gets my respect, not only for his great images, but for the hard work he put into it. - eclectro, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11Great digg. Astronomy is a great place for amateurs. Here is more info on the camera used for the photo;
http://www.stargazing.net/david/toucam/ - BassCadet, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10Absolutely beautiful!
Would love to see his images of the Moon.
EDIT - here they are. Stunning that this can be done from some guy's house.
http://www.stargazing.net/david/moon/day10h23m23moon.html - kebwi, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10Actually, popular stacking programs (I'm the programmer of one of them) can do a remarkable job of auto-selecting the images worth using in the stack. It's amazing how much of the process you can automate. A lot of the effort I put into my program, Keith's Image Stacker, is focused on exactly that feature actually, attempting to automate as much of the process as possible. So you set up your camera to catch images for a while, you go inside where its warm, you fire up your image stacker, and it does most of the work for you.
The main role a human must play is in tweaking and correcting mistakes the automatic processes make. For example, after the stacking program chooses good images and discards bad images, it's a good idea to visually scan the collection of images and make manual corrections to the set of images that are approved and discarded. For 1000 images, that's some work, but it isn't a fraction as tedious as doing the original selection/discarding from scratch.
He's getting nice results. However, I would point out that a lot of people with 10" scopes and ToUcams get comparable results. Modified long-exposure webcam astrophotography has been a maturing field for several years now. People are getting truly unbelievable images. I would rank his as very very nice images, up there with other really good 10" scope images.
He should be pleased with his results. I'm sure he is. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8That makes no sense.
- eclectro, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7Actually the pictures of the moon are using a Nikon coolpix and is a different atronomer than submission. Still cool nonetheless.
This appears to be Mike Salway's website;
http://www.iceinspace.com.au/index.php?news - mikesalway, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Hi guys. I'm the imager who took the shots of Jupiter in this article.
Thanks for your comments.
I use a run of the mill rusty tubed GSO 10" dob on top of an EQ platform, and I use a ToUcam webcam as the capture device. As the article states, the benefit of the webcam method of capturing images, is that you capture many "frames" in a short amount of time, and use software to help select the best frames - where the atmospheric turbulance was at its least, and stack those together. Seperate software is then used to sharpen the image using a "Lucy Richardson" deconvolution algorithm. The animation was made (in Jasc Animation Shop 3) of 16 separate images over an hour and half period.
You can see a pic of my imaging setup here: http://www.iceinspace.com.au/images/eqplatform-imaging.jpg
It's not expensive equipment - my whole setup costs less than AU$1500. (not including the laptop). And i'm certainly not a professional. Unless you want to pay me to do this :)
My other images can be found on my website, here: http://www.iceinspace.com.au/mygallery/
If you're interested in Astronomy, you're welcome to come and join the IceInSpace Forums, (especially if you live in Australia) and talk about astronomy, get advice about equipment, see more amateur astrophotography, etc. http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum
Thanks again.
PS: My Jupiter image also got published on Astronomy Picture of the Day on March 18:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap060318.html
Thanks - mckirkus, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7If you RTFA it says it rivals NASAs photos from the 1970s Voyager so technically you're wrong.
- boredzo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5"Mike not only captured this trio of beautiful images, he created a short sixteen-frame movie (http://www.iceinspace.com.au/downloads/20060312-jupiter_anim.gif) showing the planet in rotation! Each frame is separated by approximately five minutes; therefore the movie spans the planet's rotation over a period of almost an hour and a half."
Dugg for that alone. - Greg-J, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Here's a mirror. Pretty impressive really.
http://www.prntscrn.net/img.php?img=jupiter_lrg.jpg - dknighton, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4As most amatuer astronomers will attest to, webcams make very good astrocams for bright objects such as the planets. This guy used a Toucam, which is a favorite in the astro-community. Logitech Quickcam 4000 models are also excellent, and I've used one of those personally. There is also a great piece of freeware called Registax that takes video, then processes and stacks the individual frames to produce images close to this result. Using regular stuff, I've taken impressive images of Saturn and Jupiter.
In fact, the amatuer community's initiative sparked a whole new industry of professionally-made, low end astrocams that are now available from Meade, Orion Telescopes, and SuperCircuits. This is one area where the community took the initiative, and the corporations eventually caught on. Good stuff. - mckirkus, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6Awesome, kind of makes you wonder the amazing innovations we could have if NASA used their money for things like the X-prize instead of spending thier billions and billions on an aging, rickety shuttle.
- Lostcosmos, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Check out Digg user 15Monkeys animated Jupiter gif:
http://brianscheer.home.comcast.net/astronomy/index.html
Not bad for a 8" LX200. - diggAddict, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Aussies do it again.. well done mate ;-)
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2
Must be nice to live in a country where there they don't have so much light pollution you can't see more than 2 stars with the human eye. - CJHtxGeek, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Whoa, I was looking at jupiter at same time; I have a 8in Schmit, however mine has the electronic tracking and focusing and such... 2in really make a difference.. was using a 16mm eyepiece. Wonder what exactly he was using...
