Kon

Excellent image as always and very informative write up. The small craterlets are resolved really well.

Considering your setup, I wonder if the 5x is too much unless seeing is excellent. Your setup is quite similar to mine. I am close to ff15 with a 2.5x powermate with my 200P and asi462. I am all manual but an electric focuser sounds nice.

Some nice clouds. It's great to see you capturing some Venus images.

I opened all the images Steve sent me as layers and then changed from Normal mode to Dark only in Gimp. Other settings also worked but this gave the best output.

Happy to take a look if you want

Thanks Peter. Yes I managed a few clear spells but still hazy. I agree about the 3d feeling. If you also open the ir alongside the colour and flick back/forwards you can see the moons rotating as well. It is a shame the weather did not hold to capture a nice rotation.

I have not done it yet (Saturday might be my first ever transit) but I think you need to take your frames and blend them together in any editing software. I am planning to use this link to get me going: https://www.photographingspace.com/how-i-got-an-apod-dylan-odonnell-part-2/ I think step 19 is relevant to you. @PeterStudz and @Pete Presland have both recently done it so they might be able to give you some tips how to do it.

Nice capture! Try extract the frames as you can overlay them along its travel path.

Thanks. It is not far off. I am quite excited with Jupiter higher up this year. Let's hope the good seeing we are having continues.

Surprisingly stable seeing. It was the first time my histogram was not all over the place but a shame about the clouds. I think collimation needs a bit tweaking (weekend job) as the IR could have been sharper. Good to be out and getting the teething issues early on.

This is my first capture of Saturn this season. I was up more for the summer solstice occasion than imaging . Pretty stable seeing but the constant passing clouds ruined the captures but I managed a few decent videos. It is still early days but both the colour and IR images are looking ok. I feel rusty with the processing but I will get there. I was surprised that during the processing I could see Titan, Rhea and Tethys upon playing with the gamma levels. 8" Dob, manual, asi462mm and 462mc, IR pass and UV/IR cut filters, 2.5xTV powermate.

Excellent capture. Nice framing over the sunspots. Any ISS transit has eluded me but Saturday morning is promising for my location.

It's looking nice. It's getting harder to get them now.

Excellent image. Much more details than earlier and the banding on the planet is resolved nicely. My heart stopped when I read this!

I am not sure the Astromania filter is the issue here. I have been using it for all my Venus captures. Have a look at this link which summons my captures from March to June this year.(https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/410783-venus-from-march-to-june-2023/#comment-4388478). I had issues with the 462mc and their filter as it was giving me ghosting effects, not sure why. I then moved to 462mm and the ghosting went. With my 8" Dob, I can get 3ms at 300fps with a gain of ~80% with the 462mm. I found that capturing during daylight was the best for what I was doing but Stuart @Space Cowboy has some excellent images with the 462m at dusk (different filter but similar features to the Astromania). Neil @neil phillipsis using the 178 and he is also pulling amazing UV captures (I think he has the same filter as Stuart). Although I am not an expert on setups, looking at your imaging train there is a lot of glass there and I agree with @Ibbo! that it is likely the telescope than the filter/camera (no need for the ADC as your are effectively using the camera as mono with the filters). Yes 462mc is not great but I have got faint details on it before but I did have to up the exposure to 15ms. QE seems to drop to around 30% for asi462mc and 80% for 462mm.

Excellent observation Malcolm. Your drawing looks great and I think you have captured real features. I have stopped imaging Venus in UV as of last week since it is hard to pull fine details, but after you tagged me on this post I was really intrigued because you guys amaze me that you can get such details visually. As John said excellent scopes and experience. So, I got my Dob out and this is what I got....not far off your sketch! I imaged it at 2220pm so a few hours so you can take rotation of clouds into account. But i do see similar features to your drawing. The quality is awful (Venus is too low for good imaging and I usually do it at daytime) but you get the general picture. My hat off to you sir!

😲 I feel very honoured that you think my image was worth it of your desktop background. Yes feel free to use it. I quite like the rotated version too.

Thanks. We were lucky with the weather which helped for some consistency.

How? Seriously! Your drawn features are very similar to my capture from last night. I have managed to see some features during daylight but not in this kind of detail.

Thanks. You are very kind.

I had a very similar issue with my 200P, regardless of how I was moving my secondary. If your focuser is not square with the secondary it will not collimate easily or it will 'not hold collimation'. In the 200P, the 1.25" extension adapter in the focuser is a bit wobbly and every time I would collimate and recheck it would appear as if it was off or I could not collimate it. The solution was to rotate the extension tube until it was square and getting the Cheshire on/off, rotate along did not change it. You may have a similar issue.

Yes being out imaging is very soothing and fun. Many times it's frustrating but still fun. I hope to join soon.

Looks nice but I know what you mean 'more of the same'; Cassini division is not quite crisp yet, is it? The banding has come out nicely. The heat and long cooling overnight is not helping.

Thank you both. You have been inspirational for my processing as you always have a nice natural appearance to your images. It shows that weather has not been a complete disaster either.

I tried last night (top one) but the heat seems to be affecting focus quite a bit. Neil is having issues with his Saturn in the mornings. As in previous post, I am stopping for now.