Saturn May 15th Good seeing again!

[Space Cowboy]

Good seeing but poor trans though I'm quite chuffed with this for 21 degrees elev.

LRGB using red mono as L and colour cam for RGB :

Auto Dob 250 & QHY5L-II C & M at f18 :

23.21ut

[Pete Presland]

you should be! its an excellent image. the "C" ring is visible, as the Encke gap. it has a very natural look and the banding and the polar vortex are showing nicely as well

[mitchelln]

Absolutely fantastic image!

[NorrinRadd]

Terrific capture. Top work.

Am I right in guessing that you switched cameras from a colour to mono to get a crisp L channel and used the colour as Saturn is dim on filters ?

Interested to know as I've just started out RGB mono imaging and Saturn was dim when I had a quick look at it the other night with filters.

Cheers , Simon

[wavydavy]

Brilliant image.

[Alan]

Really good capture Stuart and very effective use of colour cam with mono red channel ... must try this 

[Barv]

Yep, really good Stuart. Love the image scale!

Regards

Harvey

[theo]

Lovely Stuart. You've bagged some excellent detail in the rings and on the globe. Top work for 21 degrees and your best this apparition I would say.

Regards

Pete 

[astroman001]

A really good image for the altitude, nice bands on the disk.

regards

Peter

[Space Cowboy]

Thanks guys for your comments! Just looked at this for the first time on my pc monitor (processed on netbook) and I see there is a red fringe on the front ring so just popped it through registax rgb align and fixed it.

Simon Saturn is not too dim for RGB filters I'm just too lazy to use them hence using the colour cam and mono cam so basically I only need 2 captures for LRGB rather than 3. I call it the best of both worlds. Thanks to winjupos all of this is possible.

Here is the RGB aligned version :

Here is a straight colour cam shot. Not bad but lacks the pop of the mono hybrid :

[bob-c]

brilliant image. bob

[U Cyg]

Really nice image Stuart, lots of detail in the rings!

Angie

[Space Cowboy]

Thanks Bob & Angie!

Here is a smoother version after comparing with Pete's brilliant image decided there was too much noise and the smoothing does not seem to have compromised the detail too much :

[theo]

That's a definate improvement I'd say Stuart. Best to reduce noise where possible up to the point where detail is not being compromised. I think you have found a nice balance here.

Pete

[si@nite]

As Petes says that last image for me is a cracking shot, great detail in the banding, I car'nt get any where near that quality at the moment, but will be trying hard in the next few weeks weather permiting!

[Space Cowboy]

Thanks Pete & Simon I don't usually use a lot of noise reduction but the strength of the red L channel seems to handle it very well.

[si@nite]

Stuart im impressed with the detail in your image, hope you don't mind, had a play with them & dropped the scale to 90% but look just as good at original size wished they were mine lol!

[NorrinRadd]

I like your thinking :-) and it's clever too :-)

I have just started mono RGB etc and have ordered a new point grey cam , but in the meantime I have been playing with my QHY5 2 mono ...not the 5L , and when I put the blue filter on I struggle to get more than 2 fps on Saturn ! Lol It's my guide cam normally so I'm hoping the new point grey will perform better. Mars offers a generous 7 on a small ROI in blue too. ...so colour combo ...sounds great to me in the meantime :-)

Love the images :-)

[Space Cowboy]

Thanks Simon you've brought out more contrast on the globe for sure but the Crepe has suffered as a result. Processing the planet separately from the rings would avoid this I guess but I've not got the know how or photoshop to do that kind of wizardry!   I wish your Mars from April 15th was mine too!

Thanks Simon its worth experimenting for sure!

[U Cyg]

Stuart, what are you using for noise reduction?

Angie

[SnakeyJ]

Very nice Stuart and nice processing - excellent result for 21deg!  I shot two red channel captures, but the poor trans was killing blue and I stuck with red mono.   Perhaps another play tonight.

[Space Cowboy]

Stuart, what are you using for noise reduction?

Angie

Thanks Angie I use image analyser.

Cheers Jake!