First try at Saturn

[Hypernova]

I had a mare of a time trying to image Saturn last night. The SPC900 kept making the laptop bluescreen with ShaprCap and the resulting AVI files looked to be corrupted for some reason, they were split up weirdly and were bright green?!?

Castrator wouldn't accept any kind of file for centering so this was bunged straight into Registax and below is the result.

Manually tacked through my 8" dob with a hopeless SW 2x barlow in place!

[Kokatha man]

Tom, I haven't any experience with SharpCap nor Castrator (although funnily enough, some Jupiter avi's from a couple of mornings ago got rejected by ninox, which also centres as well as crops and grades!?!) BUT for a first attempt and with a dob and all of these problems it really augurs well for your planetary imaging to get something at least respectable out of all of these issues.....there's certainly a hint of the storm in your image, well done..!

[King]

There's a hint of moon as well. Very good to catch that on a first go.

[Adamski]

looks good to me for your first go. welldone.

[Clayton]

Well done Tom. Better than my first Saturn with an EQ mount

[RogerTheDodger]

That looks very good, it may sharpen up a bit more with a play in the wavelets too.

[Hypernova]

Thanks for the kind comments, much appreciated

I think though that I will pack in all of this imaging malarkey until I can do something about the amount of stiction in the dob mount, movement is very jerky and easy to overshoot even after the ebony star upgrade back in December. Bear in mind that the planet is only in the field for 10 seconds with the barlow in place before I have to nudge to recenter!

Comparing my dob to Shane's old 12" OO dob, his mount is naturally so, so much smoother in both axes.

[spaceboy]

Well I think it is a good first effort Tom. Given that it's on a manual dob and you had PC issues. Regards your ebony star every now and again you have to give it a wipe over with sailkote or original turtle wax

[Adz]

Looks good for a first attempt, I shall be having a go soon as well