Saturn

[Stargazer Jack]

Hi, been through some of my avi's and managed to get this. I did this with my Explorer 130M, SPC900NC with no Barlow or tracking. Any advice/criticism welcome

[Uplooker]

Good effort, the focus may be out slightly or it may just be the seeing. Why did you decide not to use the barlow? It would add greatly to the image scale. Was it to extend the time Saturn was within the FoV due to the absence of tracking?

Keep at it,

Ian

[Peter Reader]

Depending on what capture software you're using you can zoom in on the image live view. I find this helps me get better focus.

[Stargazer Jack]

Yeah, I just couldn't find it with the Barlow in but I will try next time the sky clears and the seeing is good. The focus is not the best and I was hoping to get an automatic one but they don't work on my telescope I am using wxastrocapture to get these and sometimes sharpcap. Do these have the zoom button in? Thanks

[Clayton]

WX certainly does zoom. Don't know about Sharpcap?

[Stargazer Jack]

Thanks for the help. Am going to try again later

[Peter Reader]

I'd never go back to using wxastrocapture. Results from Sharpcap are so much better in my experience. There is a zoom button in Sharpcap (at the top of the liveview?) I zoom in until the planet fills the screen and then focus as best I can (very tiny rotations of the focuser). With a 130P you should be able to see banding and possible the cassini division at good focus and seeing.

Hope this helps

[Stargazer Jack]

I'd never go back to using wxastrocapture. Results from Sharpcap are so much better in my experience. There is a zoom button in Sharpcap (at the top of the liveview?) I zoom in until the planet fills the screen and then focus as best I can (very tiny rotations of the focuser). With a 130P you should be able to see banding and possible the cassini division at good focus and seeing.

Hope this helps

That news is great! I would just love to see a gap between the rings and planet nevermind the banding and division

[beamish]

just remember that this is far better than Galileo ever saw

[leenewtoastro]

I'd never go back to using wxastrocapture. Results from Sharpcap are so much better in my experience. There is a zoom button in Sharpcap (at the top of the liveview?) I zoom in until the planet fills the screen and then focus as best I can (very tiny rotations of the focuser). With a 130P you should be able to see banding and possible the cassini division at good focus and seeing.

Hope this helps

is the zoom infinite? i'm sure i only saw 400%?

[JKB]

Thats a really good effort. I had similar problems finding the damn thing with a barlow before I had tracking.

Trick was to use smallest ep, focus roughly so in the frame of capture software and then centre it.

Quicker than a quick thing: swap in the barlow and focus in . TBH 50/50 hit and miss but once you've done it you'll be happy.

Cheers

[Peter Reader]

Yes there is only zoom to 400. This should be enough to make the planet large enough on the screen to be easy to focus.

[Stargazer Jack]

Thanks to everyone for the help. Will try this in my next imaging attempt on saturn

[Stargazer Jack]

When i'm on Sharpcap, do I have to press new on the right and type in something like 'saturn spc900nc' when the box comes up & then I can start capturing?