Telescope Reviews: AP Images Taken with Original NexStar

Alright, here is deal with Ryan 211's Jupiter image from the last massive thread. Tel challenged me once again (the way he does that is so subtle, no?) to process the data. The data was collected with NexStar 8SE. Medium to better seeing conditions.

Here is my observations based on examining the original data:

1. Bands are clearly separated with some hint of more details on the edges.
2. Details inside of the lighter regions are not resolved, not even a hint.
3. Edge has a ghost image from the processing.

Based on this observations, I chose this strategy in potential improving the image:

1. Separate the bands even further with some contrast enhancement of the edges.
2. Do not bother with the internal regions of the bands, meaning do not apply much sharpening techniques such as wavelet parameter available in Registax at high frequency levels (Level 1 and 2).
3. Carefully watch for the edge and limit edge enhancing techniques to not cause severe degradation of the edge.

The steps I thought would be appropriate for strategy #1:
First, I loaded the original image without resizing in Registax and played with the wavelet sliders to extract a bit more definition of the edges, while keeping an eye on strategies 2 and 3.

After some moderate detail retrieval I saved the image as TIFF and opened it in Photoshop. Main goal in Photoshop was to increase color/intensity contrast to further emphasize separation of the bands. I used good old Curves to slightly modify the color curve:

After the slight curves, I applied some De-noise and Gaussian filters.

Finally, I loaded the output from Photoshop into a freeware tool that I am beginning to like more and more, RawTherapee. The RT has an interesting (and growing) capability to apply Deconvolution algorithms to further clean up the edges and carefully control amount of frequency noise in both color and intensity domains:

The ghost image of the edge was still bothering me. I returned to Photoshop, selected the black space around Rayn's Jupiter (it's not black) and applied a bit of the "Feather" to the selection. I then expanded the selection by a few pixels inside the image. Next, replaced the selection with the background color. Effectively, it meant shrinking the border of Jupiter inwards, removing the hard edge present in the ghost circle.

Finally, I resized the image in Preview on my Mac to get it fit into this forum requirements:

Can the resulting image match the clarity of Eric's 6SE images? No. Is it an improvement on the original? According to my set objectives, yes. The bands are more prominent, contrast is better. The edge ghost is not pronounced.

The beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. Is my processing "better" than Ryan's or Tel's? I am not the one to judge. I extracted features that I saw promising in his original image. My strategy and methods are for everyone to see. It took me about 3 hours to play with different settings and go back and forth on the tools. Was it worth it? Hell yes, it was fun.

Thank you for reading and watching.