Airconvent wrote:hi weixing
wow! what a difference between stacked and raw images.
but your original already looks good.
I was also taking the same photos at the same time but my attempts were mediocre...nothing in the same category as my previous best attempt.
I wonder where I did wrong....?
anyway, if you had not called to tell me about the GRS, I would not have even noticed it was there...I have already learnt the GRS is not very obvious visually ....
as usual, I did not take multiple shots but too many individual images (over 100) at different settings..I can't even remember what settings I used....but generally between .25 seconds to 0.5 seconds exposure using Macro mode on my camera (whether auto, infinite or macro does not seem to make any difference)
I have attached them for comparison...the GRS can just barely make out Jupiter's 9 o'clock...as for Saturn...can't even make out the cassini division...sigh..
rich
Rich, actually your raw shots are not too bad. Just that you really need to do this :
1) trial and error to find the best settings. Normally the best settings will give you the sharpest image but dimmest as well. Try to find a setting between the two.
2) Take a lot of shots within 5 minutes. For jupiter, you can't take your time because the surface rotation is very fast. Try to take at least 150 shots.
3) For focusing, if you can, connect your camera to a larger TV or LCD monitor. Also, use a fine focus cable for your ETX.
4) Crop each image properly and as close as possible in photoshop. This take time, but manual cropping will make the alignment and stacking much more accurate. During cropping, you can also filter out those images that are bad. Remember to choose only the best ones here. Try to spend time here....a lot of those "experts" spend a lot of time here doing cropping out of hundreds of shots. Some even mildy process their photos before they export it to registrax. I can spend the whole night just doing this alone. Rename the pictures starting from 01,02,03 and so on. Try not to use the default number from the digicam.
5) Once you got it stack and align, play with the wavelets. If you have done (4) properly, your stacked image should already be very good.
If you were to ask me what makes a good photo, I would say patience. and knowledge in image processing. Not equipment, not fancy cameras. But patience in focusing, patience in getting the right settings, and patience in image processing. Some of those guys I talked to spent more than a day just to process their images. It's 30 minutes at the field, but 8 hours on the desk. If you think that's a waste of time, then digital AP is not for you. But if you want some good photos, that's the kind of time you got to spend.
May be I should use a faster shutter.. may be 0.5 or 1 seconds. 
"The universe is composed mainly of hydrogen and ignorance." 
That's really a big difference after you have stack those images.
