another my first saturn thread spc900

[starship trooper]

hi there,

I have been trying for a while to get a decent image of saturn for a while,so on friday 20th i had a go at first i tried with my SW200pds and a 4x powermate and my spc900 but didnt have any joy because there wasntr enough back focus on the focuser i tried the 2" eyepiece adapter and couldnt get no focus at all cause it saturn disappeared when i put it on so i reverted back to just the 4x barlow and pulled it out of the 1.25" holder a bit the picture improved but still couldnt get fine focus on it.

Anyway this confused me because i have seen picture of saturn where people have use a 2x and 3x stacked and they come up with good pictures so why couldnt i?

Anyway this is a image i got with my 2x barlow i think i took 1400 frames and used registack to process it ,anyway there is a little bit of ghosting around it which i couldnt get rid of but please let me know what you think and where i could improve ?

Also i use sharpcap to control my webcam and have notice that in normal mode that the exposure slide is always in minus numbers is this right or is there something wrong?

And is there any good threads on using registax 6 because i need to learn?

Cheers dazz:headbang:

[Clayton]

I'm a little unsure as to which direction you needed to travel to get focus, I assume it was out? An extension tube between the Barlow and the Camera may help as it usually allows me to wind the focuser in to reach focus. But wit a 4X Barlow plus extension tube it may be over stretching the f ratio with Saturn due to it's lack of brightness?? Another option is to move the primary mirror back, you may even have enough movement without having to move the mirror cell.

Can't help you with Sharpcap sorry.

I have read some helpful threads on Registax V6, but don't recall where. I suggest a search on various forums. If you have V5/V4 then probably just stick with that for now as the differences in the results are subtle IMO although the process for the user is streamlined in V6

[Olorin]

Hi Star Trooper,

The picture looks very much like my pictures when I started out using the SPC900.

don't lose hope I am sure you will overcome the obstacles.

I think that it would be best if you tried to do the same with the moon first, this will allow you to know if you really can't get the focus due to the focuser length or due to the dimness of the planet and the small chip of the SPC900 (it is very hard to find Saturn when a large barlow is placed on the SPC).

As for the SharpCap yes the exposure is always minus (not clear to me why) for Saturn with a x2 on top of x3 barlow I used the max exposure (I think -4) as the planet is very dim and also the gain has to be almost 100% (I used 57) otherwise the plant is almost not seen. The best tutorial I found so far for Registax 6 is the one in the offical site (hopefully more and better ones will come soon) however many of the Registax 5 tutorials are still relevant

Hope this helps - share the next result!

Dror

[starship trooper]

with the 4x barlow i could see saturn but because the focuser was all the way out i couldnt get a decent focus on it so i played about with pulling the cam out a bit and the barlow out of the focuser which improved it but not enough.

Where can i get some extensions from?

Thank you for the encouraging words i am playing in a world that is a big learning curve and some of the stuff does fly over my head so sometimes i am going in blind.

Thanks again dazz

[Olorin]

Hi Dazz,

just Google "Orion Extension Tube" and I am sure you'll find it in a store near you.

most probably from other vendors as well.

Thanks

Dror

[starship trooper]

Cheers dror I do have a barlows that actually come apart so I might try that first but I shall ave a look at the Orion ones to.

Thanks again dazz