Starlog March 16th, 2025, 9:53 p.m. local time
Do not attempt to adjust your computer’s internal clock. You are exactly where and when you should be.
It’s been a long road, far too long, for me to get back to what I really want to do at my website: astrophotography. I could write a novelette of my journey over the past year, filled with AI-fluffed narratives of all of the twists and turns, and particularly the downs that delayed this post to the waning days of March 2026. On two separate occasions over the past 10 months or so, I really did start to make concerted efforts to finish post-processing, until other matters demanded my attention yet again.
I will only summarize that the delay was due to multi-factor combinations of emergent priorities, illnesses, and a few spurts of outright procrastnation.
I have owned my Celstron NexStar Evolution 9.25″ now for two years, but I actually used it far less than I originally wanted. Hopefully, that changes here and now; I have already had one session in 2026 (more on that in a future article). But let’s rewind back to early 2025, when I was eager to try out my new ZWO ASI676MC planetary camera while Jupiter was still in the evening sky.
The ZWO and surrounding setup was completely new to me, and I spent several weeks, when weather allowed, in March and April 2025 targeting both Jupiter and Mars. With only manual focus and Jupiter rapidly nearing the horizon each night, most of my raw videos were too fuzzy. I had to backtrack all the way to one of my first sessions, on March 16th of that year, for a passable set of Jupiter videos to post-process.
After several attempts to post-process with both old and new software programs, I finally settled on a semi-familiar stack:
- PIPP (the old standby)
- Autostakkert (now at version 4, still the best for final stacking)
- WaveSharp 3 (successor to Registax 6)
Regarding PIPP, I was also working with “PlanetarySystemStacker” though for my purposes, I saw no real difference in output from PIPP. Since PSS, unlike PIPP, is in at least stated active development, I will continue to use them in parallel.
The final image produced was not terrible, especially for a first attempt with new equipment. I realized later that the Barlow is completely unnecessary and actually a hindrance to both image quality and simply keeping the telescope on-target, despite the mount’s auto tracking. I realized that focusing, even with the Celestron motorized focuser, which I purchased around the same time as the ZWO camera, was still going to require further investment.
If I got one lesson from my March-April 2025 SCT/ZWO sessions, it was that leveraging a dedicated planetary camera, versus previous reliance on my DSLR, offers the potential for far more impressive results, with the caveat that automation would require ever more cash to harness that potential. Now that I have caught up back to 2026, in subsequent articles I will explain what my photography setup looks like today.
Equipment Used:
- Celestron NexStar Evolution 9.25 Schmidt-Cassegrain
- ZWO ASI676MC planetary camera
- – Capture Area Size = 3552 * 3552
- – Capture Limit = 60 s
- – Colour Format = RAW8
- – Debayer Preview = ON
- – Debayer Type = RGGB
- – Exposure = 270ms
- – Gain = 50
- – Temperature = 10.7 C
- – TimeZone = -5
- Barlow: TeleVue Powermate x5 1.25″
- Filter: Baader Neodymium 1.25″
- Created from a 60s video, best 50% of frames via Autostakkert
- Software for post-processing:
- – PIPP
- – Autostakkert 4
- – WaveSharp 3
- PaintShop Pro for minor touch-ups
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