- rtatay, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Here is another really good website of an amateur photographer with amazing pictures of galaxies, nebulae, etc. I don't think this guy could still be considered an "amateur". He built his own (remote!) observatory and actually sells prints of his images. http://www.rc-astro.com/
- supersan, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1awesome.. now how about take 450 photos using hubble and running it thru the same software :)
- mrASSMAN, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2i'll admit i didn't actually read the article. i saw the photo and wasn't overly impressed.. not because i thought he didn't do a good job, just that it's impossible to take a truly good shot of the planet from earth.. like i said, not his fault, it's just our atmosphere intefering with the light coming from the planet.
edit: maybe i should have just referred you to fletchowns' comment.. voyager's image: http://fletchowns.net/incoming/jupiterstorm.jpg - LittleOni, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Very cool.
- deut, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2simply amazing - well done mate
- Killerah, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Wow, that's just incredible that some guy with a camera and a telescope can make pictures that good of Jupiter! His moon picture is amazing too.
- voltagex, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1In Sydney it's that bad. On the SE coast where I live it's better.
- Eightyford, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Upside down images, right?
- deathscytheh64, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I can't imagine the man hours into putting that together. Much respect on that front, very cool.
- ivanjs, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Awesome! A great digg.. Gotta throw away my 4.5" scope and get a Dobsonian.
- idiggit, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Wait a minute... the moon is upside down. ;)
- chevykrazy60, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2WELL OF COURSE IT DOESNT RIVAL NASA but hell if you had an operating revenue of about 20 billion a year you would have DAMN good pictures as well. Personally i think these pictures are AMAZING for an amatuer congrats man you should take more
- 5m0k3, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1That is one professional amateur photographer.
- scotsman, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2Excellent effort - great digg.
- VadimKatchkakov, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0many people seem surprised by what may be done in amateur mode extremely cheaply. I use dobbsonion mount with cheap hardware to capture images of high quotient.
- fletchowns, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2It's pretty cool but I think the claim that it's near the quality of Voyager is total *****.
http://fletchowns.net/incoming/jupiterstorm.jpg
That was taken from voyager, and the quality is immensely better than his. I still think his method and effort are really cool though. - alistairf, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Sorry, I'm tripping over my keyboard. The voyager image in the original article is similar in quality to the main jupiter image. The link to the jupiter image in the previous comment was obviously taken when voyager was closer than 90% of the way to the planet.
Either way, its a nice image. I believe its a similar technique to "video astronomy" used to take the nice images of SpaceshipOne at altitude. - tpoc, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0chances are he was using Adaptive Optics...makes quite a difference
http://www.stellarproducts.com/ - jonjonblazezany, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0My dad has a $2,000 telescope wish it look like that
- Sizzor, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Wow. Digg sure has a lot of Astronomy fans. For those who do imaging, what do you use? Registax or some other stacking program?
- modian, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Those are truly remarkable images. Star Hustler dude would be proud. :oP
- The0, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2wow, he's got way too much free time... *goes and plays WoW*
Seriously, though, thats amazing - nigeltufnel, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0Read a little further - it was near the quality of Voyager's photos when it was not quite there yet.
- jonjonblazezany, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0lol MILO your right about that i hate that
- alistairf, on 10/12/2007, -2/+0I serious doubt that image was taken from 90% of way to Jupiter, as the article suggests...
"The clarity of each image is similar to pictures taken by Voyager after it had traveled over 90 percent of the distance from Earth to Jupiter."
On the other hand, the voyager image, linked to in the article, is slightly sharper, though the colors are not as vibrant. - BasouKazuma, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1I didnt find this to be very interesting. He did a good job, but MEH.
- gigabitten, on 10/12/2007, -3/+0never thought i'd have to dupe a comment....
- dbt777, on 10/12/2007, -4/+0AMAAAZZZZINNGNG!!!
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -6/+1"Astronomy is a great place for amateurs"
Astronomy is a place? Where is it? Maybe you mean astronomy is a great hobby, ah ha! that's it - scotsman, on 10/12/2007, -11/+2Excellent effort - great digg!
- Ianmacisaac, on 10/12/2007, -15/+5If is a amateur hes not a good one, hes more like a pro.
- mrASSMAN, on 10/12/2007, -19/+1sure, they look great for an amateur telescope from earth, but honestly, it doesn't nearly rival nasa's own photos as the article claims..
the atmosphere basicly rids the photo of all detail. - Fly1m1, on 10/12/2007, -37/+1This is normal. Photo stacking is how it's done. Lame
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