saturn help

[cosmicdonkey]

Hi all Took this picture the other night of saturn from my back garden using my skywatcher 127, 2x barlow and extension tube. captured 2000 frames of which I used approx 1200 in registax. I am pleased with the detail of the picture, the problem i seem to have is in nearly all the pictures I do I have very little colour in the image compared to other people using the same setup. I use a phillips toucam 840 (not flashed). In registax i have colour checked and also lgrb checked. Do i need to use filters perhaps? or is most of the colour added with software like photoshop? or perhaps its my webcam settings. I use wxastrocapture, registax and gimp editing software. Hope someone can help:D

[Space Cowboy]

Thats a very good image. Are you using a uv/ir filter? If not then that will affect the colour. Make sure saturation is set to at least 70% in vxastrocapture. To be honest there is not much colour in Saturn so I would not worry too much. You don't want a yellow colour which commonly happens with webcams. You will also get better results using the flashed spc 880 webcam.

[cosmicdonkey]

Thanks for the response:) I don't use a uv/ir filter but will definatly purchase one. Any advice on a reasonably priced but affective one? Think I may be going wrong with saturation levels too.

[Yidoboy]

That's not that bad an image mate. There's even a hint of the Cassini division.

[Space Cowboy]

Thanks for the response:) I don't use a uv/ir filter but will definatly purchase one. Any advice on a reasonably priced but affective one? Think I may be going wrong with saturation levels too.

Here is the link to Morgans who sell the IR/Uv filter and spc880 webcam. Buy Cheap Astronomy at Morgan Computers

[Ringrocket]

Hi,

I have used the same setup as yours.

I used to have more yellow/reddish pictures until I bought the IR/UV cut filter. When I used the filter my pictures became sort of less colourfull (more natural?) and looked exactly like yours. So, this filter will probably not re-introduce colours. In my case it seemed to do the opposite !

What I noticed though is that coincidentally my capture software started using other white-balance settings ! So I think a filter will not help you much (colour-wise), but you have to check the white balance settings of the capture software. The previous night for instance I had terribly reddish pictures and it turned out the white balance setting was now set to blue or something.

I don't know yet what the correct settings are now........

Cheers,

Jeffrey

Very nice picture btw. I personally prefer your colours over the more intense ones. I think this way they are more natural.